answered our mother.  ’My best regards, and I will come at once.’  Whereupon she started, and mine host, looking out of his window, saw her from afar, and came forward to welcome her with the words:  ’O Madame, how glad I am you have come!’ Then leading her into his back parlor he said; ’I cannot tell how it is, but the whole of this last night I could not sleep for thinking of you.  For some time I have had several hundred gulden lying in that chest, and all night long I was haunted by the thought that you needed this money, and that I ought to give it to you.  If that be the case, there it is—­take it; and do not trouble about repaying me.  Should you be able to make it up again, well and good—­if not, never mind.’  On this my mother said:  ’Yes, I do most certainly need it, my kind friend; for all last night I too was awake, crying to God for help.  Yesterday there came three letters, telling us that all our boys would he dismissed unless the money for their board is cleared at once.’

“‘Is it really so?’ exclaimed the innkeeper, who was a noble-hearted and spiritual Christian man.  ’How strange and wonderful!  Now I am doubly glad I asked you to come!’ Then opening the chest, he produced three weighty packets, and handed them to her with a prayer that God’s blessing might rest upon the gift.  She accepted it with the simple words:  ’May God make good to you this service of Christian sympathy; for you have acted as the steward of One who has promised not even to leave the giving of a cup of cold water unrewarded.’

“Husband and children were eagerly awaiting her at home, and those three dismal letters still lay open on the table, when the mother, who had quitted that study in such deep emotion the day before, stepped up to her husband, radiant with joy.  On each letter, she laid a roll of money and then cried:  ’Look, there it is!  And now believe that faith in God is no empty madness!’”

THE PERSECUTOR’S FATE.

Dr. Eugenio Kincaid, the Burman missionary, states, that among the first converts in Ava were two men who had held respectable offices about the palace.  Some time after they had been baptized, a neighbor determined to report them to government, and drew up a paper setting forth that these two men had forsaken the customs and religion of their fathers, were worshiping the foreigner’s God, and went every Sunday to the teacher’s house; with other similar charges.  He presented the paper to the neighbors of the two disciples, taking their names as witnesses, and saving that he should go and present the accusation on the next day.

The two Christians heard of it, and went to Mr. Kincaid in great alarm, to consult as to what they should do.  They said if they were accused to government, the mildest sentence they could expect would be imprisonment for life at hard labor, and perhaps they would be killed.  Kincaid told them that they could not flee from Ava, if they would; that he saw nothing he could do for them, and all that they could do was to trust in God to protect them, and deliver them from the power of their enemies.  They also prayed, and soon left Kincaid, saying that they felt more calm, and could leave the matter with God.