red to ask the
Missie Ammal to come again, lest people should notice it and talk. So
the years passed emptily, "and oh, my heart was an empty place, a void
as empty as air!" And she stretched out her arms, and clasping her hands
she looked at the empty space between, and then at me with inquiring
eyes, to see if I understood.

How well one understood!

"I am an emptiness for Thee to fill,
My soul a cavern for Thy sea, . . .
I have done nought for Thee, am but a Want."

She had never heard it, but she had said it. We do not often hear it
said, and when we do our whole heart goes out to meet the heart of the
one who says it; everything that is in us yearns with a yearning that
cannot be told, to bring her to Him Who said "Come."

We were full of hope about her, and we wrote to her Christian relative,
and he wrote back with joy. It seemed so likely then that she would
decide for Christ.

But one day, for the first time, she did not care to read. I remember
that day so well; it was the time of our monsoon, and the country was
one great marsh. We had promised to go that morning, but the night
before the rivers filled, and the pool between her and us was a lake. We
called the bandyman and explained the situation. He debated a little,
but at last--"Well, the bulls can swim," he said, and they swam.

We need not have gone, she was "out." "Out," or "not at home to-day," is
a phrase not confined to Society circles where courtesy counts for more
than truth. "I am in, but I do not want to see you," would have been
true, but rude.

This was the first chill, but she was in next time, and continued to be
in, until after a long talk we had, when again the question rose and had
to be faced, "Can I be a Christian _here_?"

It was a quiet afternoon; we were alone, only the little grandchildren
were with her--innocent, fearless, merry little creatures, running to
her with their wants, and pulling at her hands and dress as babies do at
home. Their grandmother took no notice of them beyond an occasional pat
or two, but the childish things, with their bright brown eyes and little
fat, soft, clinging hands went into the photo one's memory took, and
helped one the better to understand and sympathise in the humanness of
the pretty home scene, that humanness which is so natural, and which God
meant to be. I think there is nothing in all our work which so rends and
tears at the heart-strings within us, as