CHAPTER V

THE CHRISTIAN'S REVENGE

Police posts versus dispensaries--The poisoning scare--A
native doctor's influence--Wazir marauders spare the mission
hospital--A terrible revenge--The Conolly bed--A political
mission--A treacherous King--Imprisonment in Bukhara--The
Prayer-Book--Martyrdom--The sequel--Influence of the mission
hospital--The medical missionary's passport.

I was once urging on a certain official the need of a Government
dispensary in a certain frontier district. "There is no need there,"
he replied; "the people are quiet and law-abiding. Now A---, that is a
disturbed area: there we ought to have medical work"--an unintentional
testimony to one result of the doctor's work, though rather hard on
the law-abiding section of the populace that they should have no
hope of a hospital unless they can organize a few raids, or get a
reputation for truculence.

Which will be better--a punitive police post or a civil
dispensary? This seems a not very logical conundrum, yet it is based
on sound reasoning, and a well-managed establishment of the latter
kind will often remove the necessity of setting up the former. The
doctor is a confidant in more matters than one, and the right man
will often smooth down little frictions and mollify sorenesses which
bid fair to cause widespread conflagrations.

A medical mission is a pacific, as well as an essentially pioneer,
agency.

There was a little missionary dispensary on the frontier, in charge
of a native doctor, a convert from Muhammadanism, who had gone in
and out among the people till he was a household friend all down
the country-side.

One day he was sitting in his dispensary seeing out-patients, when
he heard the following conversation:

Abdultalib. "The Sarkar has sent out agents to kill the Mussulmans
by poisoning their drinking-water."

Balyamin. "Mauzbillah! how do you know that?"

A. "Mullah D. arrived last night, and, sitting in the chauk, he told
how he had seen a man throwing pills into the well at Dabb village. He
went after him, but as soon as the man saw him he ran away."

B. "What is to be done?"

A. "First we must tell the women not to draw water from the wells--they
have certainly been poisoned in the night--but they can take their
pitchers to the tank in the big mosque; no one would interfere
with that."

B. "If we can catch the miscreant, we will show him plainly enough
who is the Mussulman and who th