Most of the men under me in the workshops were starving, and sometimes a man would faint while working, and on my asking what ailed him, I would gather that he had perhaps eaten about two ounces of bread in as many days. It was impossible to help all, but those of my workmen, whom I knew to be helpless with hunger, I gave food to once a day, and in many cases it was all they got until the next day. I saw one man hiding some of the bread I had given him under his coat, and the man, being run down to skin and bone for want of food, I was surprised at his not eating it all, but he told me that he had a child at home starving, and there was nothing in the house to sell for food. He said, also, that the mother of the child, and other women in the house, had nothing to eat, but that appeared to be a matter of little concern, and it was the condition of the child only that worried him. No one puts much value on a woman in Kabul, and it is not considered right for a man to cry for the death of a woman, even when it is his mother or sister who dies, but they cry and make enough fuss over the death of any male relative. Another day a foreman workman came to me, and, without the usual salaams, told me he was a Mussulman, and had seldom asked a favour of his co-religionists, and never of a Feringhee; but he had three little children starving at home, and they were dying slowly, and his fellows would not give him anything, so he had determined to cut the throats of his children that night and put them out of their suffering, and then kill himself, but while saying his midday prayers it had been put into his mind to go first to the Feringhee, and so he had come as soon as his prayers were finished. His manner of speech was not polite, and very much removed from that of others who begged for help from me, and who usually addressed me as “Presence;” but I knew the man to be one of the religious bigots who abound in the country, to whom an infidel is lower than an animal. However, I gave him three rupees without remark of any kind, and the man, without thanking me, but simply looking dully at the money, went away. Three rupees go a long way in Kabul, although they amount to less than half a crown. I thought no more of the matter until two days after, when the man came again, and, taking off his turban, prayed for me; this is the highest compliment and favour a Mussulman can pay an unbeliever. He then told me I had saved the life of his children, and his too, for he had been mad with grief and suffering when he first came, and he said further that he had been told much against Englishmen, but he would always pray now that one of them might become a Mussulman, and so go to heaven when he died.