g the people, announced that
since none but God, the Great Spirit, could really make rain, any one
who professed to do so henceforward would be promptly 'eaten up'--that
is to say, deprived of his property by the 'father's' orders. He had the
sagacity, however, to make his peace with the discomfited professors by
sending for them afterwards, and providing each with some cattle and a
little 'stock-in-trade,' as he calls it, to start them on a more honest
way of life.

And if the African's dread of witchcraft makes him ruthless to the
accused, he is equally pitiless in his terror of what he calls
'ill-luck.' An 'unlucky' child may, he believes, bring misfortune upon a
whole village, and if mother-love triumphs sometimes over fear, and the
little one grows out of babyhood without any neighbour knowing that it
has cut its top teeth first, or is in some other way marked for
misfortune, the secret may none the less leak out some day. And then the
poor little bringer of 'bad luck' will quietly disappear, or will sicken
and die of poison, administered by some terrified neighbour.

Two or three years ago, a frightened young mother brought her little one
to a teacher in East Africa. The poor, precocious baby had been born
with one tooth, and it showed some love and courage in the mother that
she had come for help to the white friend who taught that it was wicked
to kill babies for fear of bad luck. She could never hide it, she
declared; the neighbours knew it already. Could the English 'Bibi' save
the child?

The English 'Bibi' determined to test the faith of one of her Christian
girls, a young wife who had no children of her own. She sent for her and
asked the question, 'Rose, would you like a baby to take care of?'

Rose's beaming face was sufficient answer.

'But, Rose, it is a _kigego_ (unlucky) baby.'

Rose met the information with disdain. 'I am a Christian; I am not
afraid of a _kigego_.'

'But you must ask your husband first.'

The wife, in East Africa, is generally the more powerful influence in
the house, and Rose would probably have been prepared to carry off the
infant there and then. However, her husband proved to be quite of the
same mind; and under the watchful care of the devoted foster-parents the
poor little _kigego_ will have every chance of bringing happiness into
the house.

One more story of the triumph of light over darkness.

Under the banks of a river in West Africa there waited, some years ag