d our empty hands). We
hesitate; he is poor, but we are so very thirsty. The next stall-keeper
reads our hearts, throws a halfpenny to the butter-milk man. "There!" he
says, "drink to the limit of your capacity!" and we drink. It is a
comical feeling, to be beholden to a seller of small Tamil literature of
questionable description; but we really are past drawing nice
distinctions. Never was butter-milk so good; we get through three brass
tumbler-fuls between us, and feel life worth living again. We give the
good bookseller plenty of books to cover his halfpenny, and to gratify
us he accepts them; but as he does not really require them, doubtless
the merit he has acquired is counted as undiminished, and we part most
excellent friends.

And now the crowd streaming up to the temple gets denser every moment.
Every conceivable phase of devotion is represented here, every
conceivable type of worshipper too. Some are reverent, some are rampant,
some are earnest, some are careless, awestruck, excited, but more
usually perfectly frivolous; on and on they stream.

I leave my Tamil Sister safely with two others at the cart. But the
comrade whom I am to meet again at that same cart some time to-day has
not turned up. So I go off alone for another try, drawn by the sight of
that stream, and I let myself drift along with it, and am caught in it
and carried up--up, till I am within the temple wall, one of a stream
of men and women streaming up to the shrine. We reach it at last. It is
dark; I can just see an iron grating set in darkness, with a light
somewhere behind, and there, standing on the very steps of Satan's seat,
there is a single minute's chance to witness for Christ. The people are
all on their faces in the dust and the crush, and for that single minute
they listen, amazed at hearing any such voice in here; but it would not
do to stay, and, before they have time to make up their minds what to
make of it, I am caught in another stream flowing round to the right,
and find myself in a quieter place, a sort of eddy on the outer edge of
the whirlpool, where the worship is less intense, and very many women
are sitting gossiping.

There, sitting on the ground beside one of the smaller shrines which
cluster round the greater, I have such a chance as I never expected to
get; for the women and children are so astonished to see a white face in
here that they throw all restraint to the winds, and crowd round me,
asking questions abo