ags that covered him; the malodorous wound
on his leg, full of maggots, bound round with the last remains of his
pagari; while now there is no brighter, happier boy in the hospital,
with his white hospital shirt and pyjamas, clean, gentle face and
pleasant smile, as he moves about from bed to bed with his crutch,
chatting with the other patients.

Passing on, we see a big swarthy Afghan, with fine martial features,
in which suffering is gradually wearing out the old truculent air. He
had gone armed with a friend one night to a village where there was
a Militia guard. He maintains that they had merely gone to visit a
friend, and had been delayed on the road till night overtook them;
but to be out armed at night is of itself sufficient to raise a
prima-facie case against a man on the border, and when the Militia
soldiers challenged him, and instead of replying he and his friend
took cover, it was so clear to the former that they must be marauders,
that they opened fire. The friend escaped, but our patient received
a bullet through the left thigh, which shattered the bone. He was not
brought to the mission hospital for some time, and when we first saw
him it was obvious that unless the limb were speedily removed, his
days were numbered. He, like all Afghans, had an innate repugnance
to amputation, but finally consented on condition that the amputated
limb should be given to him to take back to his home, that it might
ultimately be interred in his grave; only thus, he thought, would he
be safe from being a limb short in the next world. Once I tried to
argue an Afghan out of this illogical idea, and when other arguments
failed, I suggested that the unsavoury object might be buried in a
spot in the mission compound, and he might leave a note in his grave
specifying where it might be found. He answered at once: "Do you
suppose the angels will have nothing better to do on the Resurrection
Day than going about looking for my leg? And even if they would take
the trouble, they would not come into this heretic place for it."

So the limb was removed and carefully wrapped up and stored away
somewhere, so that he might on recovery take it back with him to
his village. His wound is nearly healed now, and he has sent off his
sister, who was in hospital to nurse him, to his home to fetch a horse
on which to ride back the forty miles to his village, where he will
wile away many a long winter's night with stories of his experiences
in t