e very out-and-out and keen about converts, and they
managed to discover that the girl in the wood had some thought of being
a Christian, and that her being there had some connection with this, so
they told us at once. The description fitted Gold. But we could not
account for a girl of her Caste being seen in a wood; she was always
kept in seclusion. At last we found out the truth. She had shown some
sign of a lingering love for Christ, and her mother had taken her to a
famous Brahman ascetic who lived in that wood; and there together,
mother and daughter stayed in a hut near the hermit's hut, and for three
days he had devoted himself to confuse and confound her, and finally he
succeeded, and reported her convinced.

[Illustration: This is the tangible brass-bossed door outside of which
we so often stand on the stone step and knock, and hear voices from
within call, "Everyone is out." The hand-marks are the hand-prints of
the Power that keeps the door shut. Once a year, every door and the
lintel of every window, and sometimes the walls, are marked like this.
That evening, just before dark, the god comes round, they say, and looks
for his mark on the door, and, seeing it, blesses all in the house. If
there is no mark he leaves a curse. This is the devil's South Indian
parody on the Passover.]

We heard all this, and sorrowed, and wondered how it was done. We never
heard all, but we heard one delusion they practised upon her, appealing
as they so often do to the Oriental imagination, which finds such solid
satisfaction in the supernatural. Nothing is so convincing as a vision
or a dream; so a vision appeared before her, an incarnation, they told
her, of Siva, in the form of Christ. Siva and Christ, then, were one, as
they had so often assured her, one identity under two names. Hinduism is
crammed with incarnations; this presented no difficulty. Like the old
monk, the bewildered child looked for the print of the nails and the
spear. Yes, they were there, marked in hands and foot and side. It must
be hard to distrust one's own mother. Gold still trusted hers. "Listen!"
said the mother, and the vision spoke. "If the speech of the Christians
is true, I will return within twenty-four days; if the speech of the
Hindus is true, I will not return." Then hour by hour for those
twenty-four days they wove their webs about her, webs of wonderful
sophistry which have entangled keener brains than hers. She was
entangled. The twenty-fo