ys to look forward to them,
and asked many questions which showed the greater insight that he was
gaining into their meaning. The next vacation, when he went home, he
took an early opportunity of visiting the old Mullah who had given
him the charm when first he joined the school five years before,
and asked him about some of his difficulties. He wanted to know
why the Muhammadans always spoke of the Book of the Law and of the
Gospels with respect, and yet would not allow people to read them,
and why the Gospels spoke of Christ as the Son of God, which he had
been taught to consider blasphemy.

The Mullah, however, did not deign to try to solve his difficulties,
but became very angry, and abused him roundly, and that evening
went to his father to tell him to take his son away before he became
utterly corrupted.

'Alam Gul got a great beating that night, and ran away to the house
of a relation, and did not come back for three days, and asked no
further questions.

His father, no doubt, thought that the beating had had its effect, and,
when the time arrived for rejoining school, allowed him to go back.

The crisis came on the day of a school picnic. It was a May morning,
and the masters and boys were going to a shady spot on the banks of
the Kurram River, where the day would be spent in aquatic sports
and merry-making. 'Alam Gul sought counsel of the missionary in a
quiet spot under the trees, where he might unburden his heart without
being disturbed.

"Does Christ demand that I should confess Him openly? Should I not
wait till my parents are dead?--because it will be a great trouble
to them when they hear that I have become a Christian, and they will
never want to see me again. Cannot I be a secret follower, and continue
to live as a Muhammadan, and attend the prayers in the mosque?"

"If any man confess Me not before men, neither will I confess him
before My Father. If any man love father or mother more than Me, he is
not worthy of Me." "Let the dead bury their dead, but follow thou Me."

How pulsating with the deepest verities of life these sayings seem,
when we put them forward to such an inquirer in answer to such
questions! How charged with the magnetism which draws the seeking
soul almost in spite of itself--a two-edged sword dividing asunder
the bones and the marrow!

"No; you must go home and tell your father what your intention
is. Persecution must come, sooner or later, and unless you are
willing to b