From Lakawn I took elephants to Chiengmai, and spent the last Sunday of my trip with Nān Inta and the newly organized church of Bethlehem, named after Mr. Wilson’s old church in Pennsylvania. Nān Inta was waiting for me where the road to his village turned off from the main route. On Christmas day following this, Mr. Wilson, Dr. Cheek, and Miss Cole organized yet another church at Mê Dawk Dêng, where Nān Suwan had been doing faithful work. In both these cases the persecution for supposed witchcraft had furnished a good nucleus for the church, which thereafter the Edict of Toleration protected from expulsion. All the departments of our work, medical, educational, evangelistic, were prospering. Nān Tā, the long-time wanderer, was becoming a power second only to Nān Inta, and destined ultimately to surpass him. Like him, he was a man of fine address and bearing, and a good Buddhist scholar; but he was much younger. Being, moreover, the son of a Prayā—the highest grade of Lāo officers—he had an influence with the nobility such as no other of our Christians had. In the church he began to show a capacity and power such as probably no other person has exercised. Meanwhile Mr. Wilson was working on plans for a building for the Girls’ High School. Already the school numbered forty-two pupils, but with no place in which to teach them save the teacher’s house. The season had been very hard on Miss Campbell’s health. She was very young, and had come direct to Chiengmai from the seminary without any period of rest, and with a constitution by no means robust. The mission voted her a trip to Bangkok for rest. Little did we think when we bade her good-bye that we should see her face no more. Financially for me the year had been the hardest in my life. With all the economy we could use—and we did not spend a useless penny—it seemed impossible for me to keep my family going. When we left Chiengmai we had overdrawn our salary, and the amount had to be made up that year. This condition was one of the straws that helped to determine me to stop over in Rahêng. I could live more cheaply there; in fact, could hardly spend money there if I wished to. In only one matter had I been greatly disappointed in Rahêng; I hoped to be in somewhat closer communication with my family, about whom I still felt some anxiety. I was, indeed, nearer them in space, but it proved much further in time. The largest mail of the year passed on up to Chiengmai, and was sent back, reaching Rahêng just after I had left the place. It finally reached me in Chiengmai on the last day of the year 1880! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXI SECOND FURLOUGH