chap, hi.] FIRST INTRODUCTION TO SAAT. 119 
of the boys, their moral obtuseness, and the apparent 
impossibility of improving them, determined the chief 
of the Mission to purge his establishment from such 
imps, and they were accordingly turned out. Poor 
little Saat, the one grain of gold amidst the mire, 
shared the same fate. 
It was about a week before our departure from 
Khartoum that Mrs. Baker and I were at tea in the 
middle of the court-yard, when a miserable boy about 
twelve years old came uninvited to her side, and 
knelt down in the dust at her feet. There was 
something so irresistibly supplicating in the attitude 
of the child, that the first impulse was to give him 
something from the table. This was declined, and 
he merely begged to be allowed to live with us, 
and to be our boy. He said that he had been 
turned out of the Mission, merely because the Bari 
boys of the establishment were thieves, and thus he 
suffered for their sins. I could not believe it possible 
that the child had been actually turned out into the 
streets, and believing that the fault must lay in the 
boy, I told him I would inquire. In the meantime he 
was given in charge of the cook. 
It happened that, on the following day, I was so much 
occupied that I forgot to inquire at the Mission; and 
once more the cool hour of evening arrived when, after 
