A big, coarse woman (this was Katy's sister, but it must not be forgotten that we at this time did not know that her family were so disreputable) came out and sat down on the cot by the sick woman; but as soon as she heard enough of the girl's pleading to know that she was asking permission to escape from her wretched existence, she flew into a passion and struck Katy, and blow would have followed blow had we not interfered. Poor Katy flung herself dejectedly into a chair, and could not summon up courage to follow us against all this opposition; then a British soldier came up and spoke to her and led her away, while two or three more British soldiers looked on in contemptuous amusement at the scene. The poor creature was too cowed in spirit, from constant bad usage, to resist the determination of officials and soldiers to keep possession of so attractive a slave. Weigh the soul of that one dark-skinned heathen girl against the diseased bodies of a standing army of men, and God knows which has most weight in his sight, even if a whole materialistic nation may have forgotten. Men and women, Governments and Armies, cannot, combined, reduce the estimate which He puts upon one immortal soul; but in a near judgment-day, these will have to drink the full measure appointed for such a crime as thwarting a woman in her God-given right to lead a decent moral life. When a Government begins to drag down the moral character of its subjects, it has begun to dig out its own foundations. We talked with over three hundred Cantonment women, held to prostitution by the iron law of military regulation, collected together by Government procuresses, who were used as the ultimate tools of administration in carrying out Lord Roberts' military order for a sufficient number of attractive women, forced to the indecent exposure of their persons by misnamed "doctors," under penalty of fine or expulsion from the Cantonment, which was tantamount to starvation; imprisoned for several days of each month, even when in perfect health, in the Lock Hospital; imprisoned for an indefinite length of time in the hospital whenever found diseased; often turned out when seriously diseased, with their British children, to starve, or to spread disease at will among the natives, the final scapegoats of British profligacy; dismissed to starvation when too old to be any longer "sufficiently attractive" to the soldier, if only a fresh victim could be found to take the place; universally so poor as to be weighed down by debts, and receiving a pittance fixed by military usage, that kept many of them on the verge of starvation. What were the circumstances that brought women to such a lot as this? We will give only a few, in bare outlines, of the many cases not already mentioned:-- 1. A nurse-maid enticed to the chakla by a British sergeant.