A beautiful young widow who lived near Sita had drowned herself in a well when she found how miserable her life was after her husband’s death. Sita looked into the cool water and wondered how long it would take her to die if she leapt in. Then she thought of what the woman had said a year before, and she could see herself jumping about as a little frog, and she feared that something worse even than that might happen to her, and that she might go to one of the places of punishment beyond the world altogether. So she shrank back, and tried to face the dreary round again--the hunger, the labour and the cruel pain. Even the joy of seeing Tungi once more could scarcely raise her spirits, and the tenderness of her little friend only brought tears to her eyes. But this time Tungi had more than kindness to offer. She told Sita of Ramabai’s home. It seemed impossible to Sita that she could enter there--she, whom no one wanted, and who had never been free to do what she wished. But Tungi told her that nothing could prevent her from getting into the Sharada Sadan, if she could reach it. And Sita did reach it, and what is more she reached it before all the fun and nonsense in her had been killed, and the happy years that followed healed the tiredness and the sickness of her arms and body, though they could not make her forget the darkness of her early days of widowhood. Before Sita had heard of Ramabai’s home, Tungi had said to her, “There’s a better God than that.” And in the Sharada Sadan Sita learned to know that God. And when she grew up a Hindu gentleman, who had also learned to know God, asked her to marry him, and Sita who had been left a widow at the age of four by the death of the “old bad man” became a happy Christian wife. [Illustration: RESCUED CHILD WIDOWS] CHAPTER XV DILAWUR KHAN AND THE KING Far away in the north of India a little boy was born. He was trained to two things--to be a robber and to obey the Prophet Mohammed; and he learned what he was taught thoroughly, for he could steal cleverly and he was careful to pray five times a day and to fast through Ramadan. From the high hill side he watched the roads by which men crossed the country. When poor people passed along he always stayed quietly where he was, and let his sword lie by his side, though he kept his gun in his hand to be ready. But, if instead of a poor man he saw a rich trader pass, he swept down into the valley, and made the merchant a prisoner. He had hidden haunts in the hills, and he took his prisoner with him to one of them. There he kept him safely till money was sent to buy his freedom. If it was a long time before any money was sent, or if Dilawur Khan did not think that the sum that had been sent was large enough he would cut off one finger from his captive’s hand and send it to his friends, to tell them that if they did not send soon it would be too late.