Words fail to convey the force, and fire, and pathos with which that poor, untaught woman pleaded the cause of her sisters. It was one voice out of many protesting against this cruel wrong, and representing the undying dignity of a woman's nature, even when forced into a deeper abyss than she ever voluntarily chose to enter. We asked if the other women felt as this one did, and they all answered indignantly, "We all hate it." The first woman cried out, "It is very disgusting; oh, _shame_!" We told them it was a grief to us that those who called themselves Christians should do such things, and that they ought not to bear the name. She replied bitterly, "Yes; the Commander-in-Chief, the Colonel, and all of them, all the way down--your Christian men!--they all favour these things. The Queen does not countenance it, for she has daughters of her own; and she cares for her daughters in India also. It is the Commander-in-Chief" (meaning Lord Roberts). The accounts we have given in previous pages reveal the extremely tender age at which some of these girls were thrust into a life of shame by court proceedings under the Contagious Diseases Acts, when they were openly enforced. Two Benares girls declared they were taken up by the police at fourteen, and one Sitapur girl said she was sold to a mahaldarni at eleven. Much has been said of the horrors of child-marriage in India, and these atrocities should not be minimized, even though we bear in mind the usually slender type of Eastern manhood; but what shall we say when the robust British soldier has had placed at his mercy a little girl of fourteen years old, of the delicate Oriental type; and this done by regular process of law "_to preserve his health_"? Then again considering the heathen training of these women, we were led to expect that we should find blindness of the moral sense in relation to this sort of wrong-doing. On the contrary, they expressed great shame and humiliation, never tried to justify their sinful acts, spoke almost universally of their hatred of the life, shed bitter tears, and told us how burdened their hearts were in thinking of their sins. Unlike what we met elsewhere in speaking of religion to the natives, they had little desire for controversy. With not a single exception, we were made welcome, treated courteously, and listened to and blessed for our message. Even in the case of the mahaldarnis we found them not inaccessible, but inclined to expressions of contempt for the whole system of regulation, and of apology for being the hirelings of such a system--an excuse which must have more weight than in a country where industries are open to women. Rahiman of Meerut was an exception. She said she considered her business perfectly legitimate, because she was in a "Government position."