My health had been such that I hoped I might safely forego my furlough, and have my wife and our youngest child return to Chiengmai alone. My wife, after finding a home for a while with her brother, Professor Bradley, in Oakland, had gone on in the spring to North Carolina. But she was not gaining much in strength, and plainly required another year. My own health was not so good as it was at the beginning of the year. Certain symptoms gave me anxiety, and decided me to delay my own furlough no longer. If it was to be taken at all, the sooner the better. So on March 12th, 1881, I started for the United States. The furlough which was now beginning ended twenty-three years of service in the general field of Siam, and fourteen years spent among the Lāo. I had proceeded down the river but a few days, when a passing boat brought the astounding intelligence of the tragic death of our esteemed and youngest co-labourer, Miss Mary Campbell. What words can express the shock I received! The news was confirmed a few days later by Dr. Cheek, whom I met on the river. At this distance it is unnecessary to enlarge on the particulars of the sad catastrophe. Indeed, it was all so sudden that there were few particulars to relate. Dr. Cheek had gone down to Bangkok on business soon after Miss Campbell left us, and now was returning with Miss Campbell under his escort. At the close of a hot day’s run, the boats lay moored by a sand-bar for the night. They had had their evening meal and worship together. Dr. Cheek had taken his bath in the river, had examined the bar, and notified Miss Campbell how far it was safe to venture in taking hers. But somehow she ventured out too far—to a depth from which only angelic arms could receive her to a shore where there is no more death. The brave effort of her Lāo maid, Kam Tip, and Dr. Cheek’s unsuccessful search till long after-life must have been extinct, were well known at the time. She had but just come to her chosen field of work, in the bloom of youth and in the full ardour of her first consecration, little thinking that her work was to be so soon and so sadly closed. Her last written words to a friend, with the ink on them scarcely dry before her death, were: “But I am not alone, for I have found in my dear Lāo girls, Bûk and Kam Tip, and in Nān Tā, my teacher, more company than I ever expected. I wish I could lend them to you long enough for you to know them.” * * * * *