ffence, although she "never,
_never_ meant to do it!" In short she was, strange to say, a victim to
self-condemnation. When the Gospel of Jesus came to her, telling, as it
does, that "God is Love," that Christ came to sweep away for ever the
very sins that troubled her, and that His Holy Spirit would fight for
and _in_ her, so as to make her "more than conqueror," she caught it to
her heart as the very thing she needed.

She did not indeed condemn herself less--nay, she rather condemned
herself more than formerly--but the joy of being on the winning side, of
knowing that all sin was pardoned for His sake, of feeling assured of
progressive victory now and complete victory in the end, thoroughly
scattered her old troubles to the winds.

Her very name was characteristic. It is a common and curious custom in
Madagascar for parents sometimes to drop their own names and take the
name of their eldest child with the word _raini_, "father of," or
_reni_, "mother of," prefixed. Now this amiable little elderly woman
had been married young, and it so happened that her husband was away on
an expedition to the coast when the first and only son was born. One of
the first things that the child did after opening its black eyes on this
life was to open its uncommonly large mouth, with the intention, no
doubt, of howling. But circumstances apparently induced it to change
its mind, for it shut its mouth without howling.

The effect of the gape on the mother was to remind her of one class of
inhabitants of her native rivers--the crocodile--and cause her
laughingly to style the child her "young crocodile." The Malagasy word
for crocodile is _mamba_, and thus the child came by his name, with the
usual prefix, Ra-Mamba. After a time his mother became so proud of her
young crocodile that she dropped her own name entirely--congenially, as
it were, obliterated herself--and ever after was known as Reni-Mamba,
"mother of the crocodile."

At the time we write of, Mamba, (we will drop the "Ra"), was a stalwart
handsome youth of over twenty, with no resemblance whatever to his
namesake except a goodly-sized mouth and an amazing strength of
appetite.

Need we say that his mother's gushing powers were expended upon him with
the force of a Norwegian mill-race? It is gratifying to be able to add
that the crocodile was keenly responsive!

The father of little Mamba--Andrianivo--had returned to the capital soon
after his son's birth. He was