t Miss McKee to do the housekeeping and take care of
our guests for a few days. She slept at the top of the house, and little
Edith in a cot beside her. It was late at night, and the moon shining
into Miss McKee's room, when she woke and saw a Chinaman standing at the
foot of her bed with a great knife in his hand. She felt under her
pillow if the keys were safe, for the box of silver was put in her room
while I was absent; then she jumped up, shouting "Thieves!" with all her
might. The man ran and she after him, down a long passage, down the
staircase, out of the house, by which time her cries had roused the
gentlemen--the Bishop was nursing a sick man in fever, and was not in
the house that night. They looked out of their doors, asking what was
the matter? However, Miss McKee had by this time made up her mind that
the thief was our own cook; she had seen enough of him by her courageous
pursuit to be sure of it. No doubt he thought she would be fast asleep,
and he should carry off the silver and the keys without discovery. Only
a servant of the house would have known where they were kept. This young
lady afterwards married Mr. Koch, one of the missionaries. He came from
Ceylon, and eventually returned to his native country, where I hope they
are still.

Now we were again without a doctor, and in the autumn Mrs. Brooke
expected her second confinement. This brings me to what we always called
the sad, dark time at Sarawak. The weather was rainy beyond any former
experience. We always had heavy rains in November, but this year they
began in October, and the sky scarcely seemed to clear. In October, God
gave us a little son, and in a usual way I should have been quite well
at the end of three weeks, and across the water to see Mrs. Brooke many
times before her confinement. But a long influenza cold kept me at home,
and the weather being always wet, there was no prospect of getting over
in a boat without a drenching, so only notes passed between us.

On November 15th, Mrs. Brooke had another boy, and though there was some
anxiety at the time, she seemed pretty well until the fourth day, when
inflammation set in with puerperal fever, and at the end of ten days our
much-loved friend was gone to her home in heaven, leaving her husband
and children desolate. It seemed so impossible that so bright a creature
should pass away from us, that to the last day we believed she would
recover. That afternoon she called her husband and bro