All this time two of our number had been waiting upon God in a quiet place out of sight. One of the two went after the parents, hoping for a chance to explain matters to the mother. As she drew near she heard the wife say in an undertone to her husband: "Leave them for to-day. Wait till to-night. You have carried off the younger in your arms against her will. What hinders you doing the same to the elder?" And that night we prayed that the Wall of Fire might be round us, and slept in peace. As a dream when one awaketh, so was the memory of that afternoon when we awoke next morning. And as a dream so the parents passed out of sight, for they left before the dawn. But weeks afterwards we heard what had happened that night. They had lodged in the Hindu village outside our gate. There has never been a Christian there, and the people have never responded in any way. It is a little shut-in place of darkness on the borders of the light. But when the parents proposed a raid upon the bungalow that night they would not rise to it. "No, we have no feud with the bungalow. We will not do it." The nearest white face was a day's journey distant, and a woman alone, white or brown, does not count for much in Hindu eyes. But the Wall of Fire was around us, and so we were safe. If the story could stop here, how easy life would be! One fight, one fling to the lions, and then the palm and crown. But it is not so. The perils of reaction are greater for the convert than the first great strain of facing the alternative, "Diana or Christ." Home-sickness comes, wave upon wave, and all but sweeps the soul away; feelings and longings asleep in the child awake in the girl, and draw her and woo her, and blind her too often to all that yielding means. She forgets the under-side of the life she has forsaken; she remembers only the alluring; and all that is natural pleads within her, and will not let her rest. "Across the will of Nature leads on the path of God," is sternly true for the convert in a Hindu or Moslem land. And so we write this unfinished story in faith that some one reading it will remember the young girl-converts as well as the little children. Fawn has been kept steadfast, but she still needs prayer. These last five years have held anxious hours for those who love her, and to us, as to all who have to do with converts. "Perpetual knockings at Thy door, tears sullying Thy transparent rooms," are words that go deep and touch the heart of things. CHAPTER XXVI The Glory of the Usual [Illustration: AFTER HER BOTTLE.]