to buy, and which is the wonder
and admiration of his neighbours.

The devotion shown in some cases by relations who have accompanied
some sick or wounded man to hospital is very touching, and in pleasing
contrast to their frequent enmity. One case that imprinted itself on
my memory was that of a man from Kabul, who had been a sufferer for
several years from severe fistula; his nearest relation was a nephew,
and he was a talib (student). Both were poor, but the man sold up
some little household belongings and hired a camel-driver to bring
him down on his camel. The journey to Bannu occupied fourteen days,
and the sick man suffered much from the constraint and jolting of the
camel-ride. An operation was performed, but it was some months before
the patient was cured and discharged, and during all that time he was
assiduously nursed by the talib, who sat day and night by his bedside,
attending to his wants and reading to him either the Suras of the
Quran or some Persian poet, only leaving him to go into some mosque
in Bannu, or in a village near, where some charitable Muhammadans
would give him his morning and evening meal.

To save the patients from the danger of having their money stolen by
other patients or visitors, we advise them on admission to give up
their money into our charge, to be kept safely until they get their
discharge, when it is returned to them. Usually they readily agree to
this, but sometimes we have some wary characters, usually Kabulis or
Peshawuris, whose experience of the world has led them to trust no one,
and these refuse to let their possessions out of their own keeping,
usually securing their money in a bag purse tied round their waist
under their clothes. One such Kabuli came into the hospital terribly
ill with dysentery. Fearing, I suppose, we might take his money by
force, he swore, in answer to the usual question, that he had not
a single anna on him, and all through his illness he begged a few
pice from us or from other patients to buy some little delicacy he
fancied to supplement the regular hospital diet. He said he had no
relations or friends living; "all had died," and certainly none ever
came to inquire after him. His disease resisted all our efforts to cure
it--he had been worn out with exposure and hard living--and at last,
one morning, we found him dead in his bed; he had passed away quietly
in the night, without even the patient in the bed next him knowing
of it. We then found