people who go to him, and tells
them about Hazrat 'Esa, and how he was a hakim and cured people."

"Well, this is strange, but I wonder if he could cure Manak Khan."

And so all particulars are asked, and the advice of all the greybeards,
while Manak Khan catches at the idea as a dying man at a straw. Sadura,
however, is not so easily convinced. She did not relish the idea of
her husband being separated from her once more, and moreover, said
she, where the doctor of Ghuzni had failed, how was it likely that
another doctor, and he a blasphemer of their Prophet, would succeed?

So the idea was waived for a time, and things went on as before,
while their last camel was sold to pay their increasing debts, and
gloom settled on the little circle. But as the September days were
lengthening and still no hope appeared, they settled that they would
try the Feringi's medicine. But then came the difficulty as to ways
and means; their last camel had been sold, and Manak had no friends
who would take him down to the plains free of expense.

At last a bright idea struck them: their little daughter, Gul Bibi,
was now seven years old, and many a man would be willing to lend eighty
or ninety rupees on condition of her being kept for his wife. And so
it was settled: the bargain was struck, and with the proceeds a man
was engaged to take him on camel-back down to the Derajat plains. The
village carpenter made a kind of litter, which could be fastened
on the back of a camel, and as his wife must stop for the children,
his old mother volunteered to take the journey with him and tend him
through it.

It was a sad farewell this time, and long did Sadura stand at the
outskirts of the village watching the camel and its precious burden,
with the old mother and sturdy camel-driver trudging by the side,
gradually disappear round a corner of the defile.

On the seventh day they emerged from the Gomal Pass on to the Plain
of Tank, and here they stayed a little to recuperate with the kind
Dr. John Williams, of the Christian hospital there; then going on
till the trees and mudhouses of Dera Ismail Khan came in sight. Here
a fresh disappointment awaited them: the Feringi doctor had left Dera,
and gone to carry on his work in Bannu, one hundred miles farther. But
what cannot be cured must be endured, and so the camel's head is turned
towards Bannu, and the weary march resumed once more. Five days later,
as the evening was drawing on--it was now lat