ults. For distances are great in India. Devai herself lives two
days' journey from us, and her address is uncertain, as she sets off at
a moment's notice for any place where she has reason to think a child in
danger may be saved. Then, too, missionaries and responsible Indian
Christians are not everywhere. So that sometimes it is a case of
choosing the lesser of two evils, and choosing immediately.

[Illustration: LATHA (FIREFLY) BLOWING BUBBLES.]

Once in the night a knock came to Devai's door. A man stood outside, a
Hindu known to her. "A little girl has just been taken to the Temple of
A., where the great festival is being held. If you go at once you may
perhaps get her." The place named was out of our jurisdiction; but in
such cases Devai knows rules are only made to be broken. Off she went on
foot, got a bandy _en route_, reached the town before the festival was
over, found the house to which she had been directed--a little shut-up
house, doors and windows all closed--managed, how we never knew, to get
in, found a young woman, a Temple woman from Travancore, with a little
child asleep on the mat beside her, persuaded her to slip out of the
house with the child without wakening anyone, crept out of the town and
fled away into the night, thankful for the blessed covering darkness.
The child was being kept in that house till the Temple woman to whom she
was to be given produced the stipulated "Joy-gift," after which she
would become Temple property. Some delay in its being given had caused
that night's retention in the little shut-up house. The child, a most
lovable little girl, had been kidnapped and disguised; and the matter
was so skilfully managed, that we have never been able to discover even
the name of her own town. We only know she must have been well brought
up, for she was from the first a refined little thing with very dainty
ways. She and her little special friend are sitting on the steps looking
at Latha (Firefly), who is blowing bubbles. The other little one has a
similar but different history. Her father brought her to us himself,
fearing lest she should be kidnapped by one related to her who much
wanted to have her. "I, being a man, cannot be always with the child,"
he said, "and I fear for her."

On another occasion the clue was found through Devai's happening to
overhear the conversation of two men in a wood in the early morning. One
said to the other something about someone having taken "It" somewh