come
a Feringi! Woe is me, but still you are my son!" He left the books with
some Mullahs there, who, though they would have been afraid to accept
them openly, or let it be known that they were in the possession of
such heretical literature, were nevertheless actuated by curiosity to
hide the books away, that they might see, at some quiet opportunity,
what the teaching of the book of the Christians was.

Jahan Khan's dangers were not yet, however, over. Travellers from
Kabul to India could not venture through the passes in small parties,
but joined one of those enormous caravans which pass twice weekly
through the Khaiber Pass. In these caravans, besides the honest
trader and bona-fide traveller, there are usually some unscrupulous
robbers, who try by trickery or by force to get the property of
their fellow-travellers. A common method with them is some evening,
after the day's journey is over, to propose a convivial party. "We
have just slain a kid," they will say to the unsuspecting traveller,
"and we have cooked the most delicious soup. Will you come and share
it?" But in the soup they have mixed a quantity of a poisonous herb,
which causes insensibility, or it may be madness, in those who
partake of it. Whether they knew of Jahan Khan's secret, or whether
they thought that he might be carrying money with him, I cannot say;
but he, all unsuspectingly, joined in one of these evening feasts,
and remembered nothing more until, some days later, the caravan entered
Peshawur. With a great effort he struggled up to the mission bungalow,
but it was some days before he was able to undertake the journey to
Bannu, and still longer before he regained his previous health.

His visit to his home had not been without fruit, and about a year
later a brother and two cousins journeyed down from Laghman to Bannu,
and while there one at least was brought to ask for Christian baptism,
and is to this day working in one of our frontier medical missions. The
others placed themselves under instruction, but they could not stand
the heat of the Indian summer, and became so homesick for their
mountain village that they returned there.

Among the thousand and one duties that fall to the lot of a frontier
missionary is that of becoming a matchmaker to some of the converts. It
may be that in one station a number of young men are brought into the
Christian fold where there is no corresponding women's work, whereby
they might be enabled to set up