hammered down hard.

We wanted to be sure of our facts about each of them, that these facts
may further answer that smile which assures us things are not as we
imagine; so the Iyer wrote to a brother missionary who had known these
lads well, and asked him to tell what happened to each of them. This
morning the answer to that letter came, and was handed to me with "I
hardly like to give it to you, but it tells the truth about what goes
on." These boys were students in our C.M.S. College.

The first one mentioned in the letter is a young Brahman who confessed
Christ in baptism, and bravely withstood the tremendous opposition
raised by his friends, who came in crowds for many weeks, and tried by
every argument to persuade him to return to Hinduism; but he preached
Christ to them. They brought his young wife, and she tore her hair and
wailed, and besought him not to condemn her to the shame of a widow's
life. This was the hardest of all to withstand; he turned to the
missionary and said, "Oh my father, take her away! She is tearing out my
heart!"

[Illustration: A typical Brahman student. The marks on the forehead are
made of bright red, yellow, and white paste, and represents the
footprint of the god Vishnu. These Brahmans are Vaishnavites.]

Then came the baptism day of another Brahman student, his friend, who
previous to this had been seized by his relatives, shut up and starved,
and then fed with poisoned food; but the poison was not strong enough to
kill, and he had escaped, and was now safe and ready for baptism.

It was remembered afterwards how the friend of the newly baptised stood
and rejoiced, and praised God. Then, the baptism over, fearing no danger
in open day, he went to the tank to bathe. He was never seen again.

What happened exactly no one knows. It is thought that men hired to
watch him seized their opportunity, and carried him off. What they did
then has never been told. Contradictory reports about the boy have
reached the missionaries. One, that he is still holding on, another that
he is now a priest in one of the great Saivite temples of South India.
Which is true, God knows.

But we are under the English Government. Could nothing be done? One of
his near relatives is the present Judge of the High Court of one of our
Indian cities. And among the crowd of Brahmans who came during those
weeks, there were influential men, graduates of colleges, members of the
legal profession--a favourite profes