And if anyone had asked how fathers and mothers could be so cruel the answer would have been, “It is our custom,” or, “It was her fate.” For everything depends on fate to the Hindu, and no one can help anything that happens. If an animal is drowned in a well, he leaves it there. It was the creature’s fate to fall into the well, and it is not his custom to cleanse the well. The children of the village may sicken and die because of the poison in the well, but that too is fate, and no one pauses to ask whether there may not be some other cause. CHAPTER VI THE STORY OF THE PROPHET There are hundreds of other old stories that affect the life of Indian children to-day; but if we remember those which tell us of the holy land--the seats of the gods--amongst the Himalayas; of the sacred river of the Ganges, whose waters are even said to flow underground to feed the other rivers of the land; of what life and death, fate and caste mean to the Hindus, we shall have something to guide us. But all those who live in India are not Hindus. Once, long ago there was an Arabian named Mohammed. He was a camel-driver in Mecca, but from his early childhood he used to dream strange dreams in which he had visions of angels who came to speak with him. He had a faithful disciple, and he used to tell him what he had heard in his dreams. This man thought the things Mohammed told him were very wonderful, and he wrote them down. He had not books in which he could write them, so he took oyster-shells and bits of wood and stone, and sometimes even the shoulder bone of a sheep, instead of paper, and wrote the teachings of Mohammed on them. Mohammed believed that there was only one God, whom he called “Allah,” and he said that he was his prophet. Within his life-time he conquered Syria, Egypt and Persia, and before fifty years had passed after his death his followers had marched through the wild passes of the mountains into India. Since then, there have been many followers of the faith of the prophet there, and whenever they have been strong and powerful they have fought against image worship; indeed one of their great leaders was called the idol-smasher. The followers of Mohammed believe in fate as firmly as the Hindus do, but in other religious things they differ from them greatly. Their greatest feast day is at the end of the month that they call Ramadan. During the whole month they hold a fast, and eat only after the sun sets. Then on the last night of Ramadan they rejoice not only because the long fast will so soon be broken, but also because it is the night on which they believe their sacred book, the Koran, came down from heaven. But the Koran was really gathered after the prophet’s death from the sentences his disciple had written down on the stones and oyster-shells and other odds and ends.