forsooth? Many
a time we were both the guests of the humblest of our Indian brothers,
and perfectly happy in unrestrained communion with them; others, too,
of stations high above our own received us both with an unreserved
hospitality, in which nothing was allowed to show that any difference
was made between English and Indian, and we honoured and loved them
for it. Why, then, should others be at pains to show that they
had one treatment for the Englishman and another for the Indian,
or perhaps conceal that feeling so poorly that we were never able to
feel at ease with them? Which, I ask, is more likely to remove racial
antipathy and unrest, and to make our Indian brethren feel that the
Christianity which we preach is really genuine and means what it says?

CHAPTER XX

A FRONTIER EPISODE

A merchant caravan in the Tochi Pass--Manak Khan--A sudden
onslaught--First aid--Native remedies--A desperate case--A last
resort--The Feringi doctor--Setting out on the journey--Arrival
at Bannu--Refuses amputation--Returns to Afghanistan--His wife
and children frightened away.

It is evening, and a party of Lohani merchants are slowly defiling
with their camels through the Tochi Pass, one of the mountain gorges
which connect our Indian Empire with Afghanistan, and its last beams
are shining in the faces of a dozen stalwart men now returning to their
homes near Ghuzni, with the proceeds of their winter's trading on the
plains of India. The men and some five or six women are on foot, while
their children and two or three more women are mounted on some of the
camels, which would otherwise be returning unladen, their loads having
been sold in Multan. The women, veiled as usual, show little more to
the passer-by than one eye and a small triangular piece of cheek;
while the men are either holding the nose-strings of the camels,
or walking beside them with their guns over their shoulders, and a
pistol and long knife or sword peeping out from their open cloak;
for the weather is getting hot now with approaching summer, and they
are passing through the hostile country of the Wazirs, that wild
border mountain tribe who think it their ancestral right to harass
and plunder the merchant caravans passing through their district as
much as opportunity allows.

Among the merchants we are struck by one fine, tall, broad-shouldered
fellow, stalking along by the side of the foremost of his three camels,
his gun an