Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/274

262 Christians, he told me, were very rarely possessed, but he had known of cases of possession among them. The girl in question was the daughter of a poor woman; she assisted her mother in making rice-cakes for sale. The usual symptoms were shown, such as indicate hysteria and derangement of the nerves in England. The girl was beaten several times, and heathen magicians were called in to exorcise the evil spirit. As she was a Christian it would not leave her at their bidding. In despair the mother came to her pastor for help. After some consideration he decided to make an attempt. He sent word that the girl was to fast on a certain day. On that same day he fasted himself, and met her and her mother at the church. He led the girl to the altar steps and bade her kneel at the railing. Opening his Prayer-book, he began to pray in a low voice. As he proceeded the patient groaned. Gradually her voice grew louder; but the more she groaned the louder did the worthy man pray, until at last he was obliged to shout against her screams, still praying earnestly at the top of his voice. The power of his supplications prevailed. The girl sank exhausted by his side, silent, but once more sane. Hoarse and worn out with the effort, he handed her back to her mother freed from the spell of the evil spirit.

He had another story to tell of the wife of a school-master, who occupied a small house near his church. She was a famine orphan, from one of the orphanages, a good, quiet girl before and for some time after her marriage. She lived with her husband like any other native woman, cooking his food and keeping the house.

One day after sunset she went to draw water at a well, which was near a tree inhabited by a devil. (I give the good man's story as he told it to me.) From that hour she was possessed, and it was supposed that she must inadvertently have gone too near the tree. Her husband,