e to tell her missionary friend about it. He sent her books to
read, and promised to let her know within two days what he could arrange
to do. "Her letter was dated from her grandfather's house," the
missionary writes, "to which she said she had been sent, and put in a
room alone. On the following day, hearing a rumour of her death, I went
to N.'s house, and there found her body, outside the door. I caused it
to be seized by the police, and the post-mortem has revealed the fact
that the poor child was poisoned by arsenic. Bribes have been freely
used and atrocious lies have been told, and the net result of all the
police inquiries, so far, is that no charge can be brought against
anyone."

Last year we met one of the missionaries from this Mission, on the
hills, and we asked him if anyone had been convicted. He said no one had
been convicted, "the Caste had seen to that."

Here, then, is a statement of facts, divested of all emotion or
sensationalism. A child is shut up in a room alone, and poisoned; when
she is dead, her body is thrown outside the door. It was found. _There
have been bodies which have not been found_; but we are under the
British Government--nothing can have happened to them!

The British Government does much, but it cannot do everything. It is
notorious in India that false witnesses can be bought at so much a head,
according to the nature of witness required. Bribery and corruption are
not mere names here, but facts, most difficult for any straightforward
official to trace and track and deal with. We know, and everyone knows,
that the White Man's Government, though strong enough to win and rule
this million-peopled Empire, is weak as a white child when it stands
outside the door of an Indian house, and wants to know what has gone on
inside, or proposes to regulate what shall go on. It cannot do it. The
thought is vain.

"Why not have her put under surveillance?" asked a friend, a military
man, about a certain girl who wanted to be a Christian; as if such
surveillance were practicable, or ever could be, under such conditions
as obtain in high-caste Hindu and Mohammedan circles, except in places
directly under the eye of Government. We know there are houses where, at
an hour's notice, any kind and any strength of poison can be prepared
and administered: quick poison to kill within a few minutes; slow
poisons that undermine the constitution, and do their work so safely
that no one can find it out; br