The words were scarcely out of Isa Dás's lips, when he heard a sudden wild tumult below, and the sound of feet first rushing through the mill-room, then up the steep stairs, with the noise of loud weeping and wailing. There was no means, even had there been time, to fasten the door, and not even the doctor could keep out the mother, two aunts, and five children, who now burst into the room.
Natthu startled suddenly from something like sleep, sprang up into a sitting posture; wildly waving his arms, and rolling his eyes, he screamed out in terror, "Here they are again!" And then fell backwards in a fit, from which he never recovered.
Before midnight, laments for the dying gave place to wild wailing over the dead. The women, in their unreasoning fear and grief, had actually put out the spark of life which the doctor had been so anxiously trying to cherish!
Isa Dás left that house at midnight with a very heavy heart, remembering how he had vainly tried to sow the seed of Truth in the poor oilman's worldly heart. He thought, too, how many a life in Hindustan is every year lost from the folly of those who should tend the sick.
"But how can I wonder," he said to himself, "that in things regarding the body the same mistakes are made as in things regarding the soul! Superstitions crowd like the flies on the eyes of that poor child, which no one takes the trouble to drive away, though they carry disease and perhaps blindness. As cleanliness, air, and quiet are to the sick frame, so are purity, truth, and peace to the sick soul. Oh! When will these blessings be widely known and prized in my poor benighted country?"
[CHAPTER V.]
DYING FOR A FRIEND.
ISA DÁS had not always the bitter trial of seeing those for whom he had laboured and prayed living without God, and dying without hope. The work of an evangelist is specially a work of faith, and those who sow are not always permitted in this world to reap. Their harvest-joy is reserved for the blessed day when they who sow and they who reap shall rejoice together. Yet even in the hard field in which the convert's lot was cast, he was not without occasional tokens that his labour was not in vain in the Lord.
One of those in whom Isa Dás took the deepest interest was a kahar of the name of Gopal, who was slowly dying of an inward disease. The doctor knew that he could not cure the poor man, but he could sometimes relieve his pain; and attending him gave to the Christian opportunities of dropping in words that might be as seeds of light to a Hindu dying in darkness. The tall form of Isa Dás, wrapt in his old worn blanket, was therefore often seen in the cottage of Gopal.