member and pray for that one, who to-day is seeking, I
think in truth, to find the Unknown God?

CHAPTER XXVIII

How Long?

"I shivered as if standing in the neighbourhood of
hell."
_Henry Martyn, India._

I HAVE come home from vainly trying to help another child. She had heard
of the children's Saviour, and I think she would have come to Him, but
they suffered her not. She was, when I first saw her, sweet and
innocent, with eyes full of light, great glancing, dancing eyes, which
grew wistful for a moment sometimes, and then filled with a laugh again.
She told me her mother lived very near, and asked me to come and see
her; so I went.

The mother startled me. Such a face, or such a want of a face. One was
looking at what had once been a face, but was now a strange spoiled
thing, with strange hard eyes, so unlike the child's. There was no other
feature fully shaped; it was one dreadful blank. She listened that day,
with almost eagerness. She understood so quickly, too, one felt she must
have heard before. But she told us nothing about herself, and we only
knew that there was something very wrong. Her surroundings told us
that.

Before we went again we heard who she was; a relative of one of our most
honoured pastors, himself a convert years ago. Then a great longing
possessed us to try to save her from a life for which she had not been
trained, and especially we longed to save her little girl, and we went
to try. This time the mother welcomed us, and told us how our words had
brought back things she had heard when she was young. "But now it is all
different, for I am different," and she told us her story. . . . "So I
took poison, but it acted not as I intended. _It only destroyed my
face_," and she touched the poor remnant with her hand, and went on with
her terrible tale. There were people listening outside, and she spoke in
a hoarse whisper. We could hardly believe she meant what she said, as
she told of the fate proposed for her child. And oh, how we besought her
then and there to give up the life, and let us help her, and that dear
little one. She seemed moved. Something awoke within her and strove.
Tears filled those hard eyes and rolled down her cheeks as we pleaded
with her, in the name of all that was motherly, not to doom her little
innocent girl, not to push her with her own hands down to hell. At last
she yielded, promised that if in one w