handsome, interesting, smart, well-to-do, well-in-society, young
bachelor in whose spiritual welfare she did not take the deepest
personal interest. And, perhaps, of all such eligible souls in Gungapur,
the one whose Salvation she most deeply desired to work out (after she
wearied of the posings and posturings of Augustus Grobble) was that of
Captain John Robin Ross-Ellison of her husband's corps--an exceedingly
handsome, interesting, smart, well-to-do, well-in-society young
bachelor. The owner of this eligible Soul forebore to tell Mrs. Pat
Dearman that it was bespoke for Mohammed the Prophet of Allah--inasmuch
as _almost_ the most entrancing, thrilling and delightful pursuit of his
life was the pursuit of soul-treatment at the hands, the beautiful tiny
white hands, of Mrs. Pat Dearman. Had her large soulful eyes penetrated
this subterfuge, he would have jettisoned Mohammed forthwith, since, to
him, the soul-treatment was of infinitely more interest and value than
the soul, and, moreover, strange as it may seem, this Mussulman English
gentleman had received real and true Christian teaching at his mother's
knee. When Mrs. Pat Dearman took him to Church, as she frequently did,
on Sunday evenings, he was filled with great longings--and with a
conviction of the eternal Truth and Beauty of Christianity and the
essential nobility of its gentle, unselfish, lofty teachings. He would
think of his mother, of some splendid men and women he had known,
especially missionaries, medical and other, at Bannu and Poona and
elsewhere, and feel that he was really a Christian at heart; and then
again in Khost and Mekran Kot, when carrying his life in his hand,
across the border, in equal danger from the bullet of the Border Police,
Guides, or Frontier Force cavalry-outposts and from the bullet of
criminal tribesmen, when a devil in his soul surged up screaming for
blood and fire and slaughter; during the long stealthy crawl as he
stalked the stalker; during the wild, yelling, knife-brandishing rush;
as he pressed the steady trigger or guided the slashing, stabbing Khyber
knife, or as he instinctively _hallaled_ the victim of his _shikar_, he
knew he was a Pathan and a Mussulman as were his fathers.

But whether circumstances brought his English blood to the surface or
his Pathan blood, whether the day were one of his most English days or
one of his most Pathan days, whether it were a day of mingled and
quickly alternating Englishry and Pa