"You have spoken wisely, my brother," the stranger answered, "yet it were better not to tempt destiny. And now, the night comes on, and I must hasten lest I run into the very dangers of which I warn you." Then, as if attracted by a certain pinched look on the face of the child that slept on the ground near where he stood, he said, quickly: "I have provisions, and to spare, in this hamper," pointing to a large basket that he had set down when he first saw Niu, "and in the morning I will reach my destination. Will you not accept it, and thereby lighten a traveller's load?" At his words the woman turned toward him with an exclamation of delight, and her husband's face lost the look it had worn during the interview, as he now attempted to speak. The stranger did not wait for the grateful thanks that rushed to their lips, but went hastily into the temple, and there he found a girl with patient, solemn eyes, seated among the ruins of her gods. As he entered, he saw that with her ragged dress she was wiping the dirt from the scarred and grimacing goddess of mercy, and he stopped to watch her. Frightened at his appearance, she arose and stood waiting for him to pass, but he said sadly: "Your gods, my child, are but wood and stone, and cannot hear your prayers. The one true God lives in Heaven, watching over you, and loving you, and there is no other God but Him." Awed by his strange words, yet understanding them not, she gazed at him in silence, and, moved by a sudden impulse, he laid his hand tenderly on her head. "May the God of love and peace bring you at last to His kingdom," he murmured, and was gone. Perhaps, had he known that this quiet girl was destined to be one of the great women of the world, at whose slightest word, millions, even hundreds of millions, of loyal subjects would bow the knee, he would have spoken longer with her, but this he never knew. It was not until they had eaten with all the zest that hunger gives of the provisions left them by the stranger, that the girl raised her eyes to the calm blue heavens above her, now dotted with countless glowing stars, and said, abruptly: "Father, the stranger told me, in the temple, about one true God, who is alive, and who lives up there. What did he mean? I never heard before of Him, and I have worshipped many gods." Niu Tsang nodded quickly at this confirmation of his suspicions. "It is as I thought," he said. "Although that traveller wore the honorable costume of our country, and spoke to us in our own tongue, yet methinks he was not one of us, but a barbarian from beyond the sea." The girl shuddered. "And he talked to me!" she cried in horror. "I never dreamed that he was a foreign devil." "Be he what he may, he was most kind to us," her father reminded her, "for his food was not polluted." "But what god is this that he worships?" she asked.