At last one of my deacons, who was a widower, wished to marry again, and he asked me to perform the marriage ceremony. We had the marriage in the station church one Sabbath morning at the close of the service. The deacon and his bride stood up in front of the rail, and I began reading the marriage service. At one part of it I had to ask the usual question--_Efa làsa va ny vòdiòndry?_ i. e. ‘Has the sheep’s rump gone?’ In former times quarrels seem to have been made up, and serious agreements concluded over the carcase of a slain animal, after which a feast followed (Gen. xxxi. 44–55). Perhaps the marriage agreement was made or concluded over the carcase of a sheep, after which the hinder quarters may have been handed over to the father and mother of the bride, or her guardians, and the reception by them of _ny vòdiòndry_ in the presence of witnesses made the marriage legal. It afterwards came about that a small piece of money took the place of the hinder quarters of the sheep; but that still retained the name of _ny vòdiòndry_, ‘the sheep’s rump,’ and the reception of that by the father and mother of the bride, or by her guardians, constituted the marriage legal. Not that there was much in the legality; for a man might divorce his wife at any time by simply saying to her, ‘Thanks, go!’ She could not divorce him, but he could divorce her at any time. We had to ask, therefore, while reading the marriage service, if the legal transaction had taken place, because if not we could not go on with the service till it had. My wife had never read the Malagasy marriage service, I don’t think she even knew about the _vòdiòndry_; certainly she did not know that we had to ask in the marriage service if that had gone or been received; and hence, when I called out in the middle of the service, ‘_Has the sheep’s rump gone?_’ the look of surprise and horror which came over her face was a thing to be remembered. I suspect she feared I had taken leave of my senses. During the previous year our station church had given a salary of £5 to their good old pastor Razàka, who, up till then, had not received any salary, although he had laboured ‘in season and out of season’ for twenty years for the church and district; but, during 1878, they agreed to give their second pastor £2 8_s._ a year, and an evangelist also £2 8_s._ They paid the teachers of the Congregational school £7 4_s._ a year, gave £2 to the Native Missionary Society, besides congregational expenses, which would probably be £2. In all this amounted to £21--but it was to them then what £105 would have been to us. This was from a poor village church of ninety-six members, a third of whom were slaves!