charged their matchlocks, attack them with their swords,
and camels and men are mingled in one shouting, slashing melee.

Fortunately for the Lohanis, two of the leading Wazirs fall quickly
with fatal sword wounds, and the remainder, seeing that the Lohanis
have not been caught napping, and that the tide is turning against
them, make off as quickly as they appeared, and the merchants have
far too much to do in quieting their frightened camels to think of
a pursuit. A hasty council is held. It is found that one man has
his arm broken by a sword cut, and Manak Khan has his leg broken,
the ball having passed through the bone and opened the knee-joint,
while most of the remainder can show smaller cuts.

The women now come to the rescue. A veil is torn up and the wounds
bound, some being stitched by the women pulling hairs out of
their own heads, and using their ordinary sewing-needles on their
husbands' skin. An immediate march is resolved upon, but then comes
the difficulty about Manak Khan. Moving him causes him great pain
and the blood to gush forth afresh, while to leave him is out of the
question, for his throat would be cut long before morning. Whatever may
be the faults of an Afghan, he is not one to forsake a friend in the
hour of need, and so it proves here. A piece of cloth is half burnt,
and the blackened shreds, soaked with oil, rubbed over the wound,
and the leg then bound to a musket with the ample folds of a shawl,
and, lastly, our hero is tied on a rough bed, and mounted high on
the back of a camel.

Great were the lamentations when Manak Khan reached his village
home; and instead of his strong step and hearty greeting consoling
his wife for her long winter of separation, she came forth only to
see the pain-marked face and helpless form carried in on a bed,
and to hear the account of the night attack in the dread Tochi
Pass. "Bismillah! let the will of God be done," consoles the village
Mullah, while some practical friend starts off for the nearest hakim,
or doctor. The latter shortly arrives; and the wife retires into the
cottage, while the greybeards assemble in the courtyard to offer their
bits of experience and advice, and vow vengeance over the Quran on
the luckless Wazirs who committed the deed.

After no little ceremony and interchange of ideas, the doctor decides
on a combination of two remedies, for the case is a serious one:
the leg is greatly swollen from the groin to the calf, and unhealthy