On we went again, over the hills, the sun climbing higher and growing hotter every moment.  Then we turned off into some dim cool woods, picking our way through rough ravines and blind tracks until we reached another little cabin home.  We had to bend low to enter the door of the rough, rude house, yet the one low room, with loft above, sheltered a family of nine persons.

Upon a bed, the dear old grandmother was dying, but the dark cabin seemed illuminated by the shining face of the happy saint.

“You are almost home, Auntie?”

“Yes chile, almost home!”

“And you find Jesus dear and precious, now?”

“Yes! yes! dear and precious.”

I held her cold, almost pulseless hands in mine, while her minister read comforting words of hope from the blessed Word.  Then we sang for her, closing with—­

     “Oh come, angel bands, come and around me stand,
     Oh bear me away on your snowy wings
     To my eternal home.”

Her dark face was fairly radiant.  She lifted her hands toward heaven, and though our eyes were holden that we could not see, we felt that the Lord and his angels were glorifying that humble abode, making it the gateway of heaven.  Holding fast to our hands as we knelt beside her bed, she murmured responses to our prayers.

With uplifted hearts, we said our last good-bye, and went away rejoicing in her triumph over the terrors of death and at the thought of the glory that awaited her.  As we passed out of sight, she entered within the gates, with that radiant look upon her face; and the next day at sunset we laid her away to rest.

From this “Beulah-land,” we hastened on to visit a man who was in the last stages of consumption.  We had been for some time doing what we could that he might be prepared for the great change that was drawing near.  In the low doorway, sat an old hag-like woman, who stared at us with a look of rage, as we passed by her into the room where the sick man was.  Sultry as was the day, there was a hot blaze in the cavernous fireplace.  Over it hung an iron kettle, from which most sickening odors emanated.  The sick man was in a heavy stupor.  We tried in vain to arouse him, even for a moment.  His wife looked unusually cheerful, as she assured us that he “was a great deal better; that he did not cough at all, and rested mighty easy.”

We understood the situation at once.  The poor woman was densely ignorant, and believed her husband had been “conjured.”  The old hag in the doorway was “a witch doctor,” who had promised to cure him for ten dollars!  How the poor wife with her five little children to support managed to raise it, God only knows; but she had done it, and was pouring down that unconscious man’s throat, hourly doses of a villainous compound of most loathsome things, over which the old hag muttered her incantations, and worked her Satanic spells.  She watched us with her evil eye as we looked pityingly upon the poor sufferer, and glared menacingly when we told the poor wife that he was no better; that the end was near.