While Ràmitràha was in prison his mother visited him, and is said to have urged him to promise to pray to the idols sometimes, seeing that they were ‘nothings,’ and save his life; but he answered, ‘I will not, I cannot.’ I once asked Razàka, our native pastor at Fihàonana, and Ràmitràha’s successor, in conducting the midnight prayer-meetings at Fihàonana, if he thought Ràmitràha’s mother was a really good woman. He said she was one of the best Christian women he had ever known. ‘For,’ said he, ‘her life was a testimony to her faith. She used to visit the sick, read the Scriptures to them, pray with them, teach the children, and do everything you could think of a good woman doing. In fact she was instant, in season and out of season, in every good work.’ ‘Well, but,’ I said, ‘if she was really the good Christian woman you say she was, how do you explain her asking her son to promise to pray to the idols sometimes in order to save his life?’ He replied: ‘I cannot explain it, sir; but she must have half lost her senses through grief at the prospect of death to her first-born and much loved son; for I am quite sure that she was a truly good woman.’ [Illustration: THE SPEARING AT AMBOHIPOTSY. THE STONING AT FIADANANA. THE BURNING AT FARAVOHITRA. (_From Native Sketches._)] Ràmitràha’s younger brother, Andrìampàrany, also visited him while in prison, and I asked him whether his brother seemed daunted at the prospect of death. ‘Not at all,’ he replied, ‘he seemed rather to rejoice.’ I had in my possession Ràmitràha’s New Testament and some of the books of the Bible which had belonged to him; they were given to me by his widow, who was a member of my congregation at Fihàonana. To my intense regret they were lost by a friend in Scotland to whom I sent them. Her husband’s death was a life-long sorrow to her till, in 1876, pneumonia brought her release, the deaconesses and other Christian women soothing her last moments with hymns of faith and hope. Their only son, Rakòtovào, has been for many years pastor of one of the churches in the Fihàonana district. There was also a daughter, Rànàhy, who lived with a relation in the village of Fihàonana--a grey-haired, fine-featured, good old lady of one of the chief families of the district, ‘an old disciple,’ known as Rafàravàvifòtsivòlo--grey-haired Miss Last-born.