and departed, and went to our
bandy left outside ("low-caste bandies" are not allowed to drive down
Brahman streets), and asked our Master to open another door. While we
were waiting, a tall, fine-looking Hindu came and said, "Will you come
to my house? I will show you the way." So we went.

He led us to the Vellala quarter next to the Brahmans, and we found his
house was the great house of the place. The outer door opened into a
large square inner courtyard. A wide verandah, supported by pillars
quaintly carved, ran round it. The women's rooms, low and windowless,
opened on either side; these are the rooms we rejoice to get into, and
now we were led right in.

But first I had to talk to the men. They were regular Caste Hindus;
courteous--for they have had no cause to fear the power of the
Gospel--yet keen and argumentative. One of them had evidently read a
good deal. He quoted from their classics; knew all about Mrs. Besant and
the latest pervert to her views; and was up in the bewildering tangle of
thought known as Hindu Philosophy. "Fog-wreaths of doubt, in blinding
eddies drifted"--that is what it really is, but it is very difficult to
prove it so.

One truth struck him especially--Christianity is the only religion which
provides a way by which there is deliverance from sin _now_. There is a
certain system of philosophy which professes to provide deliverance in
the future, when the soul, having passed through the first three stages
of bliss, loses its identity and becomes absorbed in God; but there is
no way by which deliverance can be obtained here and now. "Sin shall not
have dominion over you"--there is no such line as this in all the
million stanzas of the Hindu classics. He admitted this freely, admitted
that this one tenet marked out Christianity as a unique religion; but he
did not go on further; he showed no desire to prove the truth of it.

After this they let us go to the women, who had all this time been
watching us, and discussing us with interest.

Once safely into their inner room, we sat down on the floor in the midst
of them, and began to make friends. There was a grandmother who had
heard that white people were not white all over, but piebald, so to
speak; might she examine me? There were several matronly women who
wanted to know what arrangements English parents made concerning their
daughters' marriages. There were the usual widows of a large Indian
household--one always looks at them with a