In a small village in another part of Persia lived a little lame girl. She could not walk at all, and her leg was drawn up so that she could not straighten it, and she suffered very much. She was a good deal of trouble to her parents, and they got tired of taking care of her, and neglected her a good deal, till at last her father heard of the mission hospital in the neighbouring town, seventeen miles off, and took her there to see if the _Ferangis_ (Europeans) could cure her. She was taken in, washed, and dressed in clean clothes and put to bed. At first she used to scream when her leg was touched, but it was operated on, and gradually, very gradually, the pain grew less, and the leg grew straighter. But still, as the months went on, the recovery was very slow, and when the weather grew so hot that the hospital had to be closed and her father took her home, though free from pain while she lay still in bed, the pain was so great when she tried to stand that she could not walk a step. But as she lay alone on her bed at home she thought over all she had heard at the hospital, and one day a new thought struck her. Surely the _Khānums_ had told her that the Lord Jesus Christ, Who used to cure people so wonderfully, was alive still and could hear when anyone spoke to Him. Why had she never asked Him to make her leg well? And then and there, in her ignorance and simple faith, she asked Him, Who in the old Gospel days had made the lame to walk, to make her walk, and, confident in His love and power, she “arose and walked.” When the hospital was reopened she came back again still lame, still in pain, but able to walk about with a stick. And she loved more than ever to hear of Him who had not only done so much for the sick Jews of old times, but had done so much too for her. CHAPTER XVI CONCLUSION A Persian was one day talking to an English missionary and asked why our King did not annex Persia. “It is not right,” said the missionary, “to take what belongs to someone else, and Persia belongs to your Shah.” “Still your King is surely bound to do as the Bible tells him, and the Bible tells him to annex it.” “Where does the Bible say that?” “Does it not say that if you see your neighbour’s ox or ass fallen into a pit you are to pull it out? And Persia is an ass fallen into a pit, and your King should pull her out.”