raised to the demon of the leprosy, to the spirits of wind and air and pestilence, and to all manner of unclean beings who should find no place in the mythology of a true believer. The old-world superstitions of the Malays-the natural religion of the people, tempered a little by the bastard Hin- duism disseminated in its day by the great Brahman empire of Kambodia, ere ever the Muhammadan missionaries came to lamper with their simple paganism always comes uppermost in the native mind in seasons of trouble or stress. In precisely The same way, it is the natural man, the savage. that ordinarily rises to the surface, through no matter what superimposed strata of conventionalism. in moments of strong emotion. But these things had no power to help or comfort Minah, and any strength that came to her during that hour that she passed, lying prone and in agony, learing at the lush grass and stifling her lamentations, was drawn from her own brave and generous heart, that fountain of willing self-immolation and umutlerable tenderness, the heart of a woman who loves.
The evening sun was sinking amid the riot of splendour which attends sunset in Malaya when at last Minah gathered herself together, rearranged her disordered hair and crumpled garinents with deft feminine fingers, and turned her face homeward. Later still, when the evening meal had been dis- patched and the lights extinguished, Minah, lenderly caressing the head of her husband, which lay pil- lowed upon her breast, whispered in his ears the
