week
later set out to introduce the former to the Karens, a band of whom had
come down to convey the party. Mr. Boardman was carried on his bed, his
wife in a chair, and on the third day they reached a spot where the
Karens, of their own accord, had erected a bamboo chapel beside a
beautiful stream beneath a range of mountains. Nearly a hundred had
assembled there, of whom half were candidates for baptism. They cooked,
ate, and slept in the open air, but they had made a small shed for Mr.
Mason, and another for the Boardmans, too small to stand upright in, and
so ill-enclosed as to be exposed to sun by day and cold air by night.

The sufferer rapidly became worse, but he had an ardent desire to see
this last baptism, and all the thirty-four women, who were sufficiently
prepared, were baptized in his sight, though he was so spent as scarcely
to be able to breathe without the fan and smelling-bottle. In the
evening he contrived to speak a few words of exhortation to the
disciples, and to give them each a tract or a portion of Scripture. The
next morning the party set out on their return, but in the afternoon were
overtaken by a great storm of thunder and lightning, with rain that
drenched his mattress and pillows; and when they reached a house, they
found it belonged to heathens, who would scarcely let the strange teacher
lie in the verandah.

His cot was so wet that he was forced to lie on the bamboo floor, and the
rain continued all night. A boat was expected at twelve the next day,
and it was resolved to wait for this, while the Tavoyans looked grimly
on, and refused even to sell a chicken to make broth for the sick man. By
nine o'clock he was evidently dying, and the Karens rubbed his hands and
feet as they grew cold. Almost immediately after being conveyed to the
boat, the last struggles came on, and in a few minutes he had passed
away. He was buried at Tavoy, beside his little Sarah; all the Europeans
in the town attending, as well as a grateful multitude of Burmese and
Karens.

"The tree to which the frail creeper clung
Still lifts its stately head,
But he, on whom my spirit hung,
Is sleeping with the dead,"

wrote Sarah Boardman; and her first thought was of course to go home with
her child, but the Masons had not learnt the languages, and had no
experience, and, without her, there would be no schools, no possibility
of instruction for the converts of either people until they could