e for attendance, and often falling
afterwards, faint and speechless, on a sofa.

He knew not that one seed, cast on these turbid waters, had found good
soil, and was springing up. Sheik Salah was the son of a pundit at
Delhi, and was well-learned in Persian and Arabic. When a youth he had
become moonshee to two English gentlemen then living at Lucknow, and
while in their service converted a Hindoo fellow-servant from his
idolatry to Islam. Elated with his success, he gave himself such airs
that his English masters reproved him; and he left them in displeasure,
vowing never to serve a Feringhee again. However, being in the pay of a
Mahratta chief, he was sent in company with a Mahometan envoy who had
undertaken to murder a rival of his master, and having lulled his victim
into security by an oath on the Koran that no treachery was intended,
decoyed him into his tent, and there stabbed him.

Sheik Salah was a deeply conscientious man, and not only did he leave the
Mahratta service, lest some such horrible act should be required of him,
but he conceived a certain distrust of his own faith, which, though it
condemns such deeds, had not hindered them. While in search of
employment, he came to Cawnpore, and there, one fine evening, he sat with
some other young Mussulmans, in a summer-house on the garden wall that
bounded Mr. Martyn's garden, enjoying their hookahs and sherbet, and
amusing themselves with what they called the "foolishness" of the
Feringhee Padre, who was discoursing to the throng of hateful looking
beggars below. By and by, anxious to hear more, they came down, entered
the garden, and stood in a row before the front of the bungalow; their
arms folded, their turbans placed jauntily on one side, and their
countenances expressive of the utmost contempt.

But the words that Sheik Salah caught were sinking deep. They were of
the intense purity and holiness of God and of His laws, and of the need
of His power to attain to the keeping of them, as well as of His
Sacrifice to atone for man's sinfulness. Sheik Salah could not rest
without hearing more, and becoming determined to obtain employment at
Cawnpore, he undertook to copy Persian manuscripts for Sabat, and was
lodged by him in one of the numerous huts in Mr. Martyn's compound. He
was a well-educated, graceful man, exceedingly handsome, looking like a
hero of the Old Testament; and probably Sabat was afraid of a rival, for
he never mentioned to Mr. Ma