Laghman, and, like the Kabulis, the men are great merchants,
and travel about between Central Asia and Hindustan. One of these
merchants took his young son, Jahan Khan, down with him to India on
one of his journeys, in order that he might serve his apprenticeship
in the trade of his father and see something of the wealthy cities
and beautiful buildings of India, the fame of which had so often
roused the boyish imaginations of the youth of Laghman, and made it
the desire of their lives to travel down once to India and see for
themselves its glories and its wealth.

Father and son travelled about for two years, buying and selling
and taking contracts for road-making, at which the Afghans are
great adepts, till one summer the father was stricken down with
dysentery. The boy took him to a mission hospital, where for the first
time he heard the story of the Gospel; but he had been always taught
to look upon the English as infidels, and he used to stop his ears,
lest any of the words spoken by the mission doctor might defile his
faith. The disease grew worse, and the father paid some men to carry
him to the shrine of a noted saint in the neighbourhood, called Sakhi
Sarwar, which was renowned for its power in healing diseases. He made
a votive offering, but still the malady grew worse, and at last one
morning Jahan Khan found himself an orphan hundreds of miles away from
home and relations, with no friends and no money to help him home. It
is the great desire of an Afghan who dies away from his country to
have his body embalmed and carried back, it may be, hundreds of miles
on a camel, to be interred in his ancestral graveyard; but how could
the poor boy, without money or friends, perform this duty? He had to
be content with burying his father near the tomb of the famous saint,
whose benign influence might be expected to serve him in good stead
on the Day of the Resurrection.

Jahan Khan then took service with some Muhammadans of the country,
and it was in this way that I first met him. Soon after my arrival in
India I wanted a body-servant who knew no language but Pashtu, in order
that I might the more easily gain proficiency in that language. The
Muhammadan gentleman to whom I applied recommended me Jahan Khan;
but Jahan Khan himself resented the idea of becoming servant to a
Feringi and an infidel, which he thought would jeopardize his faith
and his salvation. His Muhammadan patron laughed at his scruples,
and quoted the