Nor was our brother's trouble at an end yet. After arriving at Cherene he lay in bed with the disease which had brought him low for about two months longer.

"God only knows," he tells us, "what I endured in that sickness. With no one who cared whether I lived or died, and practically no one to give me the attention I required, time dragged wearily on. Even Tom, on whom I had formerly depended, utterly refused to perform those simple offices which were absolutely necessary in such a sickness. My liver and heart being also affected, I began to swell with the dropsy. My limbs, abdomen and face were greatly swollen, and I felt that my time was now surely come. I had some hope before of emerging out of my sickness, but now that dropsy had taken hold of me, I felt that the diseases together would surely finish the business. My trust, however, was in God, and I prayed for deliverance. God answered in a remarkable manner. On Sunday I prayed for healing, and on Tuesday morning the dropsy was gone. In one night God took it all away. This was the beginning of better days. From this time I began to improve, and shortly afterward was enabled to walk around and visit the kraals again."

While the missionary was laid aside, however, and compelled for long and weary months to suffer in both body and mind, the progress of the work was not wholly stayed. The Holy Spirit was at work, and fruit was beginning to appear, as the following from his journal will show :

One day I heard a screaming in the chapel. Upon enquiring of Tom what was the matter he said that they had been holding a meeting and that Paketi, his sister, had been seeking

salvation. Jesus came to her at that time, and she was soundly converted. She is now married to Tizora, about whom I will have something to say later, and these two are the backbone of the work in Inhambane. Others at this time began to seek God. One, named Jeki, is at this writing in charge of the station at Cherene. Tom's wife also came out for God, and is standing firm to-day. Some who then came out have backslidden, but the truth of God has been sown in their hearts and they know that the story told by the missionaries is true. One young man, a carpenter, and a brother-in-law of Tom came out and gave up his drinking and other abominations. He ran well for a time, but was overcome again by drink. He confessed afterwards that the first night after he began to drink he dreamt about fire, the fire which is to burn the wicked forever. We are still hoping that he will come back to Jesus, take up his cross again and follow him.

CHAPTER XXII.

MINISTERING TO THE WRETCHED.

"Not to be ministered unto, but to minister."

While living at Cherene Mr. Agnew often went across the bay to Inhambane to engage in missionary work at the town. He finally purchased a small piece of land there and built on it a small corrugated iron house with tile roof. Here he would live part of the time, and part of the time he would stay at Cherene. In Inhambane town there is always much sickness among the natives. Many of the huts are badly dilapidated, admitting the wind and the rain, and thereby occasioning such diseases as dysentery, dropsy, consumption, fevers and so forth.

The mortality of the town is great. Inasmuch as immorality and vice abound many of the inhabitants are afflicted with loathesome diseases, which are little less than a living death, and which finally send them prematurely to their graves. In the interior there is much less. vice and immorality than in the town, since each man has his own wife or wives, whereas, in the town the marriage relation is less respected, and the result is "an awful mixture."

One of the duties of a missionary in such a place is that of visiting the sick and ministering to their bodies and to their souls as best he may be able. The sick come to him for medicine of all kinds. They have almost unbounded confidence in the white man's medi

cine, "and some will take it, not because they are sick, but because they wish to be [morally] better."

While Mr. Agnew would be absent from Cherene Tom would visit the kraals, hold meetings and do such other missionary work among the natives as he could, and when Mr. Agnew would return from Inhambane he would hold more general services, sometimes exhibiting his magic lantern. At other times they would go to places several miles from Cherene, so that, after a time, there were few people in that region who had not heard of Jesus as the world's Redeemer and of the home prepared by him in heaven for all his followers. The following instances related by Mr. Agnew are a few among the many strangely repulsive yet pathetic experiences incident to missionary pioneering:

She

One day at Cherene, while lying in bed recovering from an attack of fever, a boy came to tell me that an old woman was dying in the woods near at hand. I went down to see her, and found that she had been driven away by her unfeeling relatives and had had nothing to eat for five days. was in a very weak condition, and we brought her up to the mission station, gave her some nourishment and medicine, and tried to talk to her about "Jesus, the feeble sinner's Friend.'' She was too far gone to recover, and two days afterward passed away. As she was a stranger, no one would assist in burying her. Tom was not afraid on his own account, but his wife's relatives were full of superstition; and the idea among the natives is that if anyone handles the dead body of a stranger something is going to happen-someone is bound to suffer for it. If Tom had handled the corpse, and any one of his relatives shortly afterward had been taken sick, Tom would have been blamed, and would have had to pay up.

As I could get no one to help in the matter, I dug a hole about a hundred yards from the house, and, procuring a sack, doubled the body head and feet together, put it in the sack and tied up the mouth.

Being in a weak condition myself I