ver again;
she reminded them in a passion of reproach how, knowing what his
character was, they had handed her over to him. But we could hardly
follow her, the words poured forth with such fierce emotion, as with
streaming eyes, and hands that showed everything in gestures, she
besought them not to force her back. They promised, and believing them,
she returned with them. The other day when I passed the house someone
said, "Beautiful is there. He keeps her locked up in the back room now."
So they had broken their word to her, and given her back, body and soul,
to the power of a man whose cruelty is so well known that even the
heathen call him a "demon." What must he be to his wife?

And if that poor wife, nerved by the misery of her life, dared all, and
appealed to the Government, the law would do as her people did--force
her back again to him, to fulfil a contract she never made. Is it not a
shame? Oh, when will the day come when this merchandise in children's
souls shall cease? We know that many husbands are kind, and many wives
perfectly content, but sometimes we see those who are not, and there is
no redress.

Another of our children sold by auction in the Village of the Lake is
one who used to be such a pretty little thing, with a tangle of curls,
and mischievous, merry brown eyes. But that was five years ago. Then a
fiend in a man's shape saw her, and offered inducements to her parents
which ended in his marrying her. She was nine years old.

One year afterwards she was sent to her husband's home. His motives in
marrying her were wholly evil, but the child knew something of right and
wrong, and she resisted him. Then he dragged her into an inner room, and
he held her down, and smothered her shrieks, and pressed a plantain
into her mouth. It was poisoned. She knew it, and did not swallow it
all. But what she was forced to take made her ill, and she lay for days
so dizzy and sick that when her husband kicked her as she lay she did
not care. At last she escaped, and ran to her mother's house. But the
law was on her owner's side; what could she prove of all this, poor
child? And she had to go back to him. After that he succeeded in his
devil's work, and to-day that child is dead to all sense of sin.

Oh, there are worse things far than seeing a little child die! It is
worse to see it change. To see the innocence pass from the eyes, and the
childishness grow into wickedness, and to know, without being able to
stop