ing of the burning
at heart every missionary goes through who has to see the sort of thing
I have to write about. Such things do not make interesting reading. Fire
is an uncompromising thing, its characteristic is that it burns; and one
writes with a hot heart sometimes. There are things like flames of fire.
But perhaps one cares too much; it is only about a little girl.

I was coming home from work a few evenings ago when I met two men and a
child. They were Caste men in flowing white scarves--dignified, educated
men. But the child? She glanced up at me, smiled, and salaamed. Then I
remembered her; I had seen her before in her own home. These men
belonged to her village. What were they doing with her?

Then a sudden fear shot through me, and I looked at the men, and they
laughed. "We are taking her to the temple there," and they pointed
across through the trees, "to marry her to the god."

It all passed in a moment. One of them caught her hand, and they went
on. I stood looking after them--just looking. The child turned once and
waved her little hand to me. Then the trees came between.

The men's faces haunted me all night. I slept, and saw them in my
dreams; I woke, and saw them in the dark. And that little girl--oh, poor
little girl!--always I saw her, one hand in theirs, and the other waving
to me!

And now it is over, the diabolical farce is over, and she is "tied," as
their idiom has it, "tied to the stone." Oh, she is tied indeed, tied
with ropes Satan twisted in his cruellest hour in hell!

We had to drive through the village a night or two later, and it was all
ablaze. There was a crowd, and it broke to let our bullock carts pass,
then it closed round two palanquins.

There were many men there, and girls. In the palanquins were two idols,
god and goddess, out on view. It was their wedding night. We saw it all
as we passed: the gorgeous decorations, gaudy tinsels, flowers fading in
the heat and glare; saw, long after we had passed, the gleaming of the
coloured lights, as they moved among the trees; heard for a mile and
more along the road the sound of that heathen revelry; and every thud
of the tom-tom was a thud upon one's heart. Our little girl was there,
as one "married" to that god.

I had seen her only once before. She belonged to an interesting
high-caste village, one of those so lately closed; and because there
they have a story about the magic powder which, say what we will, they
imagine I dust