believing mind; doubt of divine
goodness in Deity was impossible for him; doubt of human goodness
almost as difficult.

Such men have little chance in a brisk, busy, and jaunty world; but
they prefer it should be that way with them. And of these few
believers in the goodness of God and man are our fools and gentlemen
composed.

On that dreadful day, the Kurd who had mangled him so frightfully that
he recovered only to limp through life on crutches bent over him and
shouted in his face:

"Now, you Christian dog, before I cut your throat show me how this
Christ of yours can be a god!"

"Is it necessary," replied the missionary faintly, "to light a candle
in order to show a man the midday sun?"

Which was possibly what saved his life, and the lives of his wife and
child. Your Moslem adores and understands such figurative answers. So
he left the Reverend Mr. Carew lying half dead in the blackened
doorway and started cheerfully after a frightened convert praying
under the compound wall.

CHAPTER III

IN EMBRYO

A child on the floor, flat on her stomach in the red light of the
stove, drawing pictures; her mother by the shaded lamp mending
stockings; her father reading; a faint odour of kerosene from the
glass lamp in the room, and the rattle of sleet on roof and window;
this was one of her childhood memories which never faded through all
the years of Ruhannah's life.

Of her waking hours she preferred that hour after supper when, lying
prone on the worn carpet, with pencil and paper, just outside the
lamp's yellow circle of light, her youthful imagination kindled and
caught fire.

For at that hour the magic of the stove's glowing eyes transformed the
sitting-room chairs to furtive watchers of herself, made of her
mother's work-table a sly and spidery thing on legs, crouching in
ambush; bewitched the ancient cottage piano so that its ivory keys
menaced her like a row of monstrous teeth.

She adored it all. The tall secretary stared at her with owlish
significance. Through that neutral veil where lamplight and shadow
meet upon the wall, the engraved portrait of a famous and godly
missionary peered down at her out of altered and malicious eyes; the
claw-footed, haircloth sofa was a stealthy creature offering to entrap
her with wide, inviting arms; three folded umbrellas leaned over the
edge of their shadowy stand, looking down at her like scrawny and
baleful birds, ready to peck at her with crooked handl