"Why? because God has commanded that the Gospel should be preached to all nations, and that command stands good, whether they will hear, or whether they forbear. It is our business to do His work, and His to look after the result." "And you would not consider that a man's life was wasted, if he passed his whole life as a missionary, without making one convert?" "No more wasted than if he had made ten thousand. Look here, Ernest. You have never seen a coral island, I suppose?" "No," said Warley; "I have read about them, but I have never seen one." "You have read about them? Then you know that the coral insects labour on, generation after generation, under the water, raising the reef always higher and higher, till it reaches the high-tide level at last." "Yes, that is what I have read, certainly." "For generations, then, upon generations, the work of the insect was wholly out of human sight. Ernest, was their work in vain? Did not they help to build up the island as much as those whose labours could be clearly discerned?" "You are right," said Warley. "One soweth, and another reapeth." "Yes, and both will rejoice hereafter together; claiming, under God, the work between them. The work of the missionary--of the early missionary--may seem to man's eyes as nothing, but it is merely out of man's sight. He is building up Christ's kingdom, as the coral insect, far down below, builds up the reef; and will, unknown though he be now, have equal honour hereafter with those whom the world now accounts its greatest benefactors." Many such conversations as these were held between the two friends--as, notwithstanding the disparity of their years, De Walden and Ernest might be called--and every day the bond between them grew stronger. Together they visited the Kaffir huts, and held long talks with the occupants; who were never unwilling to discourse on the subject nearest to De Walden's heart, little as they might be inclined to hearken to his teaching. He was, however, not without hope that he had succeeded in making some impression. More than one man resorted secretly to him to ask explanations of difficulties, which, it was plain, had been weighing on their minds; more than one woman attended the prayers, which were daily offered to the God of the Christians in the white man's hut, in spite of Chuma's interdict Maomo heard of it, and it roused still more fiercely his jealousy and alarm. He was, as has already been intimated, partly a deceiver, and partly a dupe. He knew that many of his pretensions were simply impostures; but he did believe in the existence of Evil Spirits, and their power to injure men. Such doctrines as those propounded by De Walden, must needs, he thought, be in the highest degree distasteful to them; and they would visit the land with the most terrible plagues, if the people fell away from the faith of their fathers.