Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/140

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124
WINGS

So, when Oughtred Couzens came to India many years later, the Hindu was a power in the land. Oughtred did not recognize him when he met him. Years and a beard and native dress are a wonderful disguise.

Couzens had also changed. After the scab of youth had rubbed itself off in contact with the harsh corners of the world, he was still a baby overtaken by manhood. The place in his soul which had formerly been filled by Omniscience, was now empty except for a residue of diffidence, so that he was easily influenced, affected and swerved.

He had become a missionary after a brief spasm of religion due to the harangue of a North Dakota Evangelist who had swooped eagle-wise on Britain's unprotected shores, had obeyed the call and had gone forth to convert Asia.

His mind was incapable of concise and lucid statements; the fruit of his intelligence could only ripen in a congenial soil of mystery and suggestion, and his soul could only communicate with a strange soul by a sort of wireless psychic telegraphy. And so he was a fine subject for Indian mission work … but not the way he imagined.

Let it finally be understood that the Reverend