e
chance of the scolding they would receive if they showed too much
interest in us. The mothers are as friendly as ever, but indifferent.
"We hear this is a religion which spoils our Caste," they say, and that
is the end of it. In the great house of the Temple Village they listened
well for some weeks. Then, as it gradually opened to them that there is
no Caste whatever in Christianity, their interest died.

How much one would like to tell a different story! But a made-up story
is one thing and a story of facts is another. So far we have only found
two genuine earnest souls here. But if those two go on--! Praise God for
the joy on before!

We went again to the potters' village and sat on the narrow verandah and
talked to a girl as she patted the pots into shape underneath where the
wheel had left an open place. She listened for awhile; then she said,
"If I come to your Way will you give me a new seeley and good curry
every day?" And back again we went to the very beginning of things,
while the old grandfather spinning his wheel chuckled at us for our
folly in wasting our time over potters. "As if _we_ would ever turn to
your religion!" he said. "Have you ever heard of a potter who changed
his Caste?"

Caste and religion! They are so mixed up that we do not know how to
unmix them. His Caste to the potter meant his trade, the trade of his
clan for generations; it meant all the observances bound up with it; it
meant, in short, his life. It would never strike him that he could be a
Christian and a potter at the same time, and very probably he could not;
the feeling of the Caste would be against it. Then what else could he
be? He does not argue all this out; he does not care enough about the
matter to take the trouble to think at all. He has only one concern in
life--he lives to make pots and sell them, and make more and sell them,
and so eat and sleep in peace.

But the girl had the look of more possibility; she asked questions and
seemed interested, and finally suggested we should wait till she had
finished her batch of pots, and then she would "tell us all her mind."
So we waited and watched the deft brown hands as they worked round the
gaping hole till it grew together and closed; and at last she had
finished. Then she drew us away from the group of curious children, and
told us if we would come in three days she would be prepared to join our
Way and come with us, for she had to work very hard at home, and her
food