I came away completely cast down and defeated; as for the poor mother, she wrung her hands and wept piteously. It was now nearly eleven o'clock, and we went back to the prison. The unhappy Khoon Jethamas took up her abode near the only window of the cell where her daughter was immured. I left her sitting on a strip of matting, with her hands over her face, shutting out the outer darkness, in order to realize the utter darkness that had fallen upon her life and upon the light of her home. Nights and days succeeded each other in regular succession, and day after day I went to the prison to find the patient, loving mother living under the shadow of its roof, so as to be ever near her child, and once a day she was admitted to see her loved one visibly wasting away. The only change that had taken place in the prisoner, that was hopeful, was, that now it was she who comforted her mother every day, by relating to her her bright visions, and assuring her that she felt the time was not far distant when the Mother and her Son would come down from heaven to proclaim her innocence; that the holy angels descended at night to bless and comfort her with loving promises of speedy justice, and that now the prison-house had been transformed by them into a paradise. There are mysteries in all religions, which the uninitiated cannot penetrate, and we stood abashed and silent on the other side of the veil that was lifted for the spiritual consolation of this strange girl. The burning July sun shone daily on the tiled roof of the prison of Tâmsèng. The ground on one side was full of muddy pools, and the river on the other was the cesspool of the village,--a liquid mass of poison from which rose the pestilence and the cholera that brooded with their death-like wings over the inhabitants of Tâmsèng. The evening air was either heavy with noxious vapors or it came in fitful burning gusts across the river, and brought no balm to the suffering prisoners within. Rungeah languished day after day, for the case was to be tried before the International Court of Siam, and the days and the weeks and the months passed away like "A stream whose waters scarcely seem to stray, And yet they glide like happiness away." With them poor Rungeah's bright faith began to grow dim, and her nightly prayers to the Mother and her holy Son were less and less hopeful, but yet she still strove with each returning day to revive her drooping spirits, and with sweet self-deceit "to paint elysium" upon the darkness of her prison-walls. The mother bribed the jailers to take to her daughter some little delicacies every day, for the coarse prison food disgusted the girl, and she was gradually being starved to death; and now a low cough and a hectic fever had set in.