It was the rainy
season, and the roads were saturated with water and full of holes,
especially a new bit of road towards Pedungan, where sleepers of wood
had been laid down, to steady what would otherwise have been a bog; but
holes here and there could not be avoided. The Bishop always took a ride
early in the morning, before seven o'clock service in church. That
morning I had asked him to go to a house down that road, to inquire
about a servant. He came home late, and covered with mud all down one
side. "Papa has fallen," said little Mildred, playing in the garden. At
her voice her father seemed to wake up out of a deep sleep, and
gradually he became conscious of a severe bruise on his face and pain in
his head; but he could give no account of the matter, which was,
however, explained by a Malay in the course of the day. This man was
walking on the road to Pedungan, when he met the Bishop returning home.
He saw the horse put his foot into a deep hole and come down, the Bishop
also. He did not, however, at once fall off, not until the horse in his
efforts to rise had inflicted a blow with his head on his rider's face.
The Malay helped the horse up, which was not hurt, and the Bishop on his
back; and seeing he was much stunned, he followed them for some way lest
the Bishop should need assistance: but when they reached the town and
seemed all right, he went back. All this time, however, the Bishop was
perfectly unconscious; the horse carried him as he chose, over a ditch,
up a steep bank, under low-hanging trees, and quite safely until he
stopped at our own door. A headache and some stiffness were the only
results of what might have been a fatal accident. We were very thankful
to God for having sent His angel to guard steps as unconscious and
heedless as any little child's could have been. No memory of what had
happened ever came back to the Bishop.

* * * * *

In 1866 the _Rifleman_, her Majesty's surveying ship, gave us a passage
to Labuan, where the Bishop wanted to hold a confirmation. This ship
was going to Manilla, and from thence to Hong Kong, before she returned
to Singapore, and, through the kindness of Captain Reed, we accompanied
her. At Labuan I caught the fever of the country, but it did not come
out for ten days, by which time we were at Manilla. We anchored off
Manilla on Christmas-day evening: it had been a very wet day, but
cleared up at night, and we sat on deck watch