owards the close of what had been a time of some tension, the
leader of the two women suddenly sprang up, snatched at the tired baby,
and flung out of the room with her. She had been gradually hardening;
and I had felt rather than seen the shutting down of the prison-house
gates upon that little soul, and had, as a last resource, appealed to
the sense, not wholly atrophied, the sense that recognises the
supernatural. God is, I told them briefly; God takes cognisance of what
we are and do: God will repay: some time, somewhere, God will punish
sin. The arrow struck through to the mark. Startled, indignant,
overwhelmed by the sweep of an awful conviction, with a passionate cry
she rushed away; and we lived through one breathless moment, but the
next saw the child dropped into our arms, safe at last.

Facts about any matter of importance are usually other than at first
stated; but we have reason to believe that in this instance our
shuffling friend spoke the truth. The women were really on their way to
the Temple when he waylaid them. The wonder was that they allowed
themselves to be persuaded by him to come to us. But if nothing happened
except what we might naturally expect would happen in this work, we
might as well give it up at once. If we did not expect our Jericho
walls to fall down flat, it would be foolish indeed to continue marching
round them.

It was a relief when the women left the compound, after signing a paper
committing the child to us. There is defilement in the mere thought of
evil, but such close contact with it is a thing by itself. The sense of
contamination lasted for days; and yet would that we could go through it
every day if the result might be the same! For the child woke up to a
new life, and became what a child should be. At first it was very
pitiful. She would sit hour after hour as she had sat through that first
hour, with her chin in hand, her eyes cast down, and the little mouth
pathetic. We found that, in accordance with a custom prevailing in the
coterie of Temple women belonging to the Temple of the Rock, she had
been lent by her mother to another woman when she was an infant, the
other lending her baby in exchange. This exchange had worked sadly; for
the little one had asked for something which had not been given her, and
her two years had left her starved of love and experienced in
loneliness. But when she came to us everything changed; for love and
happiness took her hands and led her