sets out for the town, and few people escape her keen eye and
persuasive words.

"Why are you not going to God's House?" she asks a man who is sitting
at the door of his hut. Close by are the remains of a devil-house.

He rocks himself and replies, "If your heart was vexed would you go any
place? Would you not rather sit at home and nurse your sorrow?"

Mary learns that his only child has died and has been buried in the
house, and according to custom the family is sitting in filth, squalor,
and drunkenness. She talks to him of the resurrection, and he becomes
interested, and takes her into a room where the mother is sitting with
bowed head over the grave, the form of which can be seen distinctly
under a blue cloth that covers the ground. A bunch of dirty muslin is
hanging from the ceiling. It is a dismal scene. She reads part of John
xi., and speaks about life and death and the beyond.

"Well," remarked the man, "if God took the child I don't care so much--
but to think an enemy bewitched it!"

To the mother she says, "Do you not find comfort in these words?"

"No," is the sullen reply. "Why should I find comfort when my child is
gone?"

Mary pats her on the head, and tells her how her own mother has found
comfort in the thought of the reunion hereafter. The woman is touched
and weeps: the mother-heart is much the same all the world over.