all to follow Him. Do you think it was easy? He was a loving boy.
Could it have been easy to stab his mother's heart?

When the household woke that morning he was on his way to us. The father
gathered his clansmen, and they came in a crowd to the bungalow.

They sat on the floor in a circle, with the boy in their midst, and they
pleaded. I remember the throb of that moment now. A single pulse seemed
to beat in the room, so tense was the tension, until he spoke out
bravely. "I will not go back," he said.

They promised everything--a house, lands, his inheritance to be given at
once, a wife "with a rich dowry of jewels"--all a Tamil boy most desires
they offered him. And they promised him freedom to worship God; "only
come back and save your Caste, and do not break your mother's heart and
disgrace your family."

Day after day they came, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, but the
mother never came. They described her in heart-moving language. She
neither ate nor slept, they said, but sat with her hair undone, and wept
and wailed the death-wail for her son.

At last they gave up coming, and we were relieved, for the
long-continued strain was severe; and though he never wavered, we knew
the boy felt it. We used to hear him praying for his people, pouring out
his heart when he thought no one was near, sobbing sometimes as he named
their names. The entreaty in the tone would make our eyes wet. If only
he could have lived at home and been a Christian there! But we knew what
had happened to others, and we dare not send him back.

Then a year or so afterward we all went to the water together, and he
and three others were baptised. The first to go down into the water was
the elder boy, Shining of Victory. Shining of Life was second. A few
weeks of bright life--those happy days by the sea--and then in the same
order, and called by the same messenger--the swift Indian messenger,
cholera--they both went down into the other water, and crossed over to
the other side.

Shining of Life was well in the morning, dead in the evening. When first
the pain seized him he was startled. Then, understanding, he lay down in
peace. The heathen crowded in. They could not be kept out. They taunted
him as he lay. "This is your reward for breaking your Caste!" they said.
The agony of cholera was on him. He could not say much, but he pointed
up, "Do not trouble me; this is the way by which I am going to Jesus,"
and he tried to sing a line fro