“To please God,” said the Chief.

“Johar,” said Forder, “I am just like you; I cannot change my religion, not if you cut off two heads; and I must please God by remaining a Christian....  I cannot do what you ask me.  It is impossible.”  Johar rose up and went out much displeased.

"Kill the Christian!"

One day soon after this there was fierce anger because the mud tower in which Johar was sitting fell in, and Johar was covered with the debris.  “This is the Christian’s doing,” someone cried.  “He looked at the tower and bewitched it, so it has fallen.”  At once the cry was raised, “Kill the Christian—­kill him—­kill him!  The Christian!  The Christian!”

An angry mob dashed toward Forder with clubs, daggers and revolvers.  He stood still awaiting them.  They were within eighty yards when, to his own amazement, three men came from behind him, and standing in front of Forder between him and his assailants pulled out their revolvers and shouted, “Not one of you come near this Christian!” The murderous crowd halted.  Forder slowly walked backwards toward his room, his defenders doing the same, and the crowd melted away.

He then turned to his three defenders and said, “What made you come to defend me as you did?”

“We have been to India,” they answered, “and we have seen the Christians there, and we know that they do no harm to any man.  We have also seen the effect of the rule of you English in that land and in Egypt, and we will always help Christians when we can.  We wish the English would come here; Christians are better than Moslems.”

* * * * *

Other adventures came to Forder in the Jowf, and he read the New Testament with some of the men who bought the books from him to read.  At last Khy-Khevan, the Chief of Ithera, who had brought Forder to the Jowf, said that he must go back, and Forder, who had now learned what he wished about the Jowf, and had put the books of the Gospel into the hands of the men, decided to return to his wife and boys in Jerusalem to prepare to bring them over to live with him in that land of the Arabs.  So he said farewell to the Chief Johar, and rode away on a camel with Khy-Khevan.  Many things he suffered—­from fever and hunger, from heat and thirst, and vermin.  But at last he reached Jerusalem once more; and his little four-year-old boy clapped hands with joy as he saw his father come back after those long months of peril and hardship.

Fifteen hundred miles he had ridden on horse and camel, or walked.  Two hundred and fifty Arabic Gospels and Psalms had been sold to people who had never seen them before.  Hundreds of men and women had heard him tell them of the love of Jesus.  And friends had been made among Arabs all over those desert tracks, to whom he could go back again in the days that were to come.  The Arabs of the Syrian Desert all think of Archibald Forder to-day as their friend and listen to him because he has proved to them that he wishes them well.