Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/275

Rh who was much attached to her, was greatly distressed. He tried to beat the devil out of her. Several times a day he beat her severely, but it had no effect. She did not seem to feel it, and was certainly neither better nor worse for the treatment. He then tried what native doctors could do, but their medicines made no difference. He was advised to take her to the General Hospital, and he did so. The devil never manifested himself before the European medical men, and, after a few days' observation, she was discharged as having no ailment of any kind. The moment she set foot inside her own house she was seized by the demon and thrown into violent convulsions.

During its manifestation she screamed and cried out in different languages, singing strange songs in unknown tongues. One of the songs she sang was in the language of the Koravans, the bird-catchers, a people she was not known to have seen or spoken with. (Could she have been an orphan of that tribe?)

Another peculiar feature of her possession was the gift of second sight. At times she prophesied and told people their innermost thoughts and secret actions. A man passing in the road heard her cry, 'Aha! you beat your wife last night; you think that no one knows that you beat her cruelly.' He slunk away like a whipped hound, for she spoke the truth. No one was safe from the revelations that might be made.

There was an elderly woman living a few miles away. She was of some consequence in her village, owning the house she occupied, and giving herself airs on that account. She professed to have certain powers of magic, and when she heard of the young woman's affliction she expressed a wish that she might be allowed to try her hand at casting out the devil. She entered the patient's room; but before she could begin her exorcisms the demon spoke by the