see that
the story has set them thinking. And when it is further brought home
by their experiences in the mission hospital, where they have been
lovingly tended by the very native converts whom they have abused and
perhaps maltreated in the bazaar, they return to their Afghan homes
with very different feelings towards Christians.

It is thus that the medical missionary gets his passport to all
their villages, not only in British India, but across the border
among the independent tribes. While visiting a Wazir chief once in
his border fort, he said to me: "You can do what we cannot possibly
do. I cannot go into that village over there, because I have enmity
with the people there. The chief of that tribe across the river a
few miles off has a blood-feud with me, and I have always to go armed
and with a guard lest he should waylay me; at night I cannot leave my
fort, but have to sleep ready armed in my tower. And I am like most
of us in this country: we all have our enemies, and never know when
we may meet them. But you can go into any of our villages and among
all the tribes, although you have not even got a revolver with you,
and, more than that, you get a welcome, too."

In some parts of the country across the border it is necessary to take
a fresh guide every few miles, as the various villages are on bad
terms, and might injure the traveller on the lands of the opposing
village merely in order to get their enemies involved in a feud, or
into trouble with the Government. These guides are called badragga,
and within the tribal boundary any member of the clan, even a child,
is often sufficient protection, as that is sufficient to show that the
traveller has received the sanction of the tribe to move about within
their boundaries. If, however, marauding bands are known to be about,
or if the tribe is at feud with a neighbouring one, then they will
send a fully-armed badragga of several men with you. I have, however,
seen a traveller consigned to the care of a boy of nine years or so,
and, no doubt, with perfect security.

On one occasion when it had been arranged that the badragga of a
certain clan was to meet me at a prearranged rendezvous, I arrived
at the appointed time and place under the care of the badragga of
the clan through whose territories I had just passed, but no one
was forthcoming. We waited an hour or so, but still no one came;
my badragga then accompanied us a little way forward till we came in
view o