The owners of this little cabin seem busy――and happy as they are busy――at work. The wife may be cleaning the fish which her husband caught last night in a neighboring stream and brought home in that vase-shaped bamboo basket sitting behind her to the right. If so, she will string them in a row upon a bamboo splint, and when the fire is built she will stick the splint in the ground near enough to the fire to cook the fish. The husband is preparing the pot to cook or steam the rice. A neighbor woman was passing along, and has stopped to talk a few minutes and to see the woman cleaning her fish. Splint baskets of different sizes and shapes are standing around (some of them under the dwelling)――indications of industry and thrift. There are a few of these bamboo cabins on the plains of Cheung Mai which have become vocal with the prayers and praises of God’s people. Before the gospel came to them their inmates shared in common with their neighbors the transient joys of earth. For their fears and griefs they had no solace, either from earth or heaven. Now the “Light of life” shines into their souls, and they “joy in the Lord that bought them.” And, however humble their homes may be, however fragile, the Saviour abides with them, and is preparing them for and leading them to his Father’s house. The light, too, is shining from these Christian cabins to others yet in darkness. The Saviour has purposes of mercy for other homes in the cities and villages of these northern Laos. CHAPTER XXVII. _SUPERSTITIONS OF THE LAOS._ A full account of the superstitions of the Laos would very fairly represent their intellectual attainments: their reasoning facilities are entirely in subjection to the imagination in accounting for the most ordinary natural phenomena; their reverential awe of supposed supernatural agencies stands in the place of any rational perception of natural causes. As, however, anything like a full statement of their superstitions would fill a volume, nothing more than a slight sketch of some of their more common superstitions will be attempted in this chapter.