ping girl. "No harm can
come to her. God hath afflicted, but yet doth He protect her. And she
walketh with Him and His Son Christ, else had she perished long ago, for
sometimes she will leave us and wander for many days in the forest or
along the shore, eating but little and drinking nothing, for she cannot
open a cocoanut with her one hand, and there are no streams of fresh,
sweet water here as there be in the fair land of Samoa. And yet God is
with her always, always, and she feeleth hunger and thirst but little."

Senior placed his hand on mine and gripped it so firmly that I looked
at him with astonishment He was a cold, self-contained man, making no
friends, never talking about himself, doing his duty as mate of the
_Venus_ as a seaman should do it, and never giving any one--even myself,
with whom he was more open than any other man--any encouragement to ask
him why he, a highly educated and intelligent man, had left civilisation
to waste his years as a wanderer in the South Seas. Still grasping my
hand, he turned to me and spoke with quivering lips--

"' She walketh with God! 'Did you hear that? Did you look into her eyes
and not see in them what fools would call insanity, and what I _know_
is a knowledge of God above and Christ and the world beyond. 'God has
afflicted her,' so this simple-minded native, whom many men in their
unthinking moments would call a canting, naked kanaka, says; but God has
_not_ afflicted her. He has blessed her, for in her eyes there is that
which tells me better than all the deadly-dull sermons of the highly
cultured and fashionable cleric, who patters about the Higher Life, or
the ranting Salvationist who bawls in the streets of Melbourne or Sydney
about the Blood of the Lamb, that there _is_ peace beyond for all....
'God has afflicted this poor child!' Would that He might so afflict
me physically as He has afflicted her--if He but gave me that inner
knowledge of Himself which so shines out and is glorified in her face."

His voice, rising in his excitement, nearly awakened her; so Suka, with
outstretched hand, enjoined silence.

"She sleeps, dear friends."

A year had come and gone, and the _Venus_ again lay at anchor in the
broad lagoon of Funafuti. Suka had come aboard whilst the schooner was
beating up to the anchorage, and said that there had been much sickness
on the island, that many people had died, and that Susani with other
children was _tali mate_ (nearly dead). Could we