“We had an interesting incident at our December communion. Just as I had announced the communion hymn, I saw Chao Borirak—the Nān prince, who had twice accompanied me with his elephant on my journeys, and for whose sake largely one of my trips to Nān had been taken—enter the room. As he had been the subject of much special prayer on our part, I could hardly command my voice sufficiently to proceed with the hymn. On my return from my furlough he had written that he would visit me at the first opportunity. His uncle, the Prince of Nān, had a grandson in danger of losing his sight from an accident. He had persuaded the Prince that possibly our medicine might help him. He brought a few presents from the Prince, and for himself had brought a gold ring with a native pearl from the Nān river. He is very anxious that I should move to Nān, but I tell him that he must wait for you.... With fever and death around us we have been wonderfully preserved from ‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday.’ We have had our anxieties about the children. During the last hot season we were afraid that little Margaret would melt away, she was so thin.” [D. MCG.] But the labours of the year were not in vain. During its progress Nān Suwan, who afterwards became the founder of the church in Chieng Sên, and four others who became influential ruling elders, were baptized. And with these was Pā Kawng, an aged slave of the Prince, who lived to be one of the Lāo saints. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XVIII WITCHCRAFT On January 6th, 1878, two native converts were received into the church—Nān Sī Wichai, the fine scholar who had been Dr. Cheek’s teacher, and the wife of a leading elder—and with them our own daughter Cornelia. This was the bright beginning of the year that brought in religious toleration. One day in March, as I was sitting in my study, I was surprised to see a tall man, a stranger, with the bearing of an officer, enter. He pointed with both fingers to his ears, and asked if the teacher could say “Ephphatha,” and open the ears of a deaf man as Jesus did. It was a strange introduction—to be accosted by a Lāo with a quotation from Scripture in the ancient Aramæan tongue! I judged by his accent that he was from Lakawn. In answer to my enquiry as to who he was, I learned that he was a Prayā, the highest rank among Lāo officials; that he had formerly been first in the Lakawn court, but was not then in office. But where had he received a Bible, and who had taught him?