_Monday, 27th December._—We had two of the strangest refugees I had yet seen. They were little brothers, the oldest could not have been over six years of age, and his brother was quite a baby. They had run away from their home, and come to the “English”. They had walked about four miles, and appeared tired and hungry at Blantyre. As they were too small to be left among other children, I went in search of a native woman to take charge of them at night. While the poor creatures sat weary and footsore in the Blantyre manse, I could not but wonder what reason they had for leaving a home to cast themselves upon strangers. They had heard that the English were “kind” to people, and the oldest said something about his “mother”. Some poor slave woman she had been. But she was all the good that they had seen in the world. Now she was taken away from them. Her dying wish may have been to see them safe with the English, and now they had come. We knew the man whose village they had left, for the children told most truthfully every particular that older slaves knew so well to conceal. Soon their master appeared to claim them; they, poor things, could tell no reason why they should not go back with him, and their tiny feet had to retrace the weary journey. They did not weep as older slaves always do in such circumstances; they did not even speak, but their looks meant a great deal. Hard falls the discipline of life on the poor African! CHAPTER XIV. SIXTH HALF. JANUARY 1881-JUNE 1881. On the first day of the New Year we had a party of Headmen to dinner. A cow had been killed the night before, and two boys were sent with letters of invitation! The Headmen came dressed in shirts and gaudy handkerchiefs. As they were not used to knives and forks, the meat was cut up in small pieces and the vegetables mashed so that all could be eaten with spoons. Their table-talk is just like the ordinary conversation in other lands. Some of them had been unfriendly to each other, but here was a little reunion. One Headman who lived outside Blantyre was led to speak of a slave who had run away from him. He sat beside Chibowa, a Blantyre Headman, who had been notorious for giving secret protection to slaves ever since the Mission was against the policy. We referred the slave-owner to Chibowa, “because when a person was missing every one went to him!” The two men had often disputed with each other before, but they could now join in the general laugh.