She was ninety years old—eighty years she had been an exile from the land of her birth—she had forgotten the prayers her mother taught her, and knew nothing of the worship of her fathers, when one morning she sent a messenger to tell the missionaries she wished to see them. She had ever before refused to listen to them if they came to her dwelling, but they hastened to obey the summons, glad to feel that they should be welcome, though quite uncertain concerning the nature of the interview she proposed. She was literally withered away. Her face was scarcely larger than an infant’s, and completely checkered with fine wrinkles; her teeth were entirely gone, and her mouth so sunken that her nose and chin almost met; her hair not silvery, but snowy white, except a little lock by each ear, which still retained the sandy hue of childhood; her form, which was always slight, was bent, and her limbs could no longer support her. She had revived the knowledge of her language since she had dwelt among white people, but “Oh,” said she, as the ladies entered, “I have forgotten how to pray; my mother taught me, and told me never to forget this, though I remembered nothing else.” And then she exclaimed, “Oh God, have mercy upon me!” This expression she had heard in her old age, and now uttered it in the fulness of her heart. There had come a gleam of light through all the dark clouds of superstition and Pagan blindness, and this spark was kindled at the fireside of that little cottage home, and fell upon her heart from a mother’s lips, and now revived at the remembrance of a mother’s love and her dying blessing. It was eighty years since she had seen that mother’s face, as she breathed out her soul in anguish, bending over her in the silent depths of the wilderness—eighty years since she listened to “Our Father who art in Heaven,” from Christian lips, and now the still small voice which had so long been hushed, spoke aloud, and startled her as if an angel called. She tried to stifle it, and for many days after it awoke in her bosom heeded it not, but it gave her no rest. No earthly voice had since reminded her that her heart was sinful, and needed to be washed in order to be clean. The seed which had been sown in it when she was a little child had just sprung up—the snows of eighty winters had not chilled it—the mildews of nearly a century had not blighted it, and the heavy hand of a hundred calamities had left it unharmed. She had not been in the midst of corruptions, therefore it had not been destroyed. The little germ was still alive, and proving that it had not been planted in vain.