ster. They were taken to the school
office, and here they found the head-master. He was an old gentleman
with a grey beard and a kindly face, Mr. Benjamin by name. When a young
man he had himself been converted from Muhammadanism to Christianity,
so that he was able to sympathize with the religious difficulties of
the boys under his charge, and he had been for thirty years head-master
in this school, and was looked up to by the boys as their father.

'Alam Gul's certificates were examined, and he was told what books
he must obtain, and that if he came the next morning he would be
enrolled as a scholar of the Bannu Mission School.

This being an Anglo-vernacular school, where English is taught in all
but the very lowest classes, boys who come from the village schools
have to spend one whole year in learning English, in order that the
following year they may be able to take their place with the other
boys in the class to which they are entitled; so 'Alam Gul was enrolled
in this, which is called the "Special Class."

The next day the soldier again brought him, and left him alone in
the school. Here he was surrounded by a greater number of boys than
he had ever seen before in his life--boys of all ages, all sorts,
all sizes, and all religions.

There were some Muhammadans from his district, but none from his
village, or that he knew, so he felt very nervous, and wished himself
back again in the little village school on the mountain-side among
his old playmates.

Then the letters of the English language seemed so uncouth and
different from the euphonious sounds of the Arabic and Persian
alphabet, to which he had been accustomed.

"A, B, C," said the master, and "A, B, C," repeated the other boys
in the class; but he found he could not shape his mouth to these
unfamiliar sounds, and tears began to flow at the apparent hopelessness
of the task which he had undertaken with so much enthusiasm. However,
day by day the work grew easier, and new friends and acquaintances
began to be made among his class-mates. Every day there was some
fresh astonishment for him.

In the village school he had played what they called Balli-ball,
a village imitation of cricket, played with rough imitations of bats
and wickets; but here he found that every class had its own cricket
team, which played with real polished bats and balls brought all the
way from Lahore. And above all was the School Eleven, composed of
boys who were looked up to b