, which is a kind of small
square. Their hands were tied across in front. Many people assembled
to behold the spectacle. Their graves were dug before their eyes.

"Colonel Stoddart's head was then cut off with a knife. The chief
executioner then turned to Captain Conolly and said: 'The Amir spares
your life if you will become a Mussulman.' Captain Conolly answered:
'I will not be a Mussulman, and I am ready to die!' saying which he
stretched forth his neck, and his head was then struck off. Their
bodies were then interred in the graves which had been dug."

For a long time the fate of these two officers was unknown in England,
and, indeed, overshadowed by the greater disaster in Kabul. Then a
missionary, the Rev. Joseph Wolff, undertook a journey to Bukhara,
and after many sufferings and dangers, ascertained that they had been
murdered two years before. He did not, however, come across the little
Prayer-Book, which appears to have been lying about in some shop in
Bukhara for seven years after the officers' death, when a Russian
officer, passing through the bazaar, happened to light on it. He
picked it up, and, observing its interesting nature, purchased it
from the shopkeeper. For another fourteen years the little book was
lying on his table at St. Petersburg, when a visitor who knew Captain
Conolly's relations saw it, and obtained leave to take the precious
relic and place it in the hands of the relatives of the deceased;
and thus, twenty-one years after her brother's death, Miss Conolly
obtained the full account of his sufferings, written with his own hand.

So far no vengeance had been exacted for the Amir's atrocity; now the
murdered man's sister thought she would like to have her revenge, so
when the Bannu Mission Hospital was inaugurated, she wrote out to the
medical missionary, expressing her desire to support a bed in memory
of her brother, and that bed has been supported in his name ever
since, and we tell the Afghans in it that that is the Christian's
Revenge. When I sit by the bedside of some sick or wounded Afghan
in that bed, and tell him and the others round him that it was their
co-religionists who killed this officer because he would not forsake
Christianity for Islam, and that now his sister is paying for them
to be nursed and tended, and praying for them that they may learn
of the Saviour who bid us forgive our enemies, and do good to those
who despitefully use us and persecute us, then it is easy to