Once, far along the Grand Canal in China, where the people were all afraid or hostile at the first sight of me, a beautiful girl of sixteen or seventeen ran along the bank of the canal after my boat, beckoning to me and to Mr. Weldon, the artist, who was with me, to disembark and visit her home. She was out walking with her mother. There was no doubt when one considered how far from any big town she was, and the fact that she was large-footed and willing to be seen of men, that she was a poor peasant girl, a farmer's daughter, either curious to see us strange men, or anxious to prove herself a Christian convert and to repay the hospitality and kindness she had received at the hands of Christian missionaries. That was what I thought, at any rate, and in that view I told of the happening in _Harper's Magazine_. At once a cry arose, in the companies of men I met and even in some newspapers as well, against my introducing so _risque_ a subject in my account of my adventures. Until then I had no idea how prone to evil-thinking is the world, how anxious to twist impurity out of innocence even though it required violence to do it. Once again, and here, I am going to tell of an incident equally sweet to memory and the reflection of wholesome minds; equally delicate in the perfume of innocence which it exhales. After the second issue of THE FRIEND, Sunday gave us a day of rest. We had known and seen no women for months. They were to us as our homes were, as civilisation itself was--mere memories, vague and shadowy, beside the substantial realities of fighting, marching, thirsting, and going hungry in the company of men--of men by the tens of thousands, but of no women. There was in Bloemfontein a very blond young woman of sixteen who served behind the counter of a shop in the main street--a slight, sunny-haired, blue-eyed miss, sparkling with fun and excited by the novelty of waiting upon British soldiers and living in the middle of what had changed from a dead-and-alive Boer village to a great armed British camp. The soldiers had noticed her as well. Generals and colonels compared notes of what gossip she and they had exchanged, and sent their friends to the shop to see her. The appearance of a few unattractive women among the soldiers in the village streets had made a mild sensation; but the discovery of a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked girl of English blood was the talk of the camp. [Illustration: _Julian Ralph._]