master, must be served first; then the children seize the one or two
cups by turn, and last of all comes Mother. Arul gulps her breakfast
standing and then dashes into the street. She is one of the village herd
girls; the sun is up and shining hot, and the cattle and goats are
jostling one another in their impatience to be off for the day.

The dry season is on and all the upland pastures are scorched and brown.
A mile away is the empty bed of the great tank. A South Indian tank in
our parlance would be an artificial lake. A strong earth wall, planted
with palmyras, encircles its lower slope. The upper lies open to receive
surface water, as well as the channel for the river that runs full
during the monsoon months. During the "rains" the country is full of
water, blue and sparkling. Now the water is gone, the crops are
ripening, and in the clay tank bottom the cattle spend their days
searching for the last blades of grass.

"Watch the cows well, Little Brother," calls Arul, as she hurries back
on the narrow path that winds between boulders and thickets of prickly
pear cactus. Green parrots are screaming in the tamarind trees and
overhead a white-throated Brahmany kite wheels motionless in the vivid
blue. The sun is blazing now, but Arul runs unheeding. It is time for
school--she knows it by the sun-clock in the sky. "Female education," as
the Indian loves to call it, is not yet fashionable in the Village of
the Seven Palms. With twenty-five boys there are only three girls who
frequent its halls of learning. Of the three Arul is one. Her father,
lately baptized, knows but little of what Christ's religion means, but
the few facts he has grasped are written deeply in his simple mind and
show life-results. One of these ideas is that the way out and up is
through the gate of Christian education. And so it is that Arul comes to
school. She is but eight, yet with a mouth to feed and a body to clothe,