When Ramabai had carried on her work in this school for eight years, a famine broke out in Central India. She read of this famine, and the thought of all the orphans who were left friendless by it moved her, so that she hurried off to the famine district, and brought back with her three hundred girls. The pupils of the Sharada Sadan welcomed the little waifs, and made room for them within the grounds for that night.

Some time before this the Pundita had bought a farm in order to provide for her widows’ school. The famine children were taken to this farm and nursed back to health there. Though in the Sharada Sadan Ramabai led the girls to Christ by indirect means only, she did not feel that she was bound to do so in the farm home. The famine orphans were a gift to her from God, not a loan from parents or relations, so she has from the first been free to tell them of the love of Christ the King, for all children, and for all in sorrow. The new home is called “Mukti,” that is “Salvation,” and high up over the great entrance the words “Praise the Lord” in Marathi, tell of Ramabai’s wish to call the walls of her children’s home “Salvation” and its gates “Praise.”

CHAPTER XIII
HORMASDJI PESTONJI

Before we leave India we shall hear the stories of four others of its children who found their way to Christ the King. The name of the first of these is Hormasdji Pestonji. He was not a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, but a Parsee. There are not very many Parsees in the world, and most of them live in India. They are a powerful people, though they are few in number. Their religion is a worship of fire, and their ideals of character are high and noble.

Hormasdji went to a mission college in Bombay. Though no one had to be a Christian in order to study there, yet each one had to listen to lessons on the Christian faith, and to take his turn in reading the Bible. Many of the boys hated the foreigner’s religion. They went to the classes because they wished to learn English, but they would gladly have closed their ears when the Bible lesson came. Hormasdji was one of the fiercest of these. When he saw the name of Jesus he refused to say it, and he tried to destroy the books in which it was. But he could not help hearing.

Parsee women are not treated as most Mohammedan and Hindu women are. They are honoured and loved, and may go in and out with freedom; and home life amongst the Parsees is often bright and happy. Hormasdji was extremely fond of his mother, and she died when he was still very young. He was in passionate grief as he saw her body carried out, covered with rich shawls, to the great white towers of silence by the sea, where the Parsee dead are laid. “O god Fire give me back my mother, give me back my mother,” he prayed; but his brother came sadly back without the body he had borne away, and the boys were motherless.

Hormasdji thought of his prayer, and began to wonder if ‘fire’ really was God at all. His lessons at school made him wonder still more, for there were strange experiments with fire and with water, and it did not seem to him that what he had seen with his eyes could be true if fire was really God. He became very unhappy. He did not wish to believe that Christ could be anything to him and he had lost all faith in his own god Fire.

One day he went for a swim in the sea. Before he plunged in he saw a sandbank on which he often rested, clearly marked, but while he was swimming the rising tide covered the bank and there was no resting-place for him anywhere. He turned back to swim to the shore, but it was too far away and he felt his strength failing. As his strokes grew feebler he thought of Christ and everything seemed different to him from what he had imagined. He knew that in his heart he did believe in Christ though he had tried to think that he hated Him. Those on shore saw that Hormasdji was in danger and set out to rescue him, but he did not forget the thoughts that had passed through his mind when he seemed to be sinking. It was in a different spirit that he listened to the missionaries afterwards. He was not content to hear only what was taught in school. He wished to know all he could about the King of India, so he went to the house of a Christian who lived in Bombay. He met another Parsee there, who also studied in the college. It was a joy to them both, for neither had known that the other wished to follow Christ. From that day onwards they stood together, shoulder to shoulder. When Hormasdji was nineteen years old, he was baptised, four days after his friend. All Bombay was excited. No one had ever left the Parsee faith before, and the Parsees stirred up the Hindus and both together tried to kill the young converts. When a trial at law was brought on, some of the Parsees clung to the wheels of the carriage in which Hormasdji drove away from the court and said that they would willingly die themselves in order to kill the man who had left their faith. They tried to poison him and to set fire to his house but all in vain. Hormasdji remained firm and spent his long life, for he was seventy-one when he died, in seeking to bring the faith of Christ into other hearts.

CHAPTER XIV
SITA THE WIDOW

Sita was only a child but she was very miserable. The other little girls she knew romped and played about, but she had to work hard and to bear blows and many other kinds of cruelty. She did not know why this was, but she could remember a time long before—at least it seemed long before—when people were kind to her, and she could play and romp about too. Even in her dim memory of these days one person had been unkind to her. An old man who had shaken her and told her to be quick and grow up that she might work for him. But one day he died, and Sita was very glad. Only she was not allowed to be glad long, for the others in the house came round her and told her that she had killed him, and from that time they ill-treated her terribly. She had to draw and carry all the water that was needed for washing and cooking; and a great deal was required, for there were nine people in the house. Sometimes she was terribly tired, and it seemed as if she could not draw up one bucketful more of water. One day, when she was ten years old, she was more tired than ever, and she sat down for a little by the well, while happy careless women drew up their bucketfuls and put them gaily on their heads. They looked bright in their cotton robes, and their hearts were bright too for they sang little songs as they clustered round the well. Sita thought there was a kind look in the face of one woman who came, and she said to her, “Will you not draw a little water for me, the well is so deep, and I am tired and ill?”