, and were burning and looting. Some young bloods went
for the mission hospital, but they were at once restrained by the
tribal elders, who forbade them to meddle with the property of "our
own Daktar Sahib," as they called him. Had they not often been inmates
of his hospital and partakers of his hospitality? Not a hair of his
head was to be injured. They at once set a guard of their own men on
the mission hospital, who warned off any excited tribesmen who might
have done it injury, and that was the only place in the bazaar that
escaped fire and sword and pillage. Some of his surgical instruments
had been carried off before the posting of the guard; but upon this
being made known, search was made through Waziristan, and the friends
of the doctor were not satisfied until all were returned to him.

Revenge is a word sweet to the Afghan ear, and even a revenge satisfied
by the culminating murder is the sweeter if the fatal blow, preferably
on some dark night, is so managed that the murdered man has a few
minutes of life in which to realize that he has been outwitted,
and to hear the words of exultation with which his enemy gluts his
hatred. In one case that came to my knowledge, after strangling his
victim, but before he was quite gone, the murderer dealt his victim a
terrific blow on his jaw, shattering the bone, with the taunt: "Do you
remember the day when I told you I would knock out your teeth for you?"

In the autumn of 1907 a fine stalwart Wazir was brought to the Bannu
Mission Hospital in a pitiable state: both of his eyes had been slashed
about and utterly blinded with a knife. His story was that his enemies
came on him unexpectedly in his cottage one day, beat his wife into
insensibility, tied him to a bed, and then deliberately destroyed his
eyes with a knife. His wife came to hospital with him, suffering from
severe contusions and some broken ribs, and we put them both into one
of our small "family wards"--so called because father, mother, and
children, if there be any, can all stop together for treatment. It was
painful to have to tell him that he would never see again, and still
more painful to hear him as he piteously said: "Oh, Sahib, if you can
give me some sight only just long enough to go and shoot my enemy,
then I shall be satisfied to be blind all the rest of my life." It
could not be. His lot would probably become that of the numerous
blind beggars that throng Eastern bazaars; for who would plough his