et in enough to take a photograph, surely we
were "in" enough to preach the Gospel? Why not stop and there speak
of more important matters? What was to hinder _then_?

Only this: in that town they have heard of converts coming out, and
breaking Caste in baptism, and they have made a law that we (with whom
they know some of these converts are) shall never be allowed to speak to
any of their women. That hindered us there. But even supposing we had
been free to speak, as we trust we shall be soon, and supposing she had
wanted to hear, the barriers which lie between such a child and
confession of Christ are so many and so great that when, as now, one
wants to tell you about them, one hardly knows how to do it. Words seem
like little feeble shadows of some grim rock, like little feeble shadows
of the grasses growing on it, rather than of _it_, in its solidity; or,
to revert to the old thought, all one can say is just pointing to the
Dust as evidence of the Actual.

"What is to hinder high-caste women from being baptised, and living as
Christians in their own homes?" The question was asked by an Englishman,
a winter visitor, who, being interested in Missions, was gathering
impressions. We told him no high-caste woman would be allowed to live as
an open Christian in her own home; and we told him of some who, only
because they were suspected of inclining towards Christianity, had been
caused to disappear. "What do you suppose happened to them?" he asked,
and we told him.

We were talking in the pleasant drawing-room of an Indian Hotel. Our
friend smiled, and assured us we must be mistaken. We were under the
English Government; such things could not be possible. We looked round
the quiet room, with its air of English comfort and English safety; we
looked at the quiet faces, faces that had never looked at fear, and we
hardly wondered that they could not understand.

Then in a moment, even as they talked, we were far away in another room,
looking at other faces, faces unquiet, very full of fear. We knew that
all round us, for streets and streets, there were only the foes of our
Lord; we knew that a cry that was raised for help would be drowned long
before it could escape through those many streets to the great English
house outside. There were policemen, you say. But policemen in India are
not as at home. _Policemen can be bribed._

And now we are looking in again. There is a very dark inner room, no
window, one small door; t