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Show went away Lispeth walked with him up the hill a? far as Jfarkunda, very troubled trou-bled and very miserable. The chaplain's wifo, being a good Christian and disliking dislik-ing anything in the shape of fuss or scandal Lispeth was beyond her management man-agement entirely had told the Englishman English-man to tell Lispeth that he w,as coming back to marry her. "She is but a child, you know, and, I fear, at heart a heathen," heath-en," said the chaplain's wife. So all the twelve miles up the hill the Englishman, English-man, with his arm around Lispeth's waist, was assuring the girl that he would come back and marry her; and Lispeth made hiru promise over and over again. She wept on the Narkunda ridge till he had passed out of sight along the Muttiani path. Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarh again, and said to the chaplain's chap-lain's wife: "He will come back and marry me. He has gone to his own people peo-ple to tell them so." And the chaplain's wife soothed Lispeth and said: "He will come back." At the end of two month Lispeth grew impatient, and was told that the Englishman had gone over the seas to England. She knew where England Eng-land was, because she had read little geography primers; but, of course, she had no conception of the nature of the sea, being a Hill girl. There was an old puzzle mup of the world in the house. Lispeth had pjayed with it when she was a child. She unearthed it again, and put i. together of evenings, and cried to herself, her-self, and tried to imagine where her Englishman Eng-lishman was. As she had no ideas of distance or steamboats, her notions were somewhat erroneous. It would not have made the least difference had she been perfectly correct; for tho Englishman English-man had no intention of coming back to marry a Hill girl. He forgot all about her by the time he was butterfly hunting LISPETH. She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill man, and Jadeh his wife. One year their maize failed, and two bears spent the Bight in their only poppy field just above the Sutlej valley on the Kotgarh side; so, next season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to the mission to be baptized. The Kotgarh chaplain christened chris-tened her Elizabeth, and "Lispeth" is the Bill or pahari pronunciation. Later, cholera came into the Kotgarh alley and carried off Sonoo and Jadeh, and Lispeth became half servant, half companion, to the wife of the then chaplain chap-lain of Kotgarh. This was after the reign of the Moravian missionaries, but before Kotgarh had quite forgotten her title of "Mistress of the Northern Hills." " Whether Christianity improved Lis-i Lis-i peth,.or whether the gods of her own people would have done as much for her tinder any circumstances, I do not know; bnt she grew very lovely. When a Hill girl grows lovely she is worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look upon, Lispeth had a Greek face one of those faces people paint so often and see so seldom. Sho was of a pale, ivory color and, for her race, extremely tall. Also, she possessed eyes that were wonderful; and, had she not been dressed in the abominable print cloths affected by Missions, Mis-sions, you would, meeting her on tho billside unexpectedly, have thought her the original Diana of the Romans going ut to slay. Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did not abandon it when she reached womanhood, as do some Hill girls. Her own people hated her, because Bhe had, they 'said become a memsahib and washed herself daily; and the chaplain's wife did not know what to do with her. Somehow, one cannot ask a stately god-dens, god-dens, five foot ten in her shoes, to clean plates and dishes. So she played with the chaplain's children, and took classes in the Sunday school, and read all the books in the house, and grew more and more beautiful, like the princesses in fary tales. The chaplain's wife said that the girl ought to take service in Simla as a nurse or something "genteel." But Lispeth did not want to take service. ser-vice. She was very happy where she was. When travelers there were not many in those years came into Kotgarh, Lispeth Lis-peth used to lock herself into her own room for' fear they might take her away to Simla, or somewhere out into the unknown un-known world. t. day, a few months after sli was 17 years old, Lispeth went out for a walk. She did not walk in the manner of English ladies a mile and a half out and a ride back again. She covered between be-tween twenty and thirty miles in her , little t constitutionals, all about and about! between Kotgarh and Narkunda. This time she came back at full dusk, stepping down tho break neck descent into Kotgarh with something heavy in her, arms. The chaplain's wife was dozing doz-ing in the drawing room when Lispeth came in breathing hard and very exhausted ex-hausted with her burden. Lispeth put it down on the sofa, and said simply "This is my husband. I found him ou the Bagi road. He has hurt himself. Wo will 'nurse him, and when he is well your husband shall marry him to me." This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her matrimonial views, nd the chaplain's wife shrieked with horror. However, the man on the sofa ( needed attention first. He was a young Englishman, and his head had been cut to the bone by something jagged. LiHpeth said she had found him down the khud, so she had brought him in. He was breathing queerly and was unconscious. He was put to bed and tended by the chaplain, who knew something of medi cine; and Lispeth waited outside the door in case she could be useful. She explained- to the chaplain that this was the man she meant to marry; and the chaplain and his wife lectured her se verely on the impropriety of her conduct, Lispeth listened quietly, Mid repeated in Assam. He wroto a book on the east afterwards. Lispeth's name did not appear. ap-pear. At the end of three months Lispeth made daily pilgrimages to Narkunda to see if her Englishman was coming along the road. It gave her comfort, and the chaplain's wife, finding . her happier, thought that she was getting over her "barbarous and most indelicate folly." A little Inter the walks ceased to help Lispeth and her temper grew very bad. The chaplain's wife thought this a profitable profit-able time to let her know the real state of affairs that the Englishman had only promised his love to keep her quiet; that he hod never meant anything, and that it was "wrong and improper" of Lispeth to think of marriage with an Englishman, English-man, who was of a superior clay, besides being promised in marriage to a girl of his own people. Lispeth said that all this was clearly impossible, because he had said he loved her, and the chaplain's wife had, with her own lips, asserted that the Englishman was coming back. "How can what he and you said be nntruer asked Lispeth. "We said it as an excuse to keep yon quiet, child," said the chaplain's wife. "Then you have lied to me," said Lispeth, Lis-peth, "you and her . The chaplain's wife bowed her head and said nothing.. Lispeth was silent, too, for a little time. Then she went out down the valley and returned in the dress of a Hill girl infamously dirty, but without the nose and ear rings. She had her hair braided into the long pigtail, pig-tail, helped out with black thread, that Hill women wear. 'I am going back to my own people," said she. "You have killed Lispeth, There is only left old Jadeh's daughter the daughter of a pahari and the servant ser-vant of Tarka Devi. You are all liars, yon English." , . , By the time that the chaplain's wife had recovered from the shock of the announcement an-nouncement that Lispeth had 'verted to her mother's gods, the girl had gone; and she never came back. ' She took to her own unclean people savagely, as if to make up the arrears of the life she had stepped out of, and, in a little time, she married a wood cutter who beat her, after the manner of panaris, pana-ris, and her beauty faded soon. ' "There is no law whereby you can account ac-count for' the vagaries of the heathen," said the chaplain's wife, "and I believe that Lispeth was always at heart an infidel." in-fidel." . Seeing she had been taken into the church of England at the mature age of five weeks, this statement does not do credit to the chaplain's wife. Lispeth was a very old woman when she died. She always had a perfect command com-mand of English . and when she was sufficiently suf-ficiently drunk, could sometimes be induced in-duced to tell tho story of her first love affair. It was hard" then to realize that the bleared, wrinkled creature, so like a wisp of charred rag, could ever have been "Lispeth of the Kotgarh Mission." Rudyard Kippling. " her first proposition. It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized uncivil-ized eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight. Lispeth, having found the man she worshiped, did not see why sho should keep silent as to her choice..'. She had no intention of being ent away, either. She was going to ' nurse that Englishman until he was well enough to marry her. This was her little programme. After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation the Englishman recovered coherence and thanked the chaplain and his wife, and Lispeth especially Lispeth for their kindness. He was a traveler in the east, he said they never talked about "globe trotters" in those days, when the P. & O. fleet was young and small and had come from i)chra Dun to hunt for plants and butterflies among the Simla hills. No one at Simla, therefore, there-fore, knew anything about him. Ho fancied he must have fallen over the cliff while stalking a fern on a rotten tree trunk, and that his coolies must have tolen his baggage and fled. Bethought he would go back to Simla when he was a littlo stronger. He desired no more mountaineering. He made small haste to go away, and recovered his strength slowly. Lispeth objected to being advised either by the chaplain or his wife, so the latter spoke to the Englishman and told him how matters stood in Lispeth's heart. He laughed a good deal, and srid it was very pretty and romantic, a perfect idyl of the Himalayas; Him-alayas; but, as he was engaged to a girl at home, ho fancied that nothing would happen. Certainly he would behave with discretion. He did that. Still he found it very pleasant to talk to Lispeth, and walk with Lispeth, and say nice things to her, and call her pet names while he was getting strong to go away. It meant nothing at all to him, and everything ev-erything in the vorld to Lispeth. She was very happy while the fortnight lasted, because she had found a man to lovcv Being a savage by birth, she took no Iroubli! to hide hor filings, and tho Iittflinlmnn, was am used, .When . ht |