in Canada were gathering about the blazing fire or jingling over
the crisp snow in sleighs and cutters, the great winter rains
commenced. Christmas day--his first Christmas in a land that did
not know its beautiful meaning--was one long dreary downpour. It
rained steadily all Christmas week. It poured on New Year's day
and for a week after. It came down in torrents all January.
February set in and still it rained and rained, with only a short
interval each afternoon. Day and night, week in, week out, it
poured, until Mackay forgot what sunlight looked like. His house
grew damp, his clothes moldy. A stream broke out up in the hill
behind and one morning he awoke to find a cascade tumbling into
his kitchen, and rushing across the floor out into the river
beyond. And still it poured and the wind blew and everything was
damp and cold and dreary.

He caught an occasional glimpse of snow, only a very far-off
view, for it lay away up on the top of a mountain, but it made
his heart long for just one breath of good dry Canadian air, just
one whiff of the keen, cutting frost.

But Kai Bok-su was not the sort to spend these dismal days
repining. Indeed he had no time, even had he been so inclined.
His work filled up every minute of every rainy day and hours of
the drenched night. If there was no sunshine outside there was
plenty in his brave heart, and A Hoa's whole nature radiated
brightness.

And there were many reasons for being happy after all. On the
second Sabbath of February, 1873, just one year after his arrival
in Tamsui, the missionary announced, at the close of one of his