special commissioner to Cheung Mai at once with any missionaries that might go, with stringent orders that the missionaries there and their families receive from the Laos authorities the protection the treaty between Siam and the United States guaranteed them. He declined, however, to interfere in behalf of the native Christians.
Messrs. McDonald and George bravely volunteered on behalf of the mission to go to the comfort and aid of their brethren in peril, and set out on the long journey, proceeding by boat to Rahang, thence traveling over the Laos mountains on elephants with the Siamese commissioner and his attendants. In a stormy interview which the missionaries had with the king in the presence of the commissioner he was forced to admit that the two men had been put to death because they had become Christians, and he avowed his set purpose "to kill all his people who should do the same." As to the missionaries, "they might remain, as the Siamese government had so ordered, but they must not teach religion nor make Christians."
The future of the Laos misson did indeed look dark, and there seemed to be no alternative but to withdraw from the land while this king reigned. But he who was thus "breathing out threatenings and slaughter" speedily had his power for evil taken from him and was called to his account by a higher Power. Soon after, during a
