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Title: Only an Ensign: A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul, Volume 2 (of 3)

Author: James Grant

Release date: January 10, 2021 [eBook #64253]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONLY AN ENSIGN: A TALE OF THE RETREAT FROM CABUL, VOLUME 2 (OF 3) ***

ONLY AN ENSIGN

A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul.

BY JAMES GRANT,

AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE,"

"LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH," ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

"Come what come may,

Time and the Hour runs through the roughest day."—Macbeth.

LONDON:

TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.

1871.

[All Rights Reserved.]

LONDON:

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I.—BEYOND THE LAND OF THE SUN

II.—IN THE AFGHAN FORT

III.—THE WARNING

IV.—WHAT TOOK US THERE

V.—TIFFIN WITH THE TRECARRELS

VI.—THE APPOINTMENT

VII.—"THE BAND PLAYS AT TWO"

VIII.—THE DRIVE

IX.—ADVENTURE IN CABUL

X.—THE MOSQUE OF BABER

XI.—"Only an Ensign"

XII.—ASSASSINATION

XIII.—HOME IN THE SPIRIT

XIV.—IN THE FORTIFIED CAMP

XV.—CHRISTMAS AT CABUL

XVI.—THE MORNING OF THE RETREAT

XVII.—THE HALT BY THE LOGHUR RIVER

XVIII.—SPIRITED AWAY!

XIX.—THE SKIRMISH

XX.—IN THE KHYBER PASS

XXI.—WALLER'S ADVENTURES

XXII.—CHANCE BETTER THAN DESIGN

XXIII.—DENZIL A NAWAB

XXIV.—A MEETING

XXV.—MARRIED OR NOT?

XXVI.—THE WANDERER

XXVII.—THE LOST STEAMER

ONLY AN ENSIGN.

CHAPTER I.

BEYOND THE LAND OF THE SUN.

Far, far away from rough and rocky Cornwall—from steep Tintagel with all its memories of King Arthur's knights, his "Table Round" and flirting queen; from the traditionary haunts of its giant Tregeagle, and from its wondrous mines deep, deep down below even the blue waves of the Atlantic; far away beyond the Indus and the frontiers of British India, fifteen hundred miles from Calcutta, and seven hundred from the shores of the Arabian Gulf, we have to change the scene to where a British army, under General Elphinstone, was cantoned before the city of Cabul, ere we can look after the fortunes of Denzil Devereaux, of whom we have barely thought, while progressing through an entire volume of our story.

A detachment of his regiment, under a captain named Waller, was attached to General's Trecarrel's Native Infantry Brigade; and an afternoon in November of the second year after the military occupation of the province by her Majesty's troops, found him quartered, with his brother officers, the aforesaid captain—popularly known as Bob Waller—a lieutenant named Jack Polwhele, also of the "Cornish Light Bobs," in one of the little native forts, of which a dozen or more lay scattered over the plain between the British cantonments and the bleak range of hills named Siah Sung, or "the Black Rocks."

The apartment in which the three were seated, each in a bamboo easy chair and wearing fur-trimmed poshteens (or native pelisses) above their blue undress surtouts, while they idled over brandy-pawnee and a box of cigars, was neither luxurious nor splendid, being simply a portion of a half shattered tower of native construction, before the windows of which the Bengal Sappers had erected a species of verandah, as a promenade and shade from the sun in summer; but now the season was winter; and though the evening was temperate, a fire blazed merrily in the open grate-less fireplace, and shed a cheerful glow on the whitewashed walls, the only adornments of which were certain caricatures (executed by Waller with burnt cork) of the regimental adjutant, of the brigade major, of "old Elphinstone," or other personages, to him more or less obnoxious. A charpoy or native bedstead, a few bullock-trunks, an overland ditto, an iron washing-stand, several pairs of boots, a few swords, whips, guns and hogspears, with any number of bottles, full or empty, littering the corners, made up the splendours of Bob Waller's quarters in the fort, from which, some two years before, Sir Robert Sale's brigade had summarily expelled sundry unwilling Kussilbashes at the point of the bayonet.

The rooms of Denzil and Jack Polwhele in other parts of the same rude edifice were precisely similar; but their soldiers were hutted in the cantonments close by.

One window of Waller's room faced the hills to the westward and the Arab-looking village of Behmaru, which means "the place of the husbandless," from a legend of the time of old—remote, perhaps, as the wars of Mohammed Ghori. An Afghan maid of high rank had been betrothed to a chief whom she tenderly loved; for the Afghans, though strict Mussulmen, neither seclude their wives, as others usually do, nor wed without duly winning them. But tidings came that he had fallen in battle against the Hindoos, on which she pined away and died. The news, however, was premature, for the chief recovered from his wounds, and returned to find only her grave on the hillside now called Behmaru; so he brought from Bourkhor one of those strange and spectral-like white stones, which, when placed upright, so closely resemble an eastern woman in her drapery, and set it above her tomb. In his old age he, too, was laid beneath it, and in time to come a village sprung up there.

Another window faced the south, affording the more ample view of the huts and compounds (i.e., hedges and palisades) of the British Cantonments, and about two miles beyond them the great city of Cabul, surrounded of course by a fortified wall, as what city in that part of the world is not. Here and there rose above the flat roofs of its narrow streets the tower or castle of a chief; the dome or minar of a mosque; and the huge mass of its vast bazaar, built in the time of Aurengzebe, when it became the trade emporium of Central Asia; and high over all, the Bala Hissar, or palace (wherein resided the Shah Sujah, whose power our troops had come most unwisely to uphold) and which was also the citadel or fortress—a place of vast strength; and far away in the distance, rising like the waves of a frozen sea against a deep blue sky, were the mighty peaks of Kohistan and Hindoo Koosh, in height fourteen thousand feet above the plain, and crowned by eternal snows, unchanged in aspect and character, as the dwellers there have been since Alexander marched past them with his Greeks to the conquest of the Eastern world, and since Malimoud of Ghuznee poured his hordes across the Indus in the eleventh century.

The boy ensign—he over whose couch a pale, sad mother hung, watching as he lay asleep and unconscious on the eventful morning of his departure—watching him tearfully and tenderly while he was yet her own—was now a well knit, well set up and weather-beaten looking young fellow. A few months of campaigning had changed the erratic Sandhurst cadet, whose best exploits had been breaking lamps and dismounting the college guns to spite the governor, into a practical soldier; and all that remained in him of the mere lad had nearly given place to the quietly confident air of a man—one who could take his part in society as the leader of others; one who had faced perils and surmounted them by his own unaided energy; for already had Denzil been twice under fire, and had, with a small party, defeated more than one plundering band of the fierce Beloochees.

Ignorant of the calamitous state of matters at home, and of the sorrows of his sister, Denzil, with the natural elasticity of youth, aided by the excitement consequent to military life in the cantonments of Cabul, had recovered the first shock occasioned by his father's loss at sea, and hence on the evening we have met him again, he was in excellent spirits. General Trecarrel had arrived shortly before this, and was now in command of a brigade. His daughters were with him, and proved leading attractions in that little circle of British residents, the European society, military and diplomatic, in and about Cabul, of which Lady Sale and Lady Macnaghten were the recognised heads; and Denzil had been duly introduced to Mabel and Rose by his friend Waller (who had known them in Calcutta), of the result of which introduction we shall have more to say in time to come.

Audley Trevelyan had not yet come up country, as he had been landed on the sick list at Bombay.

The young ladies knew well the story of Constance's alleged marriage, and Denzil's consequent claim to rank; but the tale seemed strange and mysterious, and good taste caused them to be silent, and to keep in the Cantonments and Residency at least what they deemed to be the secret of Denzil, who was an especial favourite with them both; but he never took them into his confidence, though he had taken his friend Waller, one day when they were on guard together at the arsenal and commissariat fort. On that occasion but little passed, and it proved a guide for the future conduct of Denzil.

"You remember our quarrel, Bob?" he asked.

"And the interrupted duel—what griffs we were! Yes—well; what of it?"

"I want your advice, old fellow;" and then he read to Waller certain portions of a letter from Sybil, impressing upon him the necessity for silence on their now unsupported claims.

"Your sister is right, Denzil, and advises you like a sensible girl," said Waller, after a pause, during which he had been thoughtfully filling his pipe with cavendish; "neither here nor at home—here most especially—can you prove anything. The important papers seem to be lost irretrievably; that lawyer fellow, with the name so consonant to his trade, Sharkley, has failed in the matter; so be, as your sister advises, a Devereaux till you can, if ever, announce yourself with strength, a Trevelyan; and have no quarrels—she seems very sensitive about that—with your kinsman on Trecarrell's staff; for meanwhile we may have the Afghans, the Ghilzies, the Kussilbashes, and the devil knows how many more darkies to fight."

Both Waller and Polwhele were unusually good-looking fellows of that peculiar style to be found in the British service, and in no other in Europe. In years they were not more than six or seven-and-twenty; and the former had attained his company after eight years' service in India.

His stature verged on six feet; his features were perfectly regular and aquiline; he had fair hair, which he parted in the middle with an amount of care only equalled by that adopted in curling his long, fair whiskers. He had very white teeth, and merry, roguish blue eyes. He possessed a singular aptitude for making himself essentially useful and agreeable to the married ladies, who consulted him on all manner of things, for Waller excelled in everything, from driving a four-in-hand drag to making a pig out of an orange at supper. He shone in amateur theatricals; wrote verses (not always his own composition) in albums; took charge of the band; got up all the parties and picnics about the station, and even the balls at the Residency, if such they could be called, in a European circle so excessively limited, as that of our garrison at Cabul.

Jack Polwhele was perhaps the more soldier-like of the two; he was fully an inch less in stature than Waller, taper-waisted and broad-chested; to his weather-beaten face, dark complexion, and sparkling eyes of the clearest hazel, a pair of black eyebrows, and a heavy mustache of the same tint, imparted a great deal of character; and being closely shaven, the contour of a chin indicative of decision—a virtue essentially military—was fully displayed. He had a smarter, perhaps more dashing, air than Waller; but like him exhibited a set of teeth, unique for whiteness and regularity, when he laughed, which he always did heartily, for like most young officers, he was a happy and heedless fellow.

He and Waller were rather considered to be two "pattern officers" of the Cornish Light Infantry, a corps which carries on its colours all the honours of the old war that began on the plains of Corunna and ended on those of Waterloo; and to these are added the glories of India down to the battle of Goojerat and the terrible siege of Lucknow.

Raised in 1702, in the days of the Good Queen Anne, it has served in every war that added honour or territory to the British Empire, and numbers among its Colonels sturdy old Brigadier Jacob Borr, who, before the capture of Barcelona in 1705, during the strife of the Spanish Succession, in a dispute about precedence, fought a duel in front of the British lines, sword in hand, in his Ramillies wig and lace ruffles, with Colonel Rodney of the Marines, whom he ran fairly through the body; Brigadier Thomas Paget of the House of Uxbridge; the ferocious old John Huske, who did such butcherly things at Culloden; Lieutenant-General Leighton of Watlesborough; William Amherst, who was Governor of Newfoundland during the American War of Independence; Ralph Earl of Rosse, and others, down to General Trecarrel, to whom Sir John Keane presented the watch already referred to, subsequent to the storming of Ghuznee, where "Old Tre," as the soldiers named him, was the second man through the Cabul gate, after Colonel Peat had blown it up, by three hundred pounds of gunpowder.

The conversation of those with whom Denzil now found himself, will best explain the state of affairs in Cabul, and the new phase of society in which Destiny had cast him.

CHAPTER II.

IN THE AFGHAN FORT.

"So, Polwhele, I find by the Order Book, that you are detailed for the party against the plundering Ghazeeas?" said Waller.

"Yes; I shall have the pleasure of scouring all the Siah Sung after these wretched fanatics to-morrow."

"What force goes with you?"

"Thirty rank and file of ours, with Sergeant Treherne."

"Son of old Mike, the miner, at Porthellick?"

"Yes; and forty of the thirty-seventh Native Infantry under Burgoyne."

"But I believe you are to tiff, with us at the Trecarrels in the afternoon," observed Denzil. "The General's Chuprassey, a half-naked fellow with a brass badge, brought Waller and me pink notes of invitation, and I saw there was one for you."

"I shall be duly there if a ball from a juzail, or a slash from an Afghan knife don't put me on the sick list, or give you a chance of a lieutenancy," replied Polwhele, twirling his thick black moustache.

"It is wretched work we are condemned to, at times, here."

"Yes," rejoined Polwhele, "and I fear that my little affair with the Ghazeeas is but the forerunner of some greater disturbance."

"However, to-morrow or the day after, the Envoy is to have a solemn conference with the ferocious Ackbar Khan."

"I don't think much will come of that," continued Polwhele. "It is to the memories of Plassey, Assaye, and a hundred glorious battles, rather than to our present numerical force, that we Britons owe our prestige in the East; but here in Cabul, beyond the Indus, it has not yet been felt, thanks to parsimony and utter mismanagement, civil and military."

"Don't take to grumbling, Jack, but pass the brandy bottle, old fellow. I hope we shall keep Shah Sujah on his throne despite Ackbar Khan and all the rebellious rabble in Afghanistan. What was up in your quarter yesterday? You were on guard near the old tomb and temple westward of the Cantonments."

"Up—how?"

"I heard a sound of musketry near it."

"One discharge?"

"Yes."

"Oh—you remember that odd-looking fellow who appeared at the band-stand and cut such strange capers when the musicians of the 37th were playing an air from Rossini. Well, he proved to be a Thug, and all the implements of Thugee—the holy pick-axe, the handkerchief and cord for strangulation, were found upon him."

"Not in his clothes," said Denzil, "for he had none, so the orderlies switched him away from the vicinity of the Trecarrels' carriage."

"I saw those wags of girls in fits of laughter at him. No, the implements were not found in his clothes, certainly, but in his hair, which hung below his waist, plaited like ropes. Many murders—he had strangled Christians and Hindoos with perfect impartiality—were fully proved against him by the Provost-Marshal, so he was shot, off-hand, to save all further trouble."

"So those Thugs are a sect?" said Denzil.

"Yes; and a vast community of secret assassins, too. As for sects, you will find as many here as in England, but calling themselves by different names, Mahommedans, Soonies, Ismaelites, Parsees, Hindoos, Bheels, Khonds, and worshippers of Mumbo Jumbo, et cetera, all hating each other most cordially; and by Jove, amid them, we may say as the knight of La Mancha said to his squire, 'Here, brother Sancho, we can put our hands up to the elbows in what are called adventures.'"

"Who are to be at the Trecarrels' to-morrow?" asked Waller, manipulating a fresh cigar.

"Ask Devereaux," replied Polwhele, sending some spiral circles towards him, and laughing the while.

"Why me?" asked Denzil, with a little annoyance of tone.

"How amusingly pink you become, my boy, whenever their names are mentioned," said Polwhele; "doubtless you will be 'doing' our old Cornwall all over again with Rose, though it is evident your heart is not there."

"Where, then?"

"In Cabul, and nearer Kohistan than the Well of St. Keyne," replied Polwhele, who, as his name imports, was a Cornishman; and he added, laughingly. "What says Southey?—

But if the wife should drink of it first,

God help the husband then!

* * * * * *

I hastened as soon as the wedding was done,

And left my wife in the porch;

But i'faith she had been wiser than me,

For she took a bottle to church.

Ah, well do I remember that old spring so famed for its virtues, arched over by old masonry, above which grow five ancient trees, the Cornish oak, the elm, and three ashes, their roots entwined like a network in the turf and moss! But to return to the Trecarrels and their tiffin to-morrow, if I escape the Ghazeeas, who are we likely to meet?"

"Well, I have heard that Lady Sale—"

"The wife of 'Fighting Bob' of the 13th Light Infantry!"

"—Is to be there; the General Commanding too, if his health will permit it, and most likely her Majesty's Envoy to the Shah," continued Denzil, still colouring plainly and deeply.

"I knew that you could tell us all about it; for, of course, the fair Rose employed you to write all the little pink notes on the perfumed paper. You seem very soft in that quarter, Denzil; but one might as well attempt to catch a meteor, my friend, as that girl's heart."

"Don't say so, Jack," urged Denzil, so earnestly that both Waller and Polwhele laughed immoderately.

"You will be like the little boy who wept for the moon," said the former, curling and caressing his long fair whiskers complacently.

"And be assured, she has a soul far above Ensigns," added his other tormentor, for unluckily for his own peace of mind, Denzil had fallen a tender victim to the flirting Rose; "yet, I must admit, that the girl—the second Trecarrel I mean—is charming; almost handsome."

"Nay, more than handsome!" added Waller emphatically, "and I must sympathize with Denzil, as I rather affect la belle Mab myself."

"But the old General has little more than his pay, or he would never have brought the girls so far up country else; at least, the good-natured Cantonment folks who indulge in gup say so," remarked Polwhele, using the native word for "gossip." "And now I must go, for Burgoyne and I mean to study the geography of yonder confounded hills which we have to scour to-morrow; and we move off from the Cantonments in the dark—an hour before daybreak."

"One glass more ere you go, Jack."

"Thanks," replied Polwhele, and then he added with mock gravity; "two of the golden rules of my simple domestic economy are, a cheroot and glass of stiff brandy-pawnee before switching the mosquito curtains and turning in; and a cup of cold tea, with a wet towel about my temples before morning parade; or at least, such used to be my custom, before we came to this Arctic and Afghan, rather than Orient region."

"And considering late hours immoral, you always come into quarters early in the morning."

"A third golden rule—precisely so, old fellow," replied the other as he assumed his sword and forage-cap. He was about to go, when Waller's servant, a soldier in livery, appeared to announce that a native wished "to speak with the Sahibs Waller and Polwhele on particular business."

"Now, what can the nigger want?" asked Polwhele; "a Parsee money-lender perhaps—have you been flying kites, Bob?"

"Show him in, Brooklands," said Waller; "he is no less a personage than Taj Mohammed Khan. He expressed a wish to see us yesterday, when I met him near the gate of the Shah Bagh;* so remain for a few minutes, Jack."

* Royal Garden.

"Khan—is he a chief?" asked Denzil.

"Not at all," replied Waller; "it is used as Esquire with us—a title given in England to every fellow who wears a black coat; so everybody is a Khan (i.e. noble) in Cabul. The world of snobbery reproduces itself everywhere; and here he comes stroking his long beard with an air of solemn satisfaction," he added, as an Afghan gentleman of tall and imposing appearance, was ushered into the apartment, making low salams as he advanced.

CHAPTER III.

THE WARNING.

The Afghan who entered was tall and muscular, but spare in person and was a very good representation of his active, bold and warlike race. His features were keen and sharp; his nose thin and aquiline; his eyes, black, glittering and piercing; but his complexion was scarcely darker than that of an ordinary Spaniard or French Catalan. The scalp of his head was shaved; but this peculiarity of the Soonies—an orthodox Mohammedan sect in opposition to the Persians who are followers of Ali—was concealed by his head-dress, a loonghee, or cloth worn turbanwise, of a bright blue check with a red border and drooping gold fringe.

His costume was extremely simple and consisted of a camise or blouse of scarlet stuff, with loose sleeves, wide baggy trowsers of dark cotton reaching to half-boots that were closely buttoned to the limb. Over his shoulder—as the season was winter—hung a large mantle of finely-dressed sheepskin well tanned, with the soft fleecy wool inwards, and round his waist a Cashmere shawl worn as a girdle, and therein he carried a pair of brass-butted flint-lock pistols, an Afghan knife and dagger. His sabre with cross-hilt and crooked blade dangled nearly in front of him, and on his left wrist, secured by a silver chain, sat a hooded hawk; for now in the nineteenth century, as in Europe ages ago, falconry is a favourite sport of the hardy Afghans.

Such was the remarkable figure which the three young officers rose to greet. Unlike the cringing servility of the slimy Hindoo, the bearing of the Afghan mountaineer is proud, but grave and full of natural dignity; and few were nobler in Cabul than their visitor Taj Mohammed Khan, son of the Hereditary Wuzeer Golam Mohammed, a strenuous adherent of the reigning Shah Sujah and friend of the British Government, which upheld that feeble monarch on his shaky throne.

Taj Mohammed was a very devout Mussulman, and most strictly obeyed the Koran in all its precepts (save one), repeating his prayers five times daily; namely in the morning, when noon is past, in the evening before sunset, and after dark, ere the first watch of the night be passed; but he could not resist an occasional glass of wine.

His family had ever possessed vast influence in that remote region; he was lord of fertile lands and vineyards in the Pughman Valley, and already two of his brothers had fallen in battle, and one been burned alive, for adherence to the Shah, whose story we shall relate in a subsequent chapter.

After being seated and assisted by Denzil to wine, which like many other Mohammedans he drank in secret, or when among unbelieving Feringhees, he proceeded at once to state the object of his visit, which he did in tolerable English, having been long an exile in one of the cities of British India, though the language of his native land is a dialect of the Scriptural Chaldaic.

"You know, Waller Sahib, that the Envoy of the Queen of England and of the great Lord Sahib Bahadur Auckland, is to have a meeting with Ackbar Khan at an early period to consult as to the unsettled state of affairs—the discontents, in fact, among us—in Cabul?"

"Yes, Khan—we have all heard so; and what then?"

"Are you to be present?"

"I expect to have the pleasure," replied Waller.

"Then do not go, and bid the Envoy also not to go."

"Why?"

"Because the conference is a snare—a lure to his destruction and the destruction of all that may accompany him. He will perish, even as Burnes Sahib perished!"

"We are but of subaltern rank, and may not presume to advise the Envoy," said Waller.

"Khan, in front of yonder Cantonments and under the very guns of the forts, I should scarcely say that even Ackbar Khan, desperate though his character is, would attempt such a thing," observed Polwhele.

"You doubt me, then?" said the Afghan, proudly.

"Nay; I only hope that you are labouring under a mistake."

"We shall see; even Ezra had his doubts, so why not may you? Ezra doubted the means by which Jerusalem and its inhabitants would be again restored; but he was cured of those doubts—do you know how?"

"'Pon my soul, I don't," said Polwhele, repressing a yawn.

"By seeing the bones of a dead ass suddenly clothed with flesh and resuscitated with life and breath and action, for so the blessed Koran tells us," replied the Khan; for among the Afghans so much of their common life and daily conversation are tinged with their religion, its legends and precepts, that from the Shah to the veriest slave, one might imagine the whole people to be engaged alone in holy reflections, for seldom is a sentence uttered without some allusion to the Deity; yet, as a nation, they are lively and merry.

"I wish to do you both a service, Sahibs, as gratitude has placed me in your debt. You saved my wife in the Great Bazaar from the insults of a Sepoy soldier, who when drunk with bhang, attempted to overturn her palanquin. I wish to do the Envoy a service and his Queen too, by saving the lives of her servants; thus I repeat and implore you to give ear. Warn Macnaghten Sahib, against the conference to which he is invited, for Ackbar Khan has sworn that he will, if possible, kill every man among you save one, and get all your wives and female children into his possession."

"As for my wife," laughed Polwhele, "he is welcome to her."

The Afghan stared at him and frowned.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Waller, incredulously playing with both his fair whiskers this time; "and what is to be done with the lucky fellow he so generously means to spare?"

"He shall have his hands and feet cut off, and be placed at the entrance of the Khyber Pass with a written notice to deter all Feringhees from entering our country again."

"And has the scoundrel sworn this?"

"By every word in the Holy Kulma, the creed of our Prophet, he has. Ackbar the Sirdar is the very incarnation of Eblis—the evil spirit who betrayed Adam to transgression, and yet seeks to do injury to all his race," continued Taj Mohammed with gleaming eyes and a glow in his dusky cheek, for he and Ackbar Khan were politically rivals and mortal enemies.

"I have heard that this fellow Ackbar is somewhat slippery if not more; but if he has ventured to conceive such projects, we should have him tied to the mouth of a nine-pounder," exclaimed Polwhele, adding sundry adjectives and expletives, in which young Englishmen are apt to indulge in moments of excitement, and again the reproving eye of the Wuzeer fell on him.

"Do not talk thus, Sahib," said he sententiously; "know you not, that the tongue is a precious jewel, and hence it is a thousand pities we should pollute it?"

"But would he dare to assassinate the Envoy?" asked Polwhele, angrily.

"Tell me, Sahib, what Ackbar Khan would not dare?" responded the other, quietly.

"Egad that is true, but I hope that our troops will ere long show all those fellows who plot mischief that we have not come 'thus far into the bowels of the land' for nothing," replied Polwhele, laughing; "and to-morrow I, for one, shall begin with the Ghazeeas among yonder hills, Khan."

"The Siah Sung is full of deep and dark caverns, Sahib," said the friendly Afghan; "the Ghazeeas are cunning; so beware alike of surprise and ambush."

"Oh that will be my look-out and Burgoyne's," replied Polwhele, confidently.

"Besides, yonder hills are the chosen haunt of the Ghoul Biaban," said Taj Mohammed, and though a brave man, he lowered his voice as he spoke, for the Afghans believe devoutly in the existence of "the Spirit of the Waste," a lonely demon inhabiting the mountain solitudes; frightful he is, and gigantic in form, devouring any passenger who comes in his way; forming by spells the mirage of the desert to snare the traveller, and disinterring the dead that he may devour them like the wife of the young king of the Black Isles.

"I must take my chance of the Ghoul and the Ghazeeas too; though it will be deuced hard lines to be killed by the latter and eaten, without salt, by the former," said Polwhele, laughing again.

"The shadow of the Prophet be over you and your soldiers, Sahib," said the Afghan, not without a knitted brow; for though he knew perhaps, but the half of what Polwhele said, he saw in his bearing much of that disposition to ridicule, which is so thoroughly intolerable to all foreigners, and does us much mischief everywhere; and to this, and some other mistakes of manner, we owed many of the mischiefs that ensued subsequently in Cabul.

"Historical truth compels us to acknowledge," says the Chaplain to the Forces, "that less regard was paid to the inhabitants than could have been wished. Though they do not, like other Mohammedans, universally shut up their women, the Afghans are as open to jealousy as Orientals in general, and treating their wives often rudely, the latter could not but be pleased with the attentions the young Feringhees showed them. It is much to be feared that our countrymen did not always bear in mind that the domestic habits of any people ought to be sacred in the eyes of strangers. And hence arose by degrees, distrust, alienation, and hostility, for which it were unfair to deny there might be some cause. Whatever errors they committed, the great mass of the garrison of Cabul atoned for them terribly."

We greatly fear that we must also admit to Messieurs Bob Waller, Jack Polwhele, and Harry Burgoyne being among the Feringhee delinquents referred to; and that some of their peccadilloes were alleged to have gone beyond mere oglings, hand-squeezings, and exchange of flowers with the fair Afghani at the Cantonment, the Band-stand, in the Bazaar and the narrow streets of Cabul, which are barely a yard wide.

But to resume:—

"I go to the Bala Hissar to seek the secret ear of the Shah," said Taj Mohammed, as coldly and as drily as if some of the preceding thoughts had been flitting through his mind; "I have but done my grateful duty in coming to warn you of the future storm, for the Envoy of your Queen has more than once turned a deaf ear to my advice; and now——salaam."

And with a low bow he retired ere Waller could start to his feet and usher him out. For sooth to say, Bob had been lounging in his bamboo chair with a leg over each arm thereof and a cheeroot between his teeth; a very undignified mode of sitting in presence of the Hereditary Wuzeer of Cabul.

"A horrid bore!" commented Polwhele; "glad he has gone—took his tipple like a Christian, though; and despite him of Mecca, has polished off the best part of a bottle of mess sherry."

"What the deuce are we to think of all this?" asked Denzil, who had hitherto sat completely silent, and who already in imagination saw the bright and beautiful Rose Trecarrel in the hands of innumerable Afghan Bluebeards with brandished cimitars, and Mabel waving her handkerchief like "Sister Anne" from the tower-head.

"An unpleasant rumour, any way, and we shall not go without our pistols," said Waller. "However, I hope his anxiety for his own post at Court, if Ackbar triumphs, exaggerates the situation."

"They are a strange people, these Afghans," resumed Polwhele musingly, as he filled his tumbler again, adding, "Father Adam's pale ale—water—is always mightily improved by a dash of brandy, thus."

"But I have seen stranger," replied Waller; "when I was in China with the 26th, for there the men wear petticoats and the ladies don't; old fellows fly kites and spin tops, while the young ones study; when puzzled they scratch their feet and not their polls like Europeans; when angry they don't punch the head, but viciously pull each other's tails; and they can write books without an alphabet in that delightful language which we see on the tea-chests. Oh, the Afghans are reasonable fellows, when contrasted with the countrymen of him of the Wonderful Lamp."

"Yes; but the former are a ferocious set, and deem a little homicide, more or less, nothing. Like the Scots Highlanders of old—'

"Take care; it is well Her Majesty's Envoy does not hear you!"

"Every man is born a soldier, I was about to add, and even every boy—a pestilent set of wasps they are—has his knife, and knows how to use it; and they are all taught, that if these black rock and yonder snow-capped hills have little attraction for them here below, the Moollahs add that heaven teems with Houris, and that their reward is there. Talking of Houris, we shall all meet at the Trecarrels to-morrow, I hope; but I shan't see you till I come off Ghazeea hunting; and, by Jove! I would rather go pig-sticking in the jungle, or tiger-potting on a Shikaree elephant, than have a day's shooting against those mad fanatics. However, you'll see the Envoy about what we have heard."

"Of course, Jack."

And whistling a popular waltz, with his sword under his arm, and his forage cap very much over the right ear, Jack Polwhele strode away to Burgoyne's bungalow in the Cantonments, just as the boom of a gun from the nearest fort, and the clang of the guard-house ghurries announced the setting of the sun.

Waller and Denzil sought the Envoy at the Residency; but, unfortunately, he was on a visit to the Shah at the Bala Hissar; thus a most precious opportunity was too probably lost.

We shall neither follow Polwhele to his consultation with Burgoyne about their future movements, nor to their adventures among the cavernous range of the Siah Sung Hills; but in the subsequent chapter shall endeavour to relate on what errand our troops, some four thousand three hundred in number, had come into that remote, ferocious, and most warlike region of all North-western India, seeking to control the views and the passions of five million one hundred and twenty thousand hostile people.

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT TOOK US THERE.

The kings of Cabul in relation to their people somewhat resembled those of the House of Stuart when on the Scottish throne; being only the khans of a warlike tribe, among many other khans and tribes; hence the old Celtic term for the king of Scotland is simply the "chief of chiefs." The resemblance to Scotland in the days of old, is still further carried out in the fact that Cabul was a mere amalgamation of petty republics, or clans, having at their head a king, whose influence was felt in the capital, but whose authority failed to reach the fierce dwellers in the glens and on the mountains.

After witnessing many civil wars, crimes and outrages, Shah Mahmud died, and was succeeded on the throne of Herat and Afghanistan, by his son Kamran.

Meanwhile Dost Mohammed Khan, another prince of the family, seized on the beautiful vale of the Cabul river; and the Lion of Lahore, Runjeet Sing (with whose name the newspapers long made us familiar) over-ran all Cashmere. Dost Mohammed was desirous of securing the friendship of the British Government, who sent Captain (afterwards Sir Alexander) Burnes to him; but the honourable reception he accorded to a Russian officer at Cabul about the first year of Her present Majesty's reign caused him to be secretly distrusted by the Governor-General of India.

The latter, with a view to secure our north-western frontier against Russian influence, and an intended invasion of the peninsula, became a party to a treaty between Shah Sujah, third son of the deceased Mahmud of Herat and Afghanistan, to re-establish him on the throne of his ancestors; and hence war was declared against the Dost, whose ally, Runjeet Sing, refused permission for our troops to march through the Punjaub—"The land of the five rivers." But, heedless of this, two Corps d'Armée, advancing simultaneously from Bombay and Bengal, under Sir Willoughby Cotton, ten thousand strong, soon found themselves under the walls of Candahar; and next Ghuznee, the most formidable fortress in Asia, was stormed at the point of the bayonet, after its gates had been blown in by a petard, and there enormous booty was found.

The seventh of the subsequent August saw the union-jack hoisted on the Bala Hissar of Cabul, and Shah Sujah, an aged, effete, and most unpopular prince, brought from exile in Loodianah and replaced upon his ancient and hereditary throne, while an army of eight thousand Beloochees and other wild warriors, sons of the Gedrosian desert, was assigned him, under the command of the Shahzadeh Timour and Colonel Simpson of the 19th Native Infantry; for such were the arrangements of that Honourable Company of Merchants whose office was in Leadenhall Street, in the City.

The restored Shah, a cruel and ruthless prince, who blinded his kinsman Futteh Khan, by thrusting a dagger into his eyes, and afterwards having him hacked into "kabobs," soon excited great discontent among the fiery tribes under his rule, and particularly by retaining a regiment of Sikhs as his body-guard; and so resolute and manifest became the hostility of the natives, that the situation of the small British force—now reduced to little more than four thousand men—cantoned without the walls of Cabul, grew daily more perilous and critical, while General Elphinstone, who now commanded, by age and health was quite unequal to the task assigned him.

After a long and arduous contest, Dost Mohammed became at last the peaceful prisoner of the British Government; for it chanced that one evening, after his last battle and defeat, our envoy, Sir William Macnaghten, when riding near Cabul, was overtaken by a horseman, whose steed, like himself, was covered with dust and blood and flakes of foam.

Announcing that he was Dost Mohammed, the stranger proffered his sword in token of surrender; for it would seem that the hapless prince had that day ridden sixty miles from the Nijrow Valley, quitting his routed host; and he was immediately transmitted to Calcutta; but rejecting with hatred and scorn all offers of pension or place from the British Government, Ackbar Khan, the most brave and reckless of his sons, preferred a life of rude independence in Loodianah, and never lost the hope of levying a holy war for the extermination of the meddling and Kaffir Feringhees—the infidel English; for so he stigmatised us.

Prior to this point of time our little army under General Elphinstone had remained peacefully in Cabul, far distant from the British settlements in Hindostan. Many of the officers had built pleasant and even pretty houses in the neighbourhood of the fortified cantonments which lay between the hills of Behmaru and those of Siah Sung, two miles distant from the city; and there they dwelt comfortably and unsuspectingly with their wives and families.

Communication with the outer world beyond the passes was however both difficult and dubious; for the territories of wild and untrustworthy allies lay between our troops and the Indies on one hand; and between them and the Arabian Sea on the other.

It was August, as before stated, when we entered Cabul. The violets, the tulips and the wall-flower, which grow wild during spring, had passed away; but the air was yet perfumed by the Persian iris; the orchards and lovely gardens around the city were teeming with luscious fruit; and the Cabul river flowed between its banks, where the purple grape, the ruddy apple, and golden orange, bending the laden branches, dipped in the stream or kissed its shining ripples.

Englishmen take old England with them everywhere; and thus the honest and confident freedom with which our officers went to and fro between the camp and city, and the free way in which they spent their money, won them, for a time, the favour of the Afghans; and the winter of the first year saw the introduction of horse races, at which a splendid sword, given by the Shah, was won by Major Daly of the 4th Light Dragoons; cricket matches, when Bob Waller held his wicket against the field; and cock-fighting, a favourite sport with the natives.

The chiefs invited them to their houses in the city and to their castles in the country, where their double-barrelled rifles brought down the snipes and quails, the elk, the deer, the hare and flying fox, with a precision that elicited many a shout of "Allah" and "Bismillah" from the entertainers.

The winter of that year also saw our officers skating on the lake of Istaliff, six miles from Cabul—the skates being the work of a Scottish armourer sergeant. Amateur theatricals,* for which Polwhele painted the scenery, were not wanting to add to the wonder of those sequestered Orientals, to whom the doors of the houses were thrown freely open; but with the coming spring, when the field-pea, the yellow briar-rose, the variously tinted asphodels, and the orchards in rich blossom, made all the valley beautiful, came the crowning marvel, when Lieutenant Sinclair of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, an officer who possessed great mechanical skill, constructed and launched on the lake of Istaliff, that which had never before been seen in Afghanistan, a large boat, with masts, sails, and oars.

* The favourite play was "The Irish Ambassador," and others of the same kind. "On such occasions they changed the titles of the dramatis personæ, so as to bring them and the offices of the parties bearing them, down to the level of Afghan comprehension; while Burnes and others skilled in the dialect of the country, translated the speeches as they were uttered."—Sales' Brigade in Afghanistan.

The plaudits of the assembled thousands made the welkin ring.

"Now," they exclaimed, "we see that you are not like the infidel Hindoos that follow you! You are men born and bred like ourselves in a land where God varies the seasons, thus giving vigour to mind and body. Oh, that you had come among us as friends, rather than enemies, for you are fine fellows, one by one, though as a body we hate you!"

And so dark days were coming, for the misrule of the Shah Sujah, the intrigues of the restless Ackbar Khan, and the national distrust of the mountaineers of all foreign, especially Kaffir, intervention, were soon to put an end to this pleasant state of matters.

On the Chief of the Ghiljees spreading a rumour by letter, that it was the intention of Sir William Macnaghten to seize all the khans of tribes and send them to the Feringhee Queen in London, a dreadful tumult ensued in the city, and ere the cannon could clear the streets, several officers, among whom was Sir Alexander Burnes, were killed in the confusion. Fast spread the spirit of revolt! The feeble Shah shut himself up in the Bala Hissar on its towering rock; and it was deemed advisable to make terms with the leaders, the chief of whom was Ackbar Khan, whose conduct during the whole of those affairs curiously combined the romantic, aristocratic, and courteous tones of a half-civilised prince, with the ferocity of an utter barbarian.

A part of the garrison having been detached under Sir Robert Sale to Jellalabad, his brigade had barely entered the terrible and tortuous ravines which lead thereto, ere it was attacked by the mountain hordes, and had to fight its way inch by inch for miles, and by the middle of November, about the time this portion of our story opens, the sixty thousand citizens of Cabul and the tribes of the surrounding country were ripe for insurrection, the fiery elements of discord being fanned by Ackbar Khan in person.

And such was the state of affairs in and around Cabul on that day, when Waller and Denzil, both well-armed—as they could not forget the friendly warnings of Taj Mohammed—quitted their quarters in the old fort, to have "tiffin" (i.e. luncheon) with the Trecarrels in the house of the General, who had now been some two months with Elphinstone's army, but without yet obtaining that which he had been promised, command of a brigade, unless one to be chiefly formed of Beloochees from the Shah's little army, under Timour the Shahzadeh, could be considered as such a force, that speedily melted away.

CHAPTER V.

TIFFIN WITH THE TRECARRELS.

Situated between the Residency of the Queen's Envoy and the square fort of Kojah Meer, near the high road leading to the city past the base of the Hills of Behmaru, the house of General Trecarrel partook somewhat of the character of a European villa, and had been built about a year before for a wealthy staif officer, who had been transferred to Ceylon almost before it was finished; for so do men change about in an army which is scattered over all the habitable globe.

It was two-storeyed, with a spacious dining-room and another apartment, which Mabel and Rose had made a decided attempt to affect as a drawing-room, with rich draperies and many pretty ornaments and suitable decorations brought up country, or purchased in the great bazaar of Cabul. Punkahs were not required in that temperate climate; but a broad verandah, covered with luxuriant creepers, afforded a sufficient shade for the windows, or to promenade under on wet days, or in the sunny summer season.

As in India, the arrivals were announced by a stroke on a gong. A few guests were already assembled in the drawing-room, where the General, more erect in bearing, and a little more emphatic in tone, than when last we saw him, and his daughters looking as bright, as showy and as handsome as ever, received Denzil and Waller with a cordiality that made the heart of the former to beat lightly and happily; for he had already begun to find more than pleasure—a joy, in the society of the charming Rose.

He knew not how far this emotion was reciprocated; but he longed with all the desire of impassioned youth for some conviction, that, at least, he was not without interest in her eyes; and Rose was precisely the kind of girl to keep him long in the dark on that point, and to give him serious doubts, unless it suited her capricious fancy to act otherwise.

He hoped that on this afternoon he might have an opportunity of testing the matter—for learning somewhat of his fate; and felt that a glance he could read, a whispered word, a touch of her hand, would make him happy—oh, so happy!

Polwhele was already there, and looking somewhat weary and excited after his early morning tour among the hills after the Ghazees, whom he had completely routed from their haunts, after killing or wounding a dozen or so; Burgoyne of the 37th Native Infantry was there too, and both were talking over their skirmish with the General.

Two or three ladies from the cantonments, Elphinstone, the general commanding (an old and worn-out man), with some half dozen other officers, all in blue surtouts or scarlet raggies, i.e., shell-jackets and white vests, with their regimental button, were present; and cloudy though the political horizon around them, and with the recent insurrection and assassinations in the city fresh in their minds, they were all conversing as merrily and as heedlessly, as if quartered at Canterbury in lieu of Cabul. The younger men crowded about the chairs of Mabel and Rose; thus Denzil, so far from having an opportunity of doing more than once touch the hand of the latter, found himself obliged to listen to her father, who being a major-general without a brigade now, was resorting to the old soldier's privilege of grumbling.

"Yes, sir!" said he, grimly, to Denzil, assenting to some thought of his own, rather than any remark of the latter; "I served throughout the whole of that victorious campaign, which saw my old friend and comrade, Keane—he who presented me with this splendid watch—created Baron Keane of Ghuzni and Cappoquin; while all that I have gained has been a gold medal from the Shah Sujah, and the Cross of the Bath from Her Majesty."

"Keane's peerage was the just reward of merit, papa," urged Rose.

"Merit, in the service, is nothing."

"How so, General?" asked an officer.

"Merit is just one man's opinion of another," said Trecarrel, with a cynical laugh, "as some one writes, somewhere."

"Is the Envoy to be here, General?" asked Waller, in a low tone.

"No; he is still at the Bala Hissar with the Shah."

"Most unlucky," whispered Waller to Denzil; "I should like that message of the Wuzeer's off my conscience at least."

"Nor are we to have the pleasure of Lady Sale's presence," continued Trecarrel; "unpleasant rumours have been brought in by an Arab hadji, of an attack on Sale's brigade in the Passes; but luckily they are as yet unconfirmed."

"I do not believe in them," said General Elphinstone, who was seated in an easy-chair, being almost too feeble to stand; "for after we restored Shah Sujah to his throne, we made, as you all know, a solemn agreement with the Ghilzie Chiefs, that, for a yearly sum, they should keep the Khoord Cabul, and other mountain passes, open between this and Jellalabad, and offer no molestation to our troops on the march; consequently, I repeat that I do not believe in the story of the hadji."

"That old fellow never believes anything; nor will he give credence to the discontents around us, till the Afghan knives are at his throat," whispered Waller to Polwhele; "poor Elphinstone! he is failing fast, Jack."

"Yes; but he was busy all summer planting peas and cabbages, like Cincinnatus, when he should have been getting the Shah's Gholandazees trained to their guns."

"And will you believe it," added Burgoyne, a smart and sunburnt young officer, "Lady Sale told me that he actually ordered Sir Robert's regiment to march from this with flint-locks,* instead of eight hundred percussion muskets which he requested from the store; an error which may be most fatal by this time, if the Passes are beset."

* Fact.

Waller gazed with something of pity at the old man, who was long past the years for command; he was orthodoxly attired in his blue undress surtout, with a gold sash over his shoulder, and a ribbon at his breast, with the Order of the Dooranee Empire, but death seemed already imprinted in his anxious eyes and haggard face, which was all wrinkles, lines, and hollows. His voice was feeble, and he had a husky cough; yet his face seemed to brighten when he mumbled hopefully of "getting home at last to die in old Scotland," though fated never to issue from the Khyber Pass, save as a corpse. And it was to him that the perilous task of keeping our little force at distant Cabul was assigned by the Government of India!

Waller mentioned to him the story of Taj Mohammed's visit; but it was treated as an illusion; for was not the atmosphere of Cabul full of such rumours, and was not the hereditary enmity between Taj Mohammed and the Sirdar (or general), as Ackbar Khan was named, proverbial? Each would ever do his utmost to injure the other, even unto death. Then the roar of the gong announced that "tiffin was served," ending the matter; the probable fate of Her Majesty's Envoy was thought of no more for the time; for Mabel Trecarrel, with a bright smile on her upturned face, slipped her white arm through that of the aged General, and all moved towards the dining-room, between close ranks of native servants, whose white turbans, jackets, and dhotties, contrasted strongly with their dark visages and gleaming eyes.

Rose fell to the care of Burgoyne, there were no ladies for either Waller or Denzil (and some other subalterns), who brought up the rear; and the latter, to his infinite annoyance, found himself seated at a distance from her, and barely able at times to catch a glance beyond a gigantic plated epergne, filled with fruit and false flowers. From his junior rank and years, he could scarcely have expected anything else, for ladies were still scarce up country, and scarcer still beyond the Khyber Pass; but Denzil felt that somehow his day had begun inauspiciously.

The khansamah (or butler), and a dozen of other Hindoo servants, were in attendance; and the business of luncheon proceeded rapidly. Polwhele and Burgoyne were still talking of their morning march into the hills of Siah Sung, and made light of killing so many of the natives, having only two rank and file killed, and one wounded severely, partaking the while of what was set before them with as much unconcern and heartiness, as if they had been snipe-shooting, or pig-sticking, in the jungle, for in that part of the world danger became a pastime.

"So one of Burgoyne's sepoys was wounded?" asked Elphinstone.

"Yes, General; his legs are scarcely quite to the regimental pattern now."

"How so, Polwhele?"

"A ball from a juzail smashed the knee; so the limb was amputated."

This elicited a little chorus of commiseration from the ladies, but as the sufferer was a native, it soon subsided.

"Any word, General, of your aide-de-camp Trevelyan of ours?" asked Waller.

"None—save that he was off the sick list, and soon to leave Bombay and join us here," replied Trecarrel; "but if this news about the passes be true, I hope he will be in no hurry to come this way; he is a fine fellow, Trevelyan."

(The name found an echo in Denzil's heart, which sank for a moment.)

"I knew him when in the 14th Hussars, at Agra," said Burgoyne to Rose; "he was not then the heir to a title."

She coloured perceptibly. Denzil did not see this, but Mabel did, and she laughed.

"If the passes are actually closed, it is deuced lucky we got up those nine-pounder guns in time," said Trecarrel to Elphinstone.

"I wrote—ugh—ugh—for—ugh—three eighteen pounders," replied the other, coughing feebly.

"And the mistake was that of the military Board?"

"Exactly," said Jack Polwhele; "they made it a case of arithmetic; and in lieu of three eighteen pound guns, sent you six long nines, which are useless for the battery-work that Ackbar Khan may ere long cut out for us."

"Oh that hideous Ackhar Khan!" exclaimed Rose, with young ladylike horror; "I have seen him once, and his mouth, when he laughed, reminded me of nothing so much as two rows of piano keys."

"Hideous!" said Burgoyne; "pardon me, is he not thought very handsome?"

"But think of his beard; it flows to his girdle, and birds might build their nests in it, as they did in the beard of Tregeagle; you remember our Cornish giant, Mr. Devereaux?" added Rose, with a glance at Denzil, whose colour rose, like that of a girl, with pleasure.

Denzil was undoubtedly a very handsome lad, verging on manhood now; he had his mother's perfect regularity of features, with eyes of a blue so dark that at times they seemed black; yet they were wonderfully soft, especially when they turned to those of Rose Trecarrel; and his hair was very fair and curly, having almost a golden tint when the sunshine fell on it. The Indian summer, and the keen breeze from the hills of Kohistan, had already browned his boyish cheek; but some of England's bloom was lingering in it still; and to Rose, a regular "man-slayer," a naturally born flirt, the temptation to entangle him, when she felt intuitively how imperceptibly to himself he was allured by glances into loving her, was too great to resist, for Rose Trecarrel had all the art to win a heart, and yet retain her own entire and untouched.

She and Denzil had many Cornish reminiscences, topics, and sympathies in common; and these afforded a grand basis of operations for Rose, though perilous enough for one so inexperienced as he in affaires du coeur, especially with one so beautiful, so gay, and, we grieve to say it, so artful; but "when gallantry becomes mingled with conversation, affection and passion come gradually to mix with gallantry, and queens, like village maidens, will listen longer than they should," so we shall see how it fared with Rose in the sequel.

The intense, but too often silent devotion of a lad so handsome, flattered her; it was so different from the half-laughing love-making of such men of the world as Waller and Polwhele; yet she had as much idea of going further—in fact, of wedding an ensign—as of espousing a dancing dervish, or an Arab faquir. Of course, she thought in her heart that the Devereaux and Lamorna affair was very strange; but what did it matter there—beyond the Indus?

His mother's unhappy story, his father's untimely fate, and, for some time past, the absence of all tidings from his sister Sybil, rendered Denzil at times intensely thoughtful, or, as Rose Trecarrel was inclined to deem it, interesting; and thus, in his craving for gentle sympathy from some one, (and from whom could it be more welcome than a bright-eyed young flirt?) made him an easy and a willing victim.

Denzil had a nervous jealousy of all who approached her; and he envied the free and easy—to some it might seem half-impudent—bearing of Waller, Burgoyne, and others, when hovering about the sisters at the band-stand, in the bazaar at Cabul, when riding or driving near the cantonments, and elsewhere. He was not old enough, or experienced enough, to know that there could be no love in the hearts of those heedless fellows, if they were so self possessed and free in the presence of the object of that love; and as little did he know the jealous fear that Rose had cost his sister at home!

CHAPTER VI.

THE APPOINTMENT.

Tiffin over—the General's khansamah had excelled himself, for there were curried hares and quails (the spoil of Waller's rifle), roasted kid, the fat being spread on buttered toast, and well peppered; curried chickens, partridge pie, snipe and ortolans, sweet bread and stilton, champagne, claret, and Bass, with a dessert of Cabul grapes, oranges, and various other fruits à discretion—tiffin over, we say, like other civilized people in the land they had come from, as it had not been dinner, but simply luncheon, all filed back to the drawing-room together; and, in obedience to a glance from Rose, from whom his eyes seldom wandered, Denzil achieved a place by her side on a sofa.

So the day to which he had looked forward so anxiously, was not, perhaps, to pass away so inauspiciously after all, for, to Denzil, time seemed to be divided into two portions—that which was spent in the society of Rose, and that which seemed blankness, spent in absence from her.

Waller was hanging over Mabel, talking in a very confidential tone, so closely that his long fair whiskers brushed at times her rich brown hair. Mabel had that kind of pure profile one sometimes sees cut on a cameo, her head was gracefully set on her shoulders, and there were times when its bearing was queenly. Her complexion was brilliantly fair by day as well as by night, and her dark grey eyes had in them now a smile so winning, that Bob Waller could not help thinking that she was really a fine girl, and looking uncommonly well.

The ladies from the adjacent cantonment were now deep in "baby talk;" the officers were clustered about the two generals, engaged in discussing "shop," and the probability of Sir Robert Sale cutting his way to Jellalabad, even though he were beset by the Ghilzies; for a little space Denzil thought he would have Rose all to himself.

Long ere this he had learned that she and Mabel were somewhat discontented. This kind of station, in a species of enemy's country, and so remote from all the world, where steamers, telegraphs, and railways were all unknown, was not the India to which they had looked forward, and to which they had been previously accustomed. They should have preferred Calcutta, with its streets of snow-white palaces, its stately villas at Gardenreach, the spacious course for driving, riding, promenading, and most decidedly for flirting. At Cabul all was semi-barbarism, as compared with Chowringhee, the Park Lane, the Belgravia of the Indian capital.

Rose knew thoroughly the science of dress. She never, even when in England, chose colours merely for their beauty, but such as she knew by tone and contrast, enhanced the power of her own. She now wore a costume of light blue Cabul silk, trimmed with the most delicate white lace, and she knew that she looked to the utmost advantage. As she lay back on the sofa, playing with a feather-fan, vivacity and langour were alternately the expression of her sunny hazel eyes, for she was pre-eminently a coquette, and had resolved to amuse herself for a time with her new, and as yet, silently professed admirer.

"So you are not yet tired of Cabul?" she began, after a pause.

"Oh no, far from it," replied Denzil, with a glance which he thought, or wished to be thought, full of tender meaning.

"How odd! I used to think India a fine place, but this Cabul, oh, it is simply horrid! There is neither a piano or harp in the whole city. To be sure there are no Europeans here, save the Queen's troops."

"The climate is temperate in summer," urged Denzil for want of something better to say.

"But nevertheless, the place is unendurable, and I hope papa will soon get a command elsewhere, that we, at least, may leave."

"I trust not."

"Why?"

"Can you really ask me—why?" said Denzil, lowering his voice, while gazing into her laughing eyes, with undisguised tenderness; then he added, "we do not wish to lose you."

"Poor Mr. Devereaux! I think you are very fond of papa; for his Cornish name, perhaps," and as no one was looking, she patted his cheek with her fan.

"I love something more than the mere Cornish name of Trecarrel," said Denzil, tremulously; but Rose only bit the feathers of her fan, and eyed him laughingly over it.

"But I repeat that this place is tiresome," she resumed, as a pause had ensued, and pauses are always awkward; "think of the Residency parties, with their young ladies' quadrilles and married ladies' ditto! A man may dance in both sets, and yet have only one hand to dispose of. There is an absurdity, too, in having present those native chiefs like Taj Mohammed and Timour the Shahzadeh, who think the whole affair—the round dancing especially—a naughty and improper Nautch; so they curl their enormous mustaches, and turn up their cruel glittering eyes, and wonder that we laboriously do that which they pay others to do for their amusement. Sunday comes, and then we have to endure what Mab calls 'a regimental sermon,' wherein the chaplain sets forth little more than the heinousness of the slightest neglect of the Queen's regulations! Heavens! I would rather endure a trot on a newly-caught elephant, or a picnic in a wet jungle! Oh, may I trouble you, dear Mr. Devereaux?" she whispered suddenly, and so close that her auburn hair brushed his cheek; "my bracelet has fallen."

The ornament, an elaborate Delhi bangle—a golden miracle of carving—was, not very speedily, clasped by Denzil on the white, veined wrist; and while doing so she permitted her hand for an instant to touch, to linger in his. Was he awkward? was the clasp stiff, that a thrill went to his heart? But her eyes were sparkling with coquetry, as she expressed her thanks for the little service she had ensured by specially and purposely letting her bracelet fall.

"How that young fellow is 'going the pace,'" whispered Polwhele to Burgoyne, with a covert laugh.

"Of course you can never feel dull when in your quarters, Mr. Devereaux?" said Rose; "young officers are said to have so many resources."

"Far from it; and, to tell the truth, I am always dull, weary and even sad, when not—here. You can never know," he added, colouring at the pointedness of his own remark, "how stupidly we fellows pass the time in cantonments; it is getting through the day anyhow—sipping everything, from iced champagne to cold tea and pale ale; smoking everything, from Latakia to Chinsurrah cheroots, and making bets on everything, from drawing the longest straw out of the bungalow roof to naming the winner of the Derby or St. Leger, the bet to be determined six months after, perhaps, when the mail reaches us."

"A profitable way of spending one's day. Do none of you, as a pastime, ever attempt to fall in love?"

The question was one of positive cruelty; but the beautiful eyes only beamed brighter with fun as she put this perilous query, which she would never have uttered to men like Waller or Polwhele.

She fanned herself, and waited for a reply.

"For others I cannot say," said Denzil, in low voice; "for myself, never till I came to Cabul—never till I met, I dare not here say who."

"For a griff, Devereaux, you give a capital answer," said Burgoyne, who had been gradually drawing near them; "we both fall in love and out of it too," he added, with a laugh that was almost saucy, for he had already suffered something at Rose's hands. "Love, like a month's pay, does not last for ever."

"Even in marriage, do you mean?" asked a lady, looking up from a book of prints.

"Less then, perhaps, according to Mr. Polewhele," said Rose; "orange blossoms fade and die as well as summer leaves."

"What a lovely little cynic it is!" said Waller in Mabel's ear; "but she never means all she says."

The conversation now became general; and save for a speaking glance from time to time, and—once at least—when their hands touched (involuntarily, of course) Denzil felt that his chances with Rose were over for the day.

"Our band plays to-morrow at the grand-stand," said an officer of the 54th Native Infantry.

As he spoke, Denzil's eyes met those of Rose, and swift as lightning each knew where to look for the other on the morrow.

"Save with the regimental bands," said Mabel, "Rossini, Bellini and Chimarosa are all lost to us here. Papa strove hard to bring our piano up country; but it was lost in the Khyber Pass by the native artillery (who had tied it on a field piece) when some wild Khyberees appeared; and they, finding that the box emitted sounds, fired a score of juzail* balls through it on speculation."

* The Afghan rifle; hence juzailchees, or riflemen.

"When I was in the Ceylon Rifles," said a Queen's officer, "I have actually seen a piano placed in four bowls of water."

"For what purpose?" asked Mabel.

"To prevent the white ants from eating it up; and I was once at a dancing party in Trincomalee when, from the extreme humidity of climate, the piano—one of Broadwood's best—went all to pieces, like a house of cards; so up here, at Cabul, we can't say what might happen."

"Have you seen the account in an English paper of the late skirmish with Nott's people at Candahar, and the queer story about the wounded being carried off?" asked General Trecarrel.

"No," replied Burgoyne; "what was it? Something extremely 'verdant,' of course, if it referred to India."

"Exactly. General Nott reported that he had thirty rank and file killed, but thrice that number wounded, were all carried off by dhooleys to the hills; on which event the editor expresses his horror in having to record that the savage tribe, known as the Dhooleys, swooped down from their native mountains and bore away the helpless wounded in their remorseless clutches!"

Dhooleys, being simply palanquins or litters, the Indian reader may imagine—as a little fun goes a long way when "up country"—how the mistake was laughed at, and how it made old Elphinstone laugh so severely, that all became seriously alarmed lest a catastrophe might occur; but ere long his dhooley was announced, and the party began to disperse; and Denzil, the last to leave, lingered a moment behind his two friends.

"The band—you have heard—plays at two to-morrow," said Rose, in low voice.

There was a fleet glance exchanged, a swift, soft pressure of the slender fingers, and in these words an appointment—an assignation—was made, causing Denzil's heart to beat wildly with joy as he hurried after Waller and Polwhele, full of dread lest they should have discovered his secret understanding with Rose and proceed to rally him thereon. As it was, he did not escape; for as they walked leisurely towards their quarters in the fort, Waller began thus.

"I have been dying for a quiet cigar! By the way, what does some poetical fellow (Byron, is it?) say—that love is of man's life a thing apart—but woman's whole existence? I don't know the truth of the statement; but anyhow, flirtation or man-slaying is a part of the 'existence' of Rose Trecarrel; so, look alive, Denzil, my boy, or you'll have but a poor chance, if the order to move down on Jellalabad don't come soon. It is all very well for subs to be spooney; but rather absurd for one to be entertaining 'views,' you know."

"You seemed soft enough on her sister, at all events," retorted Denzil, angrily.

"It is a maxim of mine," replied Waller, caressing his fly-away whiskers alternately, "that 'a little bit of tenderness is never misplaced, so long as the object is young, pretty, and, still more than all, disposed for it.' But, Denzil Devereaux, that girl amuses herself with you, and orders you about, as if you were a Maltese terrier, a poodle, or a sepoy."

"By Jove! the Trecarrels are handsome, though," said Polwhele; "and if I had not acquired the habit of making love to a pretty face, merely as a pastime, I fear I should soon be doing it in downright earnest to Rose."

Now as Polwhele was a dangerously good-looking fellow, Denzil felt nettled by his complacent remark.

"But," added the former, "I have met scores of such girls wherever I have been quartered—at home, I mean—especially in London; just the kind of girls to do a bit of Park with; to open a pedal communication with, in mamma's carriage, or meet in a crush where Gunter's fellows have brought the ices; where Weippart's band invites to the light fantastic; and where there are covert squeezes of the hand in the Lancers, on the stairs, or under the supper tablecloth, flirtations in the conservatory, and soft things said between the figures of a quadrille, or in the breathing times of a round dance, when weary of chasing 'the glowing hours with flying feet.'"

"By Jove! Jack, how your tongue runs on!"

"Well, there is no general order against its doing so; and old Trecarrel's champagne was excellent. Oh, Lord! I have done all that sort of thing scores of times, and now find there was nothing in it; but Rose Trecarrel has the prettiest ankle I ever saw.

"Ah! you're a man of close observation."

"Well, I've seen a few in my time, on windy days, at Margate and Brighton especially."

"I am not a marrying man, and had I not been hopelessly insolvent since I came into the world, egad! I would pop to Mabel," said Waller, with a sudden earnestness to which the General's champagne perhaps contributed.

"Oh! you have got the length of calling her by her Christian name!'

"As you do Rose—well, but is it not her name?"

"Of course; but——"

"But what?" asked Bob Waller, testily; "is a fellow to be everlastingly quizzed in that mess-room style, just because—because"—he stuttered and paused.

"What?" said Polwhele, laughing and pointing his black mustaches, which the Line wore in India long before the Crimean war.

"Because he has an honest fancy for a girl; and do you know, Jack, I think I could love that girl—seriously now."

"Very probably; but do you think she could love you?"

"True, I am only a captain, with a small share in an old Cornish mine, and no end of expectations."

"It is only being up-country and idleness."

"I'd call you out, Jack, only it is not the fashion to treat one's friends so now," retorted Waller, as they reached their quarters in the old fort. "There bangs the evening gun from the Bala Hissa; and now to dress for mess."

Some of Polwhele's thoughtless speeches rankled more in the mind of Denzil than he quite cared to show; for he knew that if the idea struck the mind of that confident personage he would propose to Rose Trecarrel in a moment; and Polwhele, he was aware, had a handsome estate partly in Cornwall and partly in Devonshire, and was a most eligible parti.

He, himself, was but a junior subaltern, and he speculated on the years that must inevitably pass ere he could be a captain. Oh, Rose would never wait all that time, and be true.

Poor lad—would he? At least he thought so.

Long, long did Denzil lie awake that night, after leaving the mess-bungalow, anticipating the meeting of the morrow, and recalling the expression of Rose's clear brown eyes—the touch of her soft hand and her whispered words, while the hungry jackals howled like devils in the compound without; and while, on the metal ghurries of the adjacent cantonment, the sentinels struck the passing hours.

He might, had he known the true state of matters, had a sympathetic adviser in Bob Waller, who at that precise time was seated thoughtfully in his quarters—the white-washed room already described—with a leg over each arm of his bamboo chair and his eyes fixed pensively on the ceiling, for he was thinking over Mabel's rare beauty through the medium of a soothing pipe of Cavendish; and once or twice he muttered:

"I am quite bewildered—gobrowed, as the Niggers here have it—and know not what to think—matrimony or not." And, as the night stole on, foreseeing little or nothing of the dangers and horrors to come—of the cloud of battle that was gathering in the Khyber Pass,

"He smoked his pipe and often broke

A sigh in suffocating smoke."

CHAPTER VII.

"THE BAND PLAYS AT TWO."

Young though he was, Denzil made a careful toilet next day; mufti was not much worn at Cabul; but he was unusually particular about the fitting of his blue surtout with its gold shoulder-scales, the adjustment of his crimson sash and sword-belt, forgetting that these were no novelties to the eyes of Rose, and that the black livery of the Civil Service finds more favour with ladies than military uniform in India, where the Redcoats are frequently at a discount, with mammas especially; and he was on the large circular parade ground, where the bands usually played, in the centre of the cantonments (which were an oblong enclosure measuring a thousand yards by six hundred, with a circular bastion at each corner) long before the general promenaders began to assemble, or the European musicians of the 54th Native Infantry had assorted their music, and performed those preliminary grunts on the trombone and ophicleide, which excited the astonishment of the natives, who were present in considerable numbers, by their aspect and costume, enhancing in piquancy a very remarkable scene.

For the first time since they had met, Rose Trecarrel had made a regular appointment with him. It was in a very public place, however, and though it seemed simple enough to her, to Denzil the idea that he had established a secret understanding with her, was in itself happiness; and for the first time he wished to avoid his friend Waller, and was pleased to find that he was detailed for guard that day at an old tomb and temple where we had a post, at the foot of the Behmaru Hills.

The day was one of great beauty, and the air was delightfully cool. Overhead spread the blue and unclouded vault of Heaven, and in the rarified atmosphere, even the remote details of the vast landscape and of the city were rendered visible. Viewed from the cantonments, the plains of Lombardy do not exceed in beauty and brilliance of colour those of Cabul, which moreover, in lieu of the Apennines (amid which Denzil and his parents had often resided) are overshadowed by the stupendous mountains of Kohistan.

Crowning two lofty ridges in the foreground rose Cabul within its walls of stone, and towering high above them, rose the Chola or citadel of the Bala Hissar. The city is picturesque, each house having, as in Spain, an open court-yard, though the streets of unburnt-brick are so narrow as to be frequently blocked up by one laden camel, or to prevent two horsemen riding abreast. Thus the great chiefs and nobles have always footmen running in front to prepare or clear the way for them. There all the different races live apart, and the Persians or fierce Kussilbashes have their own quarter fortified against all the rest.

The groups that gathered round the band were a sample of all the various tribes that resided in and about Cabul, for though many murderous outrages had been perpetrated on our people they were still anxious, if possible, to conciliate the natives.

Each type of humanity varied from the other in visage and in costume; the fair-faced and ruddy-looking Englishman; the lean, dark Hindoo sepoy, seeming intensely uncomfortable in his tight red coat and stiff shako; the sturdier Afghan; the wild Beloochee, the Dooranee, the Kussilbash and Arab, all of whom were admitted in limited number by the quarter-guard; some cruel and sly in expression; some lofty, proud and refined, with patriarchal beards that floated to their waists, and a solemnity of bearing that made one think of the days of Abraham; and many of them armed with ancient weapons made long anterior to the adoption of our villanous saltpetre; in their dresses and manners looking like the figures at a fancy-ball, so quiet and so brilliant in colour and variety, were their flowing Oriental robes.

Numbers of officers and ladies from the different compounds and villas in the vicinity were present; and the "chimney-pot hat of civilization," might be seen amid the white turbans of the Mussulmen, the yellow of the Khyberrees and abhorred Jews, and the scarlet loonghee of the Kussilbash, for Khan Shireen Khan, chief of that warlike tribe, appeared mounted on a slow-paced, lank, patient and submissive-looking camel. Perched high up, he sat on a lofty saddle, with a tall tasselled lance slung behind him, and in front a small armoury of knives and pistols stuck in his girdle, which was a magnificent Cashmere shawl, that many a belle might have envied. Nor were veiled Afghan ladies wanting, and these surveyed with wonder their European sisters, as they openly laughed, chatted and—Bismillah!—shook hands with the Feringhee officers.

Shahzadeh Timour, who commanded the King's forces, was there, mounted on a beautiful horse, wearing a polished shirt of mail and a plumed steel cap, looking not unlike a Circassian chief; and Taj Mahommed Khan, still intent on warning the Europeans of coming evil, rode by his side.

There, too, was Osman Abdallah, an Arab faquir or dervish, who had accompanied the troops from Bengal, a clamorous half-naked fellow, with hair unshorn and shaggy, his lean attenuated limbs smeared with ashes and ghee, thus compelling all to keep to windward of him, as his person was odorous neither of Inde nor Araby the Blest, while he begged for alms to send him on his pilgrimage to the three pools of Sacred Fish, kept by a holy Suyd (or Santon) among the mountains of Sirichussa; and to him, as a riddance, Denzil threw a handful of silver shahi's (petty coins indeed) but of great value in Afghanistan, where cowrie shells pass current at about the tenth of a penny.

Amid all this motley and increasing crowd, he looked anxiously for Rose Trecarrel; already the brass band of the Native Infantry burst upon the air with a crash of music as they began a melody from an opera; and something of disappointment and pique at her protracted absence began to steal into Denzil's heart, for her eagerness seemed by no means equal to his own.

Near him were a group of young officers like himself, but belonging principally to the 5th Cavalry and Horse Artillery. Unlike him, they were neither silent nor thoughtful, but were staring—some through their eye-glasses—at the Afghan women, and amusing themselves with sarcastic criticisms on the quaint figures about them, especially the Khan of the Kussilbashes on his camel and "Timour the Tartar," as they called the Shahzadeh, in his steel cap and steel shirt of the middle ages.

"There goes Rose Trecarrel!" cried one.

"Do you know her?" asked another.

"Know her—who doesn't? Why, man alive, she's as well known as Mechi's razor strop, or Warren's blacking, or anything you may see staring you in the face in the Strand or Regent Street," was the heedless and not very ceremonious response; and if a glance could have slain the speaker, Denzil would certainly have left a vacant cornetcy in the 5th Cavalry.

He turned away in anger, which, however, was somewhat soothed when he heard Shireen Khan, who was gazing after her, say to Shahzadeh Timour, that she was "beautiful as a Peri," which in his language is expressive of a race constituting a link between women and angels.

In a moment Denzil was by her side. She was in a little phaeton drawn by two pretty Cabul ponies and was alone. To avoid being joined by anyone, before she caught the eye of Denzil, she had driven them round the crowd about the band, managing her whip and ribbons very prettily, her hands being cased in dainty buff gauntlet gloves. She was tastefully dressed and wore a bonnet of that shade of blue which she knew was most suitable to her pure complexion and rich bright auburn hair; for Rose was one of those who thought it "was woman's business to be beautiful."

Dropping her whip into the socket, she pulled up and presented her hand to Denzil, who, we fear, held it in his somewhat long, and it did not seem that Miss Rose Trecarrel was very much inconvenienced by the proceeding; but he forgot who might be looking on—he thought only of the brilliant hazel eyes—the ever smiling mouth.

"And you are here alone?" said he.

"As you see. Papa is busy with the General—a move of all the troops down-country is spoken of as imminent soon; and Mabel is with Lady Macnaghten at the Residency, where I am to pick her up at the gate. Will you accompany us for a drive outside the cantonments?"

"With pleasure," said Denzil, though this party of three was not exactly what he had schemed out in his own mind—for he had contemplated nothing less than a solitary ramble with Rose amid the lovely and secluded alleys of the Shah Bagh, or Royal Garden, close by; but it was necessary to quit the crowd unnoticed, a movement not very easily achieved by a girl so showy and so well known as Rose Trecarrel; so they were compelled to linger a little, as if listening to the band.

In the small circle of European society at Cabul, great circumspection was necessary—greater still before the natives, who, under the ideas inculcated by their race and religion, were apt to suspect the most innocent action permitted by the usages of society at home, and to misconstrue that which they could not understand—the perfect freedom and equality, the high position, honour and character, accorded to the English lady or the Christian woman, whether as maid, wife, or mother.

Denzil was too inexperienced and too much in love to be otherwise than shy and nervous. He hesitated in speech, and actually blushed or grew pale like a girl who heard, rather than a youth who had a tale of love to tell. His voice became low, earnest, and tremulous. He could scarcely tell why the momentary touch of that graceful little hand, ungloved—for it was ungloved now—made his heart thrill, for the presence, the sense, the language, and the glances of passion, were all new and confusing to him; while the brilliant girl—the lovely spider in whose net he found himself so hopelessly meshed—knew how to wear her armour of proof and shoot her love-shafts to perfection.

The band now struck up a lively air, and dancing to its measure, through the crowd, which parted and made way for them, there came a group of some twenty Nautch girls, in their graceful Indian dress (all so unlike the swathed-up women of the Mussulmen), a single robe folded artistically about them, leaving one bosom and their supple, tapered limbs quite free. The leading Bayadere, though dark as copper, was indeed a lovely girl; but her jetty hair was all glittering with missee and silver dust.

The jewels which loaded their necks, wrists, and ankles, proclaimed them attendants on the court of the Shah,* and were flashing like their own bright eyes in the sunshine, while the coils of their hair of purple blackness, were interwoven with the white flowers of the wild jasmine. Some had vinas, or rude guitars fashioned of half-gourds; and others had tom-toms or little Indian drums, to the sound of which they sung.

* Now, as in the time of the "Arabian Nights," Nautch girls are attached to all Eastern Courts.

As all Nautch dancing borders a little on the indelicate, Rose had now a fair excuse for leaving the vicinity of the band. Denzil sprang into the little seat behind her, as she still insisted on driving, and they quitted the cantonments by the west-gate, opposite the musjeed, where Bob Waller was listening to the distant strains of the music and killing the hours of his duty as best he could; and thus they escaped Polwhele and a few others who had been waiting to pounce upon her or Mabel, for they were especial favourites with the officers, nathless the ungallant banter to which their names were subjected at times.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DRIVE.

Mabel was not at the Residency, as the sentinels of the Queen's 44th, at the gate, informed them, she having driven away with the Lady of the Envoy to visit Lady Sale, about half an hour before. Denzil perhaps might have foreseen that the sisters would miss each other, had he known more of the inner nature of Rose Trecarrel, or more of the science of flirtation.

"How excessively provoking!" she exclaimed; "shall we return to the band, or—drive without her? Besides we might perhaps meet or overtake them."

The idea of a solitary drive was somewhat perilous at that juncture of our affairs, as the district was much disturbed, and patrols of the 5th Cavalry and 1st Local Horse of the Shah, were on all the roads leading to Cabul. All the people were in arms, and since the murder of Sir Alexander Burnes, more than one officer had been waylaid and seriously wounded. But the temptation was too great, and Denzil "supposed that they might take a little drive together;" so turning the phaeton from the Residency gate, Rose drove along the Kohistan road, in a direction from Cabul.

A wretched Hindoo Kulassy, or tent-pitcher—just such a creature as one may see shivering in the Strand, singing in a nasal monotone to the beating of his dusky fingers on a tom-tom—cried something in mockery after them—a sign of the times—but they heard him not. The Shah Bagh, amid the luxuriant shrubberies of which the voices of the dove and nightingale were heard at certain seasons; the quaint, old musjeed, where Waller was on guard; the village of Behmaru; a pile of stones marking where an English lady had been thrown out of her palanquin and murdered by some wild Belooches, who fled, leaving her unplundered, as they deem the blood of a woman bodes disaster to those who shed it, were each and all soon left behind, and they drew near the long and narrow lake of Istaliff, which is about four miles in length, and where Sinclair's boat lay now neglected among the weeds and sedges.

The vicinity of this lake, the only one in Afghanistan, was lonely, and the hills of Behmaru bordered it on the east. There the shaggy goat, bearded like his Afghan master, and the graceful little antelope leaped from rock to rock; there the long-haired cat and the jabbering ape sprang from branch to branch of the plane and poplar trees, and the beautiful little bird known as the Greek partridge, the hill-chuckore of the natives, whirred up from among the long grass; but save these, and once when a solitary Afghan shepherd peeped forth from his tent of coarse black camlet, pitched on the green mountain slope, there seemed no living thing on their now sequestered path.

Waller, Burgoyne, and others, were older and more showy officers than Denzil, as yet; but it pleased the caprice of Rose Trecarrel to attach him for a time, if not hopelessly, to the train of her admirers; though there was a double risk in the little expedition of that day—the exciting comment among her friends, and the more perilous and equally probable advent of some plundering natives or armed fanatics; yet, heedless of all, the rash girl drove on, looking laughingly back from time to time, with her bright smiling face and alluring eyes, at the lover who sat behind her, striving to speak on passing objects or common-place events, while his soul was full of her, and her only.

Fortunately, no deadly or perilous adventure marked that day's expedition; yet Denzil was fated never to forget it.

Rose certainly was fond of Denzil; but her love affair had, to her, much of the phase of amusement in it. In him, it was mingled with intense and delicate respect; and every fibre seemed to thrill, when she turned half round and showed her face so beautiful in its animation, while, blown back by the soft breeze and their progress against it, her veil, and sometimes one loose tress of her silky, auburn hair, were swept across his mouth and eyes.

Denzil's hand rested on the back of her seat, and as she reclined against it, he knew that there was little more than a silk dress between it and a neck of snowy whiteness; and as the sunlight fell on her brilliant hair, it shone like floss silk, or satin, rather, while her eyes were ever beaming with pleasure, fun, excitement, and something of fondness, too; for he who sat near her was handsome, winning, dazzled by her, and, as she well knew, loved her dearly.

"Do you believe in animal magnetism?" she asked abruptly.

"I don't know—never thought about it, though I have heard old What's-his-name lecture on it at Sandhurst; but what do you mean?"

"The strange sympathy and attraction that are created between two persons who meet each other for the first time—love at first sight, in fact."

Denzil's heart beat very fast, and he was about to make a suitable response, when Rose resumed.

"I am so glad to have the pleasure of driving you, Mr. Devereaux," said she; "but see how those reins have reddened my poor fingers!" she added, holding up a plump, little white hand, ungloved, most temptingly before him. The ponies were proceeding at a walk now, and for Denzil to resist taking that hand in his, caressingly, was impossible; the next moment he had bent his lips to it, and still retained it, for Rose made no effort to withdraw it; and this seemed rather encouraging.

"And you never were in love till you came to Cabul?" she asked, deliberately.

"Never, till I saw you, Rose—dear, dear Rose—ah, permit me to call you so?" replied Denzil, with his eyes so full of tender emotion that her dark lashes drooped for a moment.

"You must not talk in this way, Mr. Devereaux; but how is one to know true love—for there is only one love, though a hundred imitations of it?" she asked, laughing—she was always laughing.

"Some one says so, or writes so, I think."

"De La Rochefoucauld."

"And De La Rochefoucauld is right," replied Denzil, covering with kisses her velvety and unresisting hand.

"I never thought you cared so much for me, Mr. Devereaux," said she after a pause.

"Cared—Oh, Rose, can you use a phrase so tame as that?"

"Well, I mean—good Heavens, I don't know what I mean! I never thought you loved me. I had some idea that you preferred Mabel—she is so statuesque."

Rose had never thought this; but it suited her to say so, and gain a little time. She half closed her clear brown eyes, and smiling most archly and seductively under their long lashes at him, said in a low voice,—

"And you love me—actually love me?"

"I have dared to say so—Rose."

"But you are so young, Denzil—dare I say Denzil?"

"Only a year perhaps younger than you."

"But then you are only an Ensign—and people would so laugh!"

"Let them do so—he who laughs wins; one day I shall be something more," said he earnestly.

"Sit beside me, please, and not behind; I shall have quite a crick in my poor little neck by the way I have to turn—and I shall give you the reins too."

In a moment Denzil was seated by her side.

"And now," said she, "let us talk of something else than love; we have had quite enough of it for one day, my poor Denzil."

How his heart thrilled again, at the sound of his own name on her lips.

"Of what shall we speak—of what else can one think or speak when with you?"

"Oh, anything; how do you like this dress, for instance—my ayah trimmed it?" and while speaking she opened her soft cashmere shawl and showed her waist and the breast of her dress trimmed with—Denzil knew not what—for to resist putting an arm round that adorable waist (a movement which we dare not quite say Miss Rose Trecarrel perhaps expected) was impossible.

"Denzil—Mr. Devereaux!" she exclaimed—"oh good Heavens! if you—if we are seen by any one."

"Pardon me—but permit me," he sighed.

"Listen for a moment and do be reasonable. I can scarcely admit or realise the idea that you are the one who is to give a tone, a colour, to all my future life. No, Denzil; you have paid me the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman; but it may not be. Let us be friends—oh yes! dear, dear friends, who shall never forget each other; but not lovers" (here she held up her ruddy lips to the bewildered Denzil) "not lovers—oh,no—not lovers!"

Kisses stifled all that might have followed.

What art or madness was this?

Denzil felt as if the landscape swam around him, and he was rather fond and fatuous in his proceedings, we must admit; but his earnestness impressed at last the coquette by his side. She began to think she had gone rather too far, so she became grave, and a sadness almost stole over her face.

She began to consider that this love-making was all very well and pleasant so long as it lasted, but where was it to end? As others have ended, thought Rose. There were moments when she could not help yielding to the calm delight with which the pure passion of Denzil was apt to inspire her, for there was a genuine freshness in it. Many had flattered her; many had pressed and kissed her hands, toyed with her beautiful hair, aye, and not a few had kissed her cheek too; but beyond all those, he seemed so happy, so intensely enchanted with her—seeming to drink in her accents—to live upon her smiles!

In short, he thoroughly believed in her, and she tried for the time to believe in herself; and yet—and yet—with the impassioned kisses of her young lover on her lips, she felt that it was all folly—folly in him, folly in her—a folly that must soon have a painful, perhaps a mortifying end.

Did it never occur to her, that young though he was, those caresses and kisses—those words half sighed, and thoughts half-uttered, might never be forgotten by him; but be recalled in time to come with sadness as "the delight of remembered days."

"Now do let us be rational, dearest Denzil," said she smoothing her hair and quickly adjusting her shawl, collar, and gloves, as a turn of the road brought them in sight of the cantonments and a patrol of the 5th Cavalry under a Duifodar riding slowly along; and on their drawing a little nearer her father's house prudence on Rose's part led her to suggest that Denzil should leave her.

"Good-bye till to-morrow—you will call and see us, of course," said she, as he alighted from the phaeton; "dear Denzil," she added, her eyes beaming with their usual witchery and waggery the while, "have we not enjoyed the band to-day?"

He knew not what he replied as she drove off and once or twice turned to kiss her hand to him, while lingeringly and with his heart swelling with all that had passed, he turned from the Kohistan road towards his somewhat squalid quarters in the old Afghan fort.

The secret understanding between them seemed to be growing deeper! What was to be the sequel, and what would the General say? But, as yet, prudence had suggested neither one idea nor the other to Denzil.

It was well for him, as after mess, he lay on his charpoy, or camp-bed, indulging in a quiet cigar and plunged in happy reverie, dreaming over all the events of that delightful drive by the Lake of Istaliff, that he did not overhear a few words of a conversation regarding him, and taking place at that precise time in a corner of General Trecarrel's drawing-room.

"Take care, Rose," Mabel was saying; "I have heard of your solitary drive to-day from Polwhele, though papa has not—a drive in defiance of the dreadfully disturbed state of the people hereabout—nearly all in insurrection, in fact. Mr. Devereaux is only a very junior subaltern, and the Civil Service are scarce enough up here certainly; but remember that cloudy story about his family which we heard at Porthellick."

"I care not," replied Rose, looking up from a fauteuil on which she was languidly reclining, her whole occupation being the opening and shutting of a beautiful fan given to her by some forgotten sub of Sale's Light Infantry; "the poor fellow loves me——"

"He has told you so?"

"Yes—so I shan't betray his home secret, if there is one."

"Yet you would betray himself?"

"Don't say so, Mab?"

"Why?"

"It sounds so horrid."

"But when Audley Trevelyan—the heir to a peerage comes——"

"Audley seems to find attraction enough in Bombay," said Rose, with an air of pique; "so please attend to Waller and his long fair whiskers, my dear sister, I am quite able to take care of myself. Besides, Mab, this lad Devereaux is only one among many."

"But to him you may be one—the one—one only Rose."

"I know it," was the pitiless reply.

CHAPTER IX.

ADVENTURE IN CABUL.

To his intense mortification, regimental duty detained Denzil in the cantonments all the following day, thus precluding his visiting the General's house at the time he intended; but as a natural sequence to their pleasant little airing by the shores of the Lake of Istaliff, it occurred to him that at their next interview he must beg Rose Trecarrel's acceptance of some suitable love-token; and for this purpose he resolved to visit the great bazaar while it was yet safe for a European to traverse the streets of the Shah's capital, as the dreaded Ackbar Khan was not as yet known to be within its walls at that precise juncture; and evening parade being over, he hastened along the road to the Kohistan gate, and turning to the left after entering it, proceeded at once towards the Char Chouk, the aforesaid great bazaar, with his mind intent on his proposed purchase, and so full of the tender memories of yesterday, that he was quite oblivious of the manner in which the armed Afghans, the red-capped Kussilbashes, and others who were thronging the narrow thoroughfares in unwonted numbers, regarded him; how they scowled ominously, handled their weapons, and muttered curses under their thick flowing mustaches.

He was thinking only of Rose, when there were those hovering about him who required but the precept, or example, of one bolder or more cruel than the rest, to cut him to pieces and elevate his head on some conspicuous pole in the market-place; for the Afghans almost invariably slice off the heads of those they slay.

It never occurred to him, that in her own laughing way, her manner yesterday had been somewhat forward, over-confident, or "flirtatious" as Polwhele would have phrased it. He had but one idea and conviction; "How fond she is of me?" and thus a few gold pieces which he had once intended to invest in a present for his mother—alas! he knew not all that had happened at home—or for Sybil, his gentle sister, were now to be spent in a suitable love-gift for Rose Trecarrel.

"She loves me—and she is so beautiful!" he whispered to himself again and again; for there is much truth in the old Roman maxim, that "what we wish should be, we readily believe;" and what reason had he to doubt her? Doubtless, she had flirted with many—but she loved him.

Followed and alternately mocked, reviled or importuned insolently for alms, by Osman Abdallah, the Arab Dervish, to be rid of whose inodorous presence, he thrice gave him a rupee, Denzil reached the great bazaar, the largest in all the East (and once famed as the emporium of Asia), which was built in the days of Aurungzebe; but which exists no longer, as it was subsequently destroyed by our troops.

Like other Oriental bazaars, it was formed of stone, like a long double gallery, arched in with wood elaborately painted, gilded, and carved, and having to the right and left bezetzeins or shops opening off it; and in these, merchants displayed their various goods for sale. The true Afghans never engage in trade; but despise it. All their shopkeepers, merchants and artizans are generally men of other nations—Tadjiks, Hindoos, or Persians; and through a scowling and well armed crowd of idle men and veiled women, Denzil wandered amid a maze of shops, some of their windows being ablaze with jewels, gold and silver work, rich draperies, divans, Persian carpets, Cashmere shawls; shops where iced sherbet and luscious fruits were vended in summer; shops where chupatties and sweet confectionery were sold; others where silver-mounted saddles, gold-handled sabres, silks, muslins and riches of all kinds were displayed, a more picturesque aspect being imparted to the whole scene by the variously-coloured lamps of perfumed oil which hung from the ceilings, and which, as the dusk of evening was now stealing into the bazaar, were being lighted here and there.

At last he stood before the booth of a jeweller, who was seated cross-legged behind the trays whereon female ornaments of every conceivable kind for the neck, ankles and wrists, for the hair and the girdle, rings for the ears, the fingers and nose were displayed, all fashioned of that bright-coloured gold and delicate workmanship for which the East, but more especially the city of Delhi is so famed. The prices of these were marked on labels in Afghan money, from the rupee and gold mohur upwards.

While Denzil was looking over these gems of art for a ring of some value as a suitable present for Rose Trecarrel, he did not perceive that the cross-legged and remarkably cross-visaged proprietor—a huge Asiatic, who wore a green turban, declaring thereby his descent from the prophet, and who sat smoking on a piece of carpet within his shopboard, his beard of intense blackness, flowing almost to his knees—was eyeing him with a deepening scowl, and seeming to shoot towards him with fierce and insulting energy the pale blue smoke wreaths that issued from his lips and the nostrils of his hooked nose—a veritable eagle's beak.

At last Denzil selected a ring, the price of which was marked as eight gold mohurs, and was about to proffer the money therefor, when the merchant snatched the jewel from his hand, and saying, with savage energy, the single epithet, "Kaffir!" spat full in his face. At the same moment Osman Abdallah, the filthy, greasy and unshorn Arab Hadi, who had been watching closely, uttered a shrill and hostile yell.

Startled and justly enraged by an insult so sudden and so foul, Denzil drew back with his hand on his sword. As his assailant was quite unarmed, he had no intention of drawing it unless farther molested. He looked round in vain for a choukeydar (or policeman) and saw only a gathering crowd with black-gleaming eyes and swarthy malevolent visages closing round him. How the affair might have ended there is little difficulty in foreseeing. He must have been slaughtered on the spot, but for the intervention of a splendidly equipped horseman, who at that critical moment rode up, and seizing him by the arm waved the people back by his sabre, and assisted by his followers, six juzailchees, half led half dragged Denzil from the bazaar into the open street.

"Are you mad or weary of your life, Sahib, that you venture into Cabul in the present state of the city, and, more than all, to-day?" asked his protector, sternly.

"Why particularly to-day, Mohammed Khan?" said Denzil, greatly ruffled, and now recognising the tall, thin and yellow visaged Wuzeer of the Shah.

"Alas! ye are but as swine!" was the complimentary reply. "Know you not that it is Friday—a day set apart by the devout for solemn fast and prayer, in commemoration of the holy prophet's arrival at Medina; and because on that day God finished the great work of creation?"

"I never thought of all this, Khan," replied Denzil, whose heart was yet furious against the fanatical jeweller; and he might with truth have added, that so far from thinking of the prophet he thought only of Rose Trecarrel.

The narrow streets were nearly involved in darkness now. They were destitute of all lamps; and thus, provided the Wuzeer could elude the crowd that followed clamorously from the bazaar, he would not have much difficulty in effecting the escape of Denzil, whose blood they fiercely and furiously demanded, crying aloud that one of the faithful had been assaulted, robbed and half murdered by a Kaffir, a Feringhee, and so forth.

The six juzailchees who formed the escort of Taj Mohammed Khan, and who were soldiers of the Shah's 6th regiment (a portion of the same force that General Trecarrel had come up country to command) now fixed their long bayonets and kept back the pressure of the crowd, many of whom had now drawn their swords. The high, narrow thoroughfare re-echoed with barbarous yells, and Denzil felt that he was in a very awkward scrape.

Dismounting, the Wuzeer quitted his horse, and seizing the somewhat bewildered Denzil by the hand conducted him down a narrow, dark and steep alley, under the very ramparts of the towering Bala Hissar; and thence, by a steeper open slope to the lower wall of the city, through a kirkee, or wicket, in a gate of which they issued, and the fugitive found himself free. Before him stretched, far away in the starlight, the extensive and beautifully cultivated valley, amid which the Cabul flows till it passes through the city, the ramparts, royal citadel, domes and castles of which rose in sombre masses skyward behind him.

Mohammed drew a long breath, as if of relief. So did Denzil. He had been thinking of the emotions of Rose on the morrow, if she heard that he had been massacred in the streets of Cabul, helplessly, pitilessly, barbarously, and of those who were so dear at home, and were so far, far away.

"As yet you are safe," said his guide.

"I thank you gratefully; but how far am I from the cantonments?"

"About two kroes."

This was fully four miles English from that angle of the city, and Denzil heard him with anxiety.

"Know you the way, Sahib?"

"I do not. Moreover, it may be beset."

"Then I must conduct you; but see! yonder are horsemen coming straight from the Candahar road. I know not who they may be. Some Belooches are expected with Ackbar Khan on the morrow; so, quick, let us conceal ourselves here."

And hurrying—running, indeed—with all the speed they could exert, they sought the shelter of a grove, wherein, as Denzil knew, stood the mosque and tomb of the once mighty Emperor Baber, in quieter times the object of many a ride and visit, and the scene of many a pleasant pic-nic for the ladies and officers of the garrison. All was still here—still as death—save the plashing of a sacred fountain and the cooing of the wild pigeons, disturbed by their approach. The grove and cornices of the mosque were full of those birds, which are deemed holy by the Mohammedans, because as the Wuzzer, who, like a true Afghan, never omitted to interlard his discourse with religious topics and allusions, a pigeon had built its nest in front of a cavern in which the prophet lay concealed, and thus favoured an escape from his enemies.

"These horsemen draw near us," said Denzil, as hoofs now rang on the pathway to the shrine.

"Az burai Kodar—silence!" (for the love of God) whispered Taj Mohammed, as he placed a hand on the mouth of the speaker and drew him under the shadow of the trees, only in time to escape the eye of a tall and well-armed man, who suddenly appeared at the door of the mosque, in which one or two more lamps were now being lighted.

The horsemen, twelve in number, were all Afghans, and armed to the teeth. They carried juzails slung over their poshteens. Each had a double brace of pistols in his girdle as well as a pair at his saddle bow; and all, save one, who appeared to be a chief, had a lance in his right hand, and an elaborately-gilded shield of rhinoceros hide strapped to his back. They were all stately, strong and resolute-looking fellows. Linking their horses together, they dismounted with one accord, and their figures seemed remarkably picturesque in the strong light which now streamed through the door—a horse-shoe arch—of the illuminated mosque, as they entered it in succession, each making a low salaam to the armed man, who was evidently standing there to receive and welcome them.

Denzil turned to Taj Mohammed and was about to make some inquiry, when that personage, whose eyes were sparkling like those of a hyæna in the clear starlight, and whose teeth were set with rage, said in a low and hissing voice,

"Silence, Sahib, silence, for your life! These are Ghilzies and Kussilbashes; and he who received them is the Sirdir, Ackbar Khan! Now, by the soul of the prophet, the dark spirit of the devil is in Baber's tomb to-night!"

A political or military conference—perhaps a conspiracy—was evidently on the tapis; and great though the risk of discovery—a cruel and immediate death—Taj Mohammed, in his dread and hatred of a powerful and hereditary foe and would-be supplanter, crept forward that he might overhear; and following his example, Denzil was rash enough to climb, by the rich carvings of the mosque, to one of the openings, which, for religious purposes, were left in its eastern wall; and peeping in, he saw a somewhat remarkable scene—one which, so far as regarded character, costume and spirit, resembled one in the middle ages, rather than in her present Majesty's reign.

CHAPTER X.

THE MOSQUE OF BABER.

Under the dome or centre of this edifice was formed a lofty hall of circular shape, rising from horse-shoe arches that sprang from slender pillars of white marble. In the centre of each arch hung a silver lamp, but only two were lighted. On one side stood a pulpit of the purest white marble, and on the other, a gilded gallery for the Shah, when it pleased him to come hither and pray at the tomb of his remote predecessor. Opposite this stood an altar, where the name of the Deity was painted in brilliant arabesques, and two enormous candles, each a foot in diameter, stood at each end of it on gilded pedestals.

In the middle of this place, and amid a group of armed Afghan chiefs, stood one whom Taj Mohammed indicated by a sign, to be the Prince, Ackbar Khan, our most bitter enemy in that half-barbarous land; and it was not without some emotions of interest and excitement that Denzil looked upon this son of Dost Mohammed—one whose character for cruelty and recklessness of human suffering and human life was so notorious.

Fairer than Afghans usually are, he was a man of distinguished hearing, with a magnificent black beard: but, for the purpose of disguise, was clad as yet in the humble attire of a shepherd; thus it contrasted strongly with the brilliant colours worn by Shireen Khan of the Kussilbashes, Ameen Oollah Khan, the Ghazee chiefs, and others, to whom he was now speaking with animation, ever and anon, while he did so, grinding those teeth of which Rose Trecarrel had spoken so disparagingly.

This Ackbar Khan was simply a monster in cruelty; he had been known to have a man flayed alive in his presence, "commencing at the feet and continuing upwards, till the sufferer was relieved by death." A favourite and brave follower of his own, named Pesh Khedmut—one who had been with him in all his defeats, flights, and varieties of fortune, was once assisting him to mount his horse, when some portion of his loose flowing dress caught the lock of a pistol. It exploded, and the terrible Ackbar was slightly wounded. In vain did the luckless Khedmut swear upon the Koran that it was the result of an accident over which he had no control; in vain, we say; for the pitiless Sirdir had him burned alive; and he is alleged to have tortured to death more than one British officer, whom the fortune of war had left in his hands.

Ackbar, however, excelled in all the higher branches of Afghan education; thus he rode well, shot with precision, and handled his sabre with an expertness few could equal.

"Some conspiracy is afoot," thought Denzil; "and there is Shireen Khan, the old Kussilbash brute whom I saw airing himself on a camel at the band-stand; and now, here comes my friend, the Arab Hadji, who loves his Prophet so much, but loathes soap and water more," he added, mentally, as his late tormentor now stole in, and creeping, almost crawling, on his hands and knees, up to Ackbar, delivered a letter, which he drew from his tattered cummerbund, the cloth which girt his loins.

Ackbar read it, and his eyes flashed fire as he turned to grim old Shireen Khan, and said,—

"Sale, the Kaffir Sirdir (i.e. infidel general) has actually cut his way through the Ghilzie tribes, and is now safe in Jellalabad! Well; the unbelievers who remain in Cabul shall be destroyed, root and branch, ere he can return to succour them; that I have sworn on the Kulma, unless the Envoy of their Queen ransoms their accursed heads to-morrow."

"And their women shall be our slaves," said one.

"Or exchanged for horses with the chiefs of Toorkistan," added another.

Then, said Shireen Khan, his eyes, too, blazing like carbuncles, as the hatred of race and religion boiled up within him,

"The Feringhees, those dogs of covetousness, are among us, and for what? What seek they here? To put over us a king whom we loathe—a king who will be subservient to the Lord Bahadur at Calcutta; dethroning Dost Mohammed!"

"Solomon, as we may read, knew three thousand proverbs, and the songs that he sang were a hundred and five; yet what was Solomon when compared with Shah Sujah?" sneered Ackbar, as his white teeth glistened under his coal-black mustache.

"You will ask this Envoy on the morrow, if it was really his intention to send me, Ameen Oollah Khan, Shireen Khan, and others, bound as slaves, to the feet of his Queen, in her Island of the Sea?" said one with sombre fury.

"I shall, without fail."

"And the white-faced dog will deny it!"

"Perhaps; but it shall be the last lie of the unbeliever's tongue," replied Ackbar, with a grim smile as he touched the hilt of his Afghan dagger.

"Slay him, even as I slew Burnes Sahib!" added that pleasant personage who rejoiced in the name of Ameen Oolah Khan. "Ha! what said the Khan of Khelat-i-Ghilzie to him, when he heard of the Feringhees first coming hither by the Khyber and the Khoord Cabul passes? 'Ye have brought an army into the land of the Pushtaneh; but how do you propose to take it back again?'"*

* These were almost the words of the Duke of Wellington (by a singular coincidence) when intimation was first made in Parliament of our advance into Afghanistan.—Macfarlane's Hist. of British India, p. 537.

"Had we killed Burnes Sahib when first he came among us alone, he had not returned with all those Kaffirs who are now cantoned between yonder hills of Siah Sung and Behmaru," said another chief, who wore the sword of Sir Alexander Burnes in his girdle; "so now, that we have the opportunity, let us slay the dogs ere they can escape us."

"Nay, let us get the ransom first," suggested Shireen Khan.

"Yes; and then let them march and be in the Passes, we know by which they must depart; and remember," added Ackbar, with a tone and face of indescribable ferocity, "the old Arab proverb—Al harbu Khudatun!"—(All war is fraud).

"Moreover," said Ameen Oollah, "the Prophet tells us, that promise as we may, no faith is to be kept with heretics."

"I came to retake my father's rights; the rights he sold to the Feringhees. It was written that I should do so; for who that could sit on a lofty throne in yonder Bala Hissar, would content him with a carpet in a tent? Those Feringhees—those Anglo-Indians are the most presumptuous dogs in the world," continued Ackbar, "they are accustomed to see their servile sipahees, their effeminate Hindoos, and others cower before them; but did they expect the same homage from us—the free men of Afghanistan?"

A fierce laugh answered the question, and those who had lances, made their iron-shod butts to crash on the marble floor.

Much more to the same purpose passed. Many of the arguments used and impulses given, were nearly the same as those which excited the terrible mutiny of a subsequent year; but what plan those conspirators meant to adopt—whether to take a bribe, and let our troops retreat in peace; or take the bribe, and lure them to destruction in those terrible passes by which alone they could return to India; in either case, to make slaves of the white women, neither Mohammed, who translated much of what we have written, nor the other listener, could determine; but the farewell words of Ackbar, ere they departed, were ominous of much evil to come.

"To your castles and tents," said he; "let every Khan and tribe be prepared, for to-morrow may determine all. You, Shireen Khan, shall dispatch tchoppers* to the chiefs of the Ghilzies, and those of the Khyberrees, to guard the passes to the death, promise what we may—for remember all war is fraud!"

* Mounted couriers.

With a low salaam to Ackbar, after all turning their faces in the direction of Mecca, they now separated, and in a few minutes, the sound of their horses' hoofs died away, some in the direction of the city, and others on the Candahar road.

"Sahib," said Mohammed Khan, greatly disturbed, "you have heard?"

"More than I quite understand," replied Denzil; "however, I shall report the affair to the General in the morning; those fellows are evidently up to something more than either he or the Envoy quite calculate upon. I only wish that I were nearer my quarters."

"I have promised to guide you."

"Thanks, Khan; you are most kind."

All around the tomb and mosque of Baber was still and silent again; the cooing of the pigeons and the gurgle of the sacred fountain alone were heard. The quiet stars, and their queen, the vast round silver moon, were shining now in peace and calmness over Cabul; over city, plain, and flowing river; and in floods of liquid light, the picturesque towers and masses of the Bala Hissar stood forth pale and grey, while the curtain walls between, were sunk in shadow or obscurity.

Glad to befriend in any way an English officer, the Wuzeer guided Denzil between the Armenian and the Mussulman burying-grounds, where the shadows of the tall and ghost-like cypresses fell on the white headstones and the little square chambers or cupolas that covered the graves of those of rank.

"Listen," said Denzil, pausing, as he suspected the Arab Hadji might still be following; "surely I hear a sound."

"You hear only the night wind sighing through yonder cypresses," replied Taj Mohammed, solemnly; "sadly it goes past us bearing some weary soul, perhaps, to the bridge of Al-sirat—some soul whose earthly tabernacle may yet lie there, where five of my children are laid, each with its fair face turned towards Mecca."

Paler and sad grew the face of the Wuzeer as he spoke, for the Afghans greatly reverence all burial-places, which, in their own language, they term "the cities of the silent;" and in fancy they love to people with the ghosts of the departed, sitting each unseen at the head of his or her own grave, enjoying the fragrance of the wreaths and garlands hung there by sorrowing relatives.

Almost in the centre of the plain, midway between where the burial-grounds lie and where the cantonments were, flowed the Cabul river; and a mile or two brought Denzil and his guide within hail of an advanced picquet of the 54th Native Infantry, now posted at the bridge. There the former was safe, and with many expressions of thanks and gratitude, he parted from the Wuzeer.

He was informed by the officer in command of the post, that spies had told the General of Ackbar Khan being in the vicinity of the city; and that in consequence, all European residents had been ordered to repair for safety, within the shelter of the cantonments.

White in the moonbeams he could see the walls of General Trecarrel's villa, which, being under the guns of our fortified Camp was, as yet pretty safe; and he looked towards it with such emotion as a lover who is young and ardent, alone can feel; for Rose he knew was there; and after all he had heard at the Mosque of Baber, his heart swelled with anxiety, and a longing desire that she and Mabel, and all their friends, were elsewhere, in some place of greater peace and security.

"To-morrow I shall tell her of my narrow escape," thought he; "my darling—my darling—how I love you! and how nearly you were losing me!"

CHAPTER XI.

"ONLY AN ENSIGN."

Providentially for us, none in this world know what a day, or even an hour may bring forth; so Denzil, when next morning he dressed and accoutred himself, could little foresee the many stirring events that were to crowd the next twelve hours, and in which he was to bear a part; as little could he foresee the sorrows that were in store for him, ere for the last time, as the event proved, he laid his head on the pillow in the Afghan fort; for next day was to see the whole forces concentrated in the cantonments. Polwhele was absent on patrol duty, and Bob Waller had gone abroad unusually early.

Denzil's intense longing to see Rose Trecarrel and to revive the memories of yesterday was mingled with a conviction of the necessity to see her father, that he might take him to General Elphinstone or the envoy, to whom he was most anxious to report all that he had heard and seen overnight in the Mosque of Baber; but Trecarrel was absent (as a sepoy on duty at the gate of the villa informed him), having gone to the Bala Hissar with a strong cavalry escort, as the turbulence of the people rendered all the roads and streets unsafe—a state of affairs sufficiently proved to Denzil already.

He recalled the threat, or proposal he had overheard, to sell the European ladies as slaves in Toorkistan, or to exchange them for horses;—Rose Trecarrel sent to Toorkistan! He felt that he could cheerfully shed his heart's blood in defence of her—of Mabel and the old General too; that he could die for them—for her more than all; and all that a young, loving and enthusiastic spirit could suggest were in his head and heart, with a hope that his narrow escape overnight would invest him with additional interest in her estimation.

He entered the house with somewhat of the confidence felt only by a privileged dangler, and by chance on this occasion his arrival was not proclaimed by a stroke on the gong. He gave his name to a native servant of the Trecarrels, who ushered him into the drawing-room, announcing his presence as "Deveroo Sahib," but in a tone so low that it seemed to be unheard by those who were there, and for a full minute Denzil stood irresolute and did not advance.

The apartment was spacious, and at a remote end of it, almost out on the verandah, in fact, were Bob Waller and Mabel Trecarrel, very much occupied with each other. She was seated in an easy chair looking up at him, with an arch yet confident expression. They were conversing in whispers, while Waller leaned over her, stooping his tall and handsome figure so much that his face was close to hers—so close indeed that his long curly whisker, the left one, was caught by her right-ear earing, from which it was with difficulty extricated.

"Do you know what I've been thinking, Mabel?" asked Waller, at that juncture.

"How should I guess?"

"Try."

"What is it?"

"How have I ever been able to get on for those seven-and-twenty years—I am just twenty-seven—without you!"

Denzil might have laughed at all this but for the other two who made up a quartette.

Nearer him in the foreground sat Rose, the glory of the morning sun streaming full upon her, and imparting fresh radiance to her beauty. Her rich auburn hair glittered in the sheen, half like gold and half like dusky bronze, while her smiling eyes were full of liquid light as she looked upward from a book of coloured prints which lay open on her knee, to the face of a staff officer who hung somewhat familiarly over her. His face was fine, well browned by the sun, and closely shaven, all save a smart black mustache; his eyes were soft in expression, and his whole air was decidedly distinguished.

"Now, who the deuce is this fellow? who seems such an ami de la maison—in staff uniform, too—never saw his face before," were the surmises that flashed on Denzil's mind.

"And what is all this Miss Trecarrel has told me?" asked the stranger, in a low voice.

"A foolish flirtation with a boy," replied Rose, laughing. "It was all a joke. Be assured that he never asked me to favour him with my agreeable society for the term of his natural life."

"By Jove! I should think not," was the rather dubious response of the visitor.

"And some bread-and-butter Miss now a-bed, perhaps, in England will console him in the future, if the memory of me survive so long."

"Mabel says you are over head and ears in love with him."

"Psha! how can you talk so? I am out of my teens, and the time has gone by for me falling over head and ears for anybody. Come, don't be foolish, friend Audley," she continued, gazing into the same eyes which looked so softly into those of Sybil by the lonely moorland tarn. "Do you think," she added, laughing, "I have been writing 'Mrs. and Ensign Devereaux' in my blotting-pad, just to see how the conjunction looked; for Denzil, you know, poor fellow, is very young and only an ensign."

Denzil felt as if petrified; and but last night he had risked his life to procure a bauble for her!

"But you certainly have been letting him make love to you," resumed the stranger, in a tone of combined reproval and banter.

"Well, it is rather pleasant to have a nice foolish boy to make love to one, to tease and to laugh at."

"Oh, indeed!" His tone was almost contemptuous; but in her vanity Rose failed to perceive this.

It was not eavesdropping, hearing all this, which passed rapidly, for the Hindoo had formally announced Denzil; but so absorbed were the quartette in themselves that they neither saw nor heard him. Then as he paused irresolutely with cap and pipe-clayed gloves in hand, he heard more than certainly even Rose, in her most rantipole mood, ever meant he should hear. To say truth, she had been grievously piqued that Audley had come out overland, instead of with her and Mabel in the Indiaman; and hence she was disposed to exert the full power of her charms, and use all her arts to lure him into flirting with—if not of absolutely loving—her; and for the time poor Denzil seemed to be already forgotten or only remembered as a subject for merriment.

But as yet, at least, Audley Trevelyan was proof against all her wiles and smiles. He thought only of the little girl at home now—she whose brother he was certain might abhor and shun him for his somewhat selfish treatment of her; for he knew not that Denzil had heard nothing of the little love scenes that had passed at Porthellick.

Suddenly Denzil caught the eye of Rose as he drew nearer, and starting and growing rather pale in the fear of what he might have heard, she exclaimed, nervously,

"Oh! Mr. Devereaux, welcome! Allow me to introduce you—Mr. Devereaux, Cornish Light Infantry,—Mr. Trevelyan, one of yours, just arrived—papa's new aide-de-camp, you know."

Denzil bowed with anything but a satisfied air to "papa's new aide-de-camp," who presented his hand with more than polite cordiality, and muttered something about "the sincere pleasure" it gave him, et cetera.

"Hallo, Denzil, my boy! what was that shindy we hear you got into in Cabul last night?" asked Waller, looking up. "Hope you were not poking your nose under the veil of some bride of the Faithful, eh? Here is Trevelyan of ours, has had a narrow escape, too. He and his escort were pursued by the Ghilzies as he came up country; but he sabred one, shot five or six and got clear off. Then I suppose you know all about this devilish business of Sale and the 13th Light Infantry in the pass?"

Waller running on this, caused a diversion, and saved both Rose and Denzil some pain by giving them breathing time.

So this was Audley Trevelyan, his cousin, the Audley to whom Sybil owed her life in the Pixies' Hole, was the first thought of Denzil, and his heart seemed to harden. He had come thinking to create an interest in a very tender bosom by an account of "the shindy," as Waller styled it, in the great bazaar; and here was a fellow bronzed and mustachioed already in possession of the situation—master of the position—an intensely good-looking beast, who had actually crossed swords and exchanged shots with the wild and untamable Ghilzies!

To Denzil it was bitter mortification, all—yet he was compelled to dissemble. Could it be possible that he found himself de trop? That words of mockery had fallen on his ear? That Mabel and this man, too, knew alike of that delightful drive by the lake?

There was a nervous flutter and laughing air of confusion about Rose that were neither flattering nor assuring; but the confirmed tidings of the attack, by the insurrectionary tribes upon Sir Robert Sale's regiment in its downward march to Jellalabad, luckily afforded a ready topic—a neutral ground—on which all could talk with ease; for now they were aware that Sir Robert Sale's little brigade, including the Queen's 13th Light Infantry and 35th Native Infantry, armed with flint muskets, though the stores were full of percussion fire-arms, had been attacked by the mountain tribes, and that after clearing the stupendous Khoord Cabul Pass and enduring eighteen days of incessant fighting as far as a place called Gundamuck, had succeeded in reaching Jellalabad on the 12th of November; and that now on Sir Robert's retention of that city depended all the hope of General Elphinstone's slender army having a place of refuge—a point on which to fall back—if compelled to retire from Cabul (leaving the unpopular Shah to the mercy of his own subjects), even with the knowledge that a great amount of fighting awaited them in the savage mountain passes (through which their homeward route must lie,) amid the land of the Ghilzies, a race of hereditary robbers.

Many officers and men had been killed and wounded; among the latter were Sir Robert Sale, who received a ball in his left leg, and Lieutenant O'Brien, of the 13th, whose skull was fractured by a shot as he attempted to storm the rocks at the head of his company. Such was the story of that protracted fight as it reached Cabul, and reference to it now shed somewhat of gravity over even the lively Rose Trecarrel; for among the officers of the two regiments attacked—especially of the dashing 13th, Prince Albert's Own Light Infantry—many were known to her, and had deemed her the chief attraction of the band-stand and the daily promenade.

But regrets were short, for something of the off-hand recklessness to danger and even death, incident to military society in such a place as Cabul, pervaded even the tenor of female life there; and the subject was soon dismissed.

"A mounted tchopper accompanied Mr. Audley," said Mabel to Denzil, whose saddened face interested her; "and so we have had quite a bale of newspapers from England."

"A bale?" repeated Denzil, mechanically, his eyes seeking those of Rose.

"Yes, positively. Three months' newspapers at least, though not one letter; and thus the obituaries and marriages in the Times become so perplexing to us here."

"I brought some letters for the army up with me from Bombay," said Audley Trevelyan, "and among them, Devereaux, I observed one for you—the name had, somehow, an attraction for me."

"From home!" exclaimed Denzil, starting, for only those who are so far from Europe as he was then can know how much is concentrated in that single word, "home."

"I trust so."

"Then I must go to my quarters at once."

"Nay, Devereaux," said Waller, "moderate your impatience, if the letter is from some fair one——"

"I have no correspondent but my—my sister Sybil," said Denzil, with a flash in his eyes and a quiver of the lip.

"But you must wait, my good fellow," said Waller, patting him kindly on the shoulder; "you remember that we promised to ride on the Staff of the Envoy, to make up a gallant show, and to impress, if possible, the Sirdir."

"My horse is not here."

"But mine is, and is quite at your service," said Audley, bowing to Denzil, who was in an agony of impatience to peruse his long-wished-for letter.

"All right," added Waller, looking at his watch; "and now we must be off—must tear ourselves away."

He glanced smilingly to Mabel as he spoke.

A strange footing the two kinsmen were on. Something in their hearts kept each from talking of their being such to each other. It was indignant disdain on the part of Denzil, with somewhat of jealousy, too. In Audley it was a well-bred nervous doubt of how much or how little Denzil knew of the love affair—the broken engagement, in fact, with his sister; or the misconstruction of the last visit at night—the visit which ended, as neither yet knew, by an effect so fatal. Denzil thanked him briefly and emphatically for saving his sister's life (the Trecarrels had fully detailed all that), and then all reference to Porthellick, and even to Cornwall, was dropped; but they had soon other things to think of.

The father of Audley had left nothing unsaid or undone to impress upon him that the mysterious story of Constance's marriage was a fabrication—one calculated to injure the prospects, and imperil the honour, and so forth of the Trevelyan family; but when Audley remembered Sybil, and sought to trace a likeness to her in Denzil's face, he could not help feeling kindly and well-disposed to his younger brother officer.

Denzil having no such tender reminiscences to soften him, was disposed to be politely cool or grim as Ajax.

"We must get our bonnets and shawls if we are to see this Conference," said Rose; "and we must look sharp—temps-militaire, you know."

"Don't be slangy," said Mabel.

"Do you call French so, Mab?" Rose asked, as they hastened in high spirits to attire themselves for walking, and little anticipating the scene that was before them.

"What are you thinking of Waller?" asked Audley, smiling.

"That a thousand girls may be beautiful; but only one among them have an air of refinement."

"Like Miss Trecarrel?"

"Exactly."

All Europeans had now been ordered to keep within the shelter of the cantonments, and as it was feared that the General's house might not be sufficiently protected by the guns on the bastions overlooking the Residency, he had arranged for the removal of his whole family and effects into the regimental bungalows; and already a fatigue party under Sergeant Treherne was at work on the premises, pulling down and packing up, as only soldiers can pack and prepare in haste.

With something of a stunned emotion Denzil rode by the side of Waller on the horse of Audley, as the latter preferred to accompany the ladies who were to witness the Conference through their lorgnettes from the cantonment walls.

"Oh! he preferred remaining behind," thought Denzil viciously; "preferred remaining with her, of course; what cares he about the Envoy, the Sirdir, or the Conference, d—n him!'

"Full uniform is the order, you see," said Waller, as three other officers joined them; "we are to meet Ackbar in our war-paint—in all the pomp and glorious circumstance——"

"Oh! Waller," urged Denzil; "how can you chaff so?"

"Why not; it is a poor heart that never rejoices. You are down in your luck with Rose, but you will laugh at that by-and-by."

Denzil coloured, but made no reply. Oh, had his ears deceived him? Had he heard aright? Had he been bantered by the tongue that spoke so alluringly yesterday, mocked by the lips that had been pressed to his so passionately? Were the clear, bright hazel eyes that but lately looked so earnest, now smiling, as they alone could smile, into those of another?

Might he not have been mistaken? he tormentingly asked himself again and again, and she be true after all—yes, after the sweet impassioned hours of joy by the Lake of Istaliff it must be so! He actually began to flatter himself that this was the case; that all was as he wished it to be; so true it is "that a man freshly in love is more blind than the bats at noonday."

So far as change of scene, of circumstance, of society, and some kinds of experience went, Denzil was beginning to learn the truth of Southey's maxim, "Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest of your life."

CHAPTER XII.

ASSASSINATION.

No special correspondent had ever, or has ever, penetrated beyond the Indus and into the wilds of Kohistan, to saturate the English papers with narratives of the terrible scenes which we are about to describe in some of these pages.

Leaving the cantonments by the centre gate which faced the hills of Siah Sung, Denzil, Waller, and the officers who had joined them, Captains Mackenzie, Lawrence, and Trevor, now rode to where a group of others surrounded one on horseback, who proved to be the Envoy, who had with him a Hindoo syce, or groom, leading a marvellously beautiful Arab horse, which he meant to present in our Queen's name to the Sirdir. With all his avowed confidence in the latter, he had requested that, in case of any unforeseen emergency arising, the 51th Native Infantry, the Shah's 6th regiment and two field pieces should be in readiness for instant service; but so greatly was General Elphinstone debilitated, alike in mind and body, that no order to this effect was issued; so the men remained idle in their bungalows, though it was known that the cowardly Shah Sujah, who had eight hundred ladies, the flower of all his country, shut up with him in the Bala Hissar, was so apprehensive of the result of the meeting, that he coolly sent orders through his Kadun Kahia (or Mother of the Maids) placed in authority over them, that they should, if the rebels under Ackbar got into the city, be each and all prepared to take a deadly poison within an hour.

"Look alive, Denzil—waken up; here is the representative of Her Britannic Majesty in this pleasant part of the world," said Waller to his abstracted friend, while laughing and saluting, he approached Sir William Macnaghten, Baronet, who, for his great political services, had just been appointed Governor of Bombay, and who was in full diplomatic uniform, elaborately laced with silver embroidery, and had several jewelled orders glittering on his breast.

Like many men whom a perilous adventure or a sudden fate menaces, he was in excellent spirits this morning, and was by no means disposed to listen to the warnings of the solemn-visaged Wuzeer, who was relating all that he and Denzil had overheard in the Mosque of Baber. Captain Mackenzie also stated that there was certainly a plot laid by Ackbar for his destruction; but Macnaghten would listen to neither advice nor remonstrance.

"I must meet him," said he, "and already he and the chiefs are on the ground to consult about whether we shall remain here in peace or retire beyond the Indus; and you will see how I shall snub even such a fellow as Ackbar Khan," he added, lifting his cocked hat and bowing gracefully to the ladies who were gathering in numbers above the rampart of the Siah Sung gate, and all were busy with their opera-glasses, looking towards the east bank of the Cabul river, where, about a quarter of a mile distant, were clustered a group of Afghan horsemen, their brightly coloured flowing dresses and burnished weapons making a brilliant show in the sunshine.

In common with Captain Lawrence and Captain Trevor of the 3rd Light Cavalry, Waller begged the Envoy to consider well these repeated warnings, but the latter only laughed and said,

"Bold as he is—and even in this wild country there is none perhaps bolder—Ackbar dare not molest me."

"Be not over confident, Sir William: remember his remorseless character, and the homicides he has committed."

"I have my pistols."

"So have we all; but consider your wife—consider Lady Macnaghten, if you perish as Sir Alexander Burnes perished!"

Macnaghten's lip quivered slightly, and he glanced to where the row of fair English faces, the flutter of ribbons, veils, and gay bonnets, were all visible above the dark slope of the cantonment wall; but he concealed his rising emotion or anxiety by an angry outburst.

"I do not ask you, Captain Waller, to accompany me; Mackenzie, Lawrence, and Trevor are enough to be in front of the lines, if you think the risk so great."

Waller's open and ruddy countenance lowered and grew pale.

"Risk, Sir William!" said he, greatly ruffled, "of course there is risk, otherwise I should not be here as a volunteer."

"Nor I," added Denzil, glancing towards a certain blue crape bonnet, and detecting Audley's cocked hat very close thereby.

"Nor I," exclaimed the black-whiskered Polwhele, who had hitherto been intent on the points of the Arab courser.

"Come on then, gentlemen—the more the merrier, and a little time must solve all."

The Wuzeer sadly shook his head, and saying,

"As Darrah said of the hypocrite Aurungzebe, 'Of all my brothers most do I fear the teller of beads,' so say I of Ackbar;" and almost rending his beard as he went, this loyal minister of a most unpopular king retired into one of the forts to wait the event, while the Envoy laughingly spurred his horse and with his companions rode towards the group of Afghan Chiefs, around and in the rear of whom their armed followers were every moment increasing in number and excitement, as fresh horsemen accoutred with spear and shield, matchlock and sabre, came galloping from the gates of the city, uttering menacing and tumultuous cries, which could not fail to make the hearts of the ladies in the fortified camp to throb with apprehension.

The Envoy, with his little Staff, after crossing the canal by the bridge near an old and abandoned fort, advanced more leisurely towards where Mohammed Ackbar Khan, and many other great Chiefs, among whom were Shireen Khan of the Kussilbashes, on his towering camel, and Ameen Oollah Khan, were posted a little way in front of an armed, dark-visaged, and stormy-looking throng.

The last-named individual, Chief of Loghur, perhaps equalled Ackbar in cruelty; and it may be sufficient to illustrate his character to state, that in order to get rid of an elder brother who stood between him and the inheritance, he caused him to be seized and buried up to the chin in densely packed earth. Around his neck was then looped a rope, the end of which was haltered to a wild horse, which was driven round him in a circle, until the unhappy victim's head was torn from his shoulders, as a testimony of how Ameen Oollah Khan protested against the law of primogeniture.*

* Lieutenant Eyre's Narrative.

Conspicuous among all by his stature and deportment, the Prince Ackbar was magnificently attired in a camise of shawl pattern, all scarlet and gold; his plumed cap was of blue and gold brocade, with a fall and fringe that drooped on his right shoulder. He was armed only with his sabre, a poniard, and a pair of magnificent pistols, which Sir William Macnaghten had presented to him on a former occasion; but Ameen Oollah Khan, Shireen, the Kussilbash, the other chiefs, and all their followers, especially the Ghilzies, were accoutred to the teeth, with the arms usually borne by Afghan horsemen—a heavy matchlock with a long bayonet, a sabre, a blunderbuss, three long pistols, a dagger, four or five knives, a shield on the back, and a comical complication of bullet-bags, powder-flasks, priming-horns, and other things dangling at their girdles; and warlike, ferocious, and formidable-looking fellows they were, save their firearms, unchanged in aspect and in nature as their forefathers who dwelt on the mountains of Ghore, in the days when the Scots and English were breaking each other's heads on the field of Northallerton.

It was a strange scene, and picturesque in all its details.

On one side a few fair-faced English officers in full uniform, with glass in eye and cigarette in mouth, cool, quiet, and secretly rather disposed to "chaff the niggers"—men of that type of whom Bob Waller might be taken as the representative, frank, fearless, and light-hearted, with his honest blue eyes and those long, fair whiskers which Mabel Trecarrel thought so adorable—quite as much so as he deemed her tresses of ruddy, golden auburn; on the other, a horde of those hardy warriors from the hills of Kohistan—men whose ideas were beyond the middle ages of the world's history, with their hearts full of proud disdain, rancorous hate, and all the malignant treachery that adversity of race, religious fanaticism, and profound ignorance can inspire, and yet suavely dissembling for the time.

"Permit me, Khan, to present you with this horse, in the name of Her Majesty the Queen of England, with her wishes that you may long be spared to ride him," said Sir William Macnaghten, with a profound salaam, after he and his companions drew close to the carpet on which Ackbar awaited them. He then alighted from his horse and seated himself, together with Captains Trevor, Lawrence, and Mackenzie, upon a piece of carpet, among the chiefs and sirdars; but, luckily for themselves, Waller, Denzil, and the rest remained in their saddles, at a little distance. The Sirdir coldly and haughtily thanked the Envoy for his new gift, the points of which he praised with all a horseman's perception. It cost Sir William 3000 rupees, and had belonged to Captain Grant, the Assistant Adjutant-General. Then with an eye to any confusion that might ensue during the Conference, he ordered the Hindoo syce to lead it off at once towards the city, and a sly, cruel gleam came into his black eyes, as this was done. After a few solemn salutations in oriental fashion and phraseology, Ackbar Khan said—

"Bismillah! let us talk."

All the chapters in the Koran, except nine, commence with this word, which signifies, "In the name of the merciful God;" thus it is incessantly used in conversation by the Arabs, and still more by the somewhat canting Afghans.

He then proceeded to business at once, by asking the Envoy if he was prepared to effect a proposition that had before been made, to the effect that we should deliver up the Shah Sujah, with all his household and family, male and female, to his—the Sirdir's—mercy; that we should lay down our arms and colours, yielding also cannon and horses, together with those two obnoxious sahibs, Sir Robert Sale and Brigadier Shelton, as hostages—in fact, an unconditional surrender—in virtue of which he should graciously pardon our appearance in Afghanistan, our interference with its affairs, and permit our whole force to retire with their lives, on the further condition of swearing to return no more!

"Such proposals," said Sir William, endeavouring to preserve his temper, "are too dishonourable for British troops to entertain. You know not, Sirdir, the men you speak to, and if you persist——"

"Ah, if we persist, what then?"

"We shall simply appeal to arms."

"You Feringhees are proud," said Ackbar, scoffingly; "but Allah punishes the proud and humbles them."

He breathed hard as he spoke, and the splendid jewels on his breast heaved with each excited respiration as he strove to restrain his fiery temper; but his dark eyes sparkled, and his teeth glistened like those of a wild animal.

"I have to lament, Khan," resumed Sir William, "that relations of friendship which have hitherto existed between your people and us have been clouded; and I am ignorant wherefore it should be so. Good-will towards the people of Afghanistan caused my mistress, the Queen of England, to lend her aid——"

"In dethroning my father, Dost Mohammed Khan," interrupted Ackbar, with sombre fury.

"In restoring Shah Sujah to the throne of his ancestors," continued Macnaghten, heedless of the pointed interruption; "and now, Khan, I beseech you to remember that I received your royal father's sword at yonder gate of Cabul, when he rode in, a hunted fugitive, after his escape from the Emir of Bokhara, and I saved his life, sending him with all honour to Calcutta, when I might have slain him."

"I have not forgotten it, Kaffir, and would rather you had cut him to pieces, than made him a dependent on your bounty."

Sir William took no heed either of the injurious epithet or the prince's somewhat unfilial wish.

"The paths of the just are rugged like yonder hills of Kohistan; yet the snowy peaks are nearer Allah than the plain around us," said Ackbar, in true Afghan phraseology.

"I know that, Khan; but——"

"Peace! You Kaffirs pretend to know all things, whereas ye know nothing. How can it be else, when ye know not the blessed Koran? You can be grasping and cruel, however, and well know how to be so. Was it not your secret intention to send Ameen Oollah Khan, Skireen Khan, and even me, chained, as slaves to your Queen, a Kaffir woman, in her little island, which, Abdallah the Hadji tells us, is a mere spot of mud amid a misty sea?"

"It was a lie of the Ghilzie chiefs," replied Sir William, becoming uneasy at the decidedly offensive tone so rapidly assumed by the Khan.

"There is but one God, and before Him none other did exist," resumed the royal hypocrite; "He formed seven heavens, seven worlds, and eighteen creations, and He sent his friend Mohammed as the Prophet to mankind; and by every hair in that Prophet's beard I swear to see you brought low—very low, and to exult over you."

"Perhaps so, Khan—you are younger than I," replied the other, affecting to misunderstand the ominous threat.

"You will not accept our terms?"

"It is impossible; as I have said, they are too dishonourable."

"Then, while the Khyberees guard the passes, we shall starve you in yonder cantonments, till the horses gnaw each other's tails, and the tent-pegs too, for very hunger; till the babe shall suck in vain for milk at its dying mother's breast, and the jackals and pariah dogs shall gorge themselves with the flesh of camels, of horses, and those who are lower yet than even the beasts of the field—the accursed of the Prophet!"

Ere Macnaghten could reply to this remarkable outburst, an officer (Captain Lawrence) drew near, and called his attention to the great number of armed men who had been gradually stealing in between them and the gate of the cantonments, and suggested that they "should be ordered to withdraw."

"No," exclaimed Ackbar, starting to his feet; "they are all in the secret; begeer! begeer!" (seize—seize).

At these words, as if they had been a given signal, the Envoy, Captains Trevor, Lawrence, and Mackenzie were seized by a crowd of Afghans, and were so completely taken by surprise, that their swords, pistols, and epaulets were torn from them before they could strike a blow in their own defence.

With an expression of indescribable ferocity in his dark face, Ackbar grasped Sir William with his own hand, and proceeded to drag him violently and by main strength down a bank towards the Cabul river.

"Ah! Kaffir," said he, tauntingly, "you think to take my country, do you?"

"For God's sake, beware!" exclaimed the unfortunate man, making all the resistance that rage, just indignation, and fear of a sudden death, such as that endured by his friend Burnes, would inspire; so finding it impossible to carry him off, Ackbar shot him dead with one of the beautiful pistols, a present from his victim; and ere the corpse touched the ground it was impaled by a hundred swords and bayonets. The head was then hewn off and upheld by the hair.

Captain Trevor, of the 3rd Bengal Cavalry, also fell, the victim of innumerable wounds. Mackenzie and Lawrence were borne off towards the city by one horde of fanatics, while another, led by Ameen Oollah Khan, with juzails cocked and swords drawn, and with flashing eyes and infuriated faces and gestures, uttering screams of "Kaffirs—Feringhees—Sugs!" (infidels—Europeans—dogs), rushed upon Waller, Denzil, Polwhele, and two other officers, who could hear the shrill cries of dismay uttered by the ladies on the wall of the cantonments, where now, when it was too late, old Elphinstone had ordered the drums to beat to arms, and General Trecarrel brought the cavalry, half-saddled, from their stables.

"Stick close to me, Devereaux," cried Waller, shortening his reins and raising himself in his stirrups. He escaped two juzail balls, and parried a most vicious poke of a lance made at him by Shireen Khan; and then by one tremendous blow, which, however, fell harmlessly on the thick folds of the loonghee or scarlet cap of that personage, he tumbled him from his perch on the camel's hump. The next blow he gave rid Denzil of Abdallah, the Arab Hadji, who, shouting "Mohammed resoul Allah!" had actually sprung, with all the fierce activity of a tree-tiger, upon his horse's crupper, and was about to plunge an Afghan dagger—a formidable weapon, as it is twenty-four inches in length, broader than a sword-blade, and sharp as a razor—into his back or throat; it only grazed his neck, however, when Waller's sword, with all the impetus that strength of arm and speed of horse could give it, was through and through the body of the savage fanatic.

"There is another nigger sent to the other end of nowhere," cried Waller. "Dash right through them, gentlemen; we must cut for our lives!"

Riding close together and abreast, the five officers, making a charge right through the mob (who were chiefly Ghilzees, and who, in their blind fury, wrath, and confusion, wounded and shot each other), succeeded by hard riding in reaching the cantonments, the gates of which were instantly closed and barricaded.

Polwhele left his sword in one man's body, so firmly was it wedged in the spinal column. Waller's sword was only one of the rubbishy regulation blades of Sheffield, a poor weapon when opposed to the keenly tempered sabres of those Afghan warriors, yet towering over them all, his bulk, strength, and stature had availed him greatly; he had shot two, and cut down three. Denzil, though half stunned by confusion at the suddenness of the whole affair, and by the explosion of a matchlock close to his face, struck about manfully, and must have sent at least one Mussulman on his way to the dark-eyed girls of paradise; for when he dismounted, breathless and excited, within the gates, he found his sword and right hand both covered with blood.

In the exasperation of his mind at Rose Trecarrel, the tumult of the time was a relief to Denzil's mind; and he was not sorry that she, through her lorgnette, had seen him, sword in hand, among the Afghans.

On this conflict the poor ladies had gazed, with faces paled by terror, and lips that were mute, save when a shriek escaped them involuntarily as blood spirted upward in the air, as a man or horse went down, yet they gazed with the strange fascination that the ferocity of a conflict between men—more than all armed men—will sometimes have for the gentlest woman, for it seemed a species of wild phantasmagoria. But they wrung their hands and wept piteously; for they saw the terrible butchery of Sir William Macnaughten and of Captain Trevor, and could only tremble for the too-probable fate of Captain Lawrence and Captain Mackenzie, who, in sight of the entire troops in the cantonment, and in sight of all their friends, were borne off captives amid a yelling horde, whose weapons, spear-heads, crooked sabres, and polished horseshoes, flashed out brightly from amid a cloud of dust that rolled away towards the Lahore Gate of the now-hostile city of Cabul.

"Well, this is a shindy that will suffice to scare our blue devils for awhile," said Polwhele, with a grim smile on his dark face.

"Denzil, my boy," said Waller, "you had a narrow squeak for your life; that Arab wasp's dagger was pretty close."

"I have no words to thank you," replied Denzil, breathlessly, and turning away somewhat bluntly from Audley Trevelyan, who frankly came to shake his hand in token of congratulation; for their escape was almost miraculous—without wounds, too.

Lady Sale was thanking Heaven that her husband was safe in Jellalabad, and Mabel Trecarrel made a pretty plain exposé of what her emotions were on beholding Waller safe.

"Mr. Devereaux," said a voice that made his heart thrill—"Denzil, thank God you have escaped! But, Heavens! your hands are all over blood; it is horrible!"

There was infinite tenderness in the tone of Rose. It is the slavery of great love to be ever very humble. The lad blessed her in his heart; yet her honeyed accents, though they recalled the joy of yesterday, could not remove the sting of that morning's mockery which still was sore and rankling.

"Poor Trevor, and all the rest, God help them!" exclaimed General Trecarrel, and many others, who had no hope now save in vengeance; but, ere nightfall, Taj Mohammed stole into the cantonments with some final tidings.

The body of Sir William, who was a brave, good, and highly accomplished gentleman, had been ignominiously stripped and hung, with all its gaping wounds, in the Char Chouk, or Great Bazaar, where Denzil had so nearly lost his life; and the head was taken by a khan, named Nawab Zuman, and, together with one of the hands, exhibited with ferocious triumph to Captain Conolly, an officer who had unfortunately fallen into their power, and whose brother, with Major Stoddart, afterwards perished miserably under torture in the dungeons of the Emir of Bokhara.

The other two officers were detained as prisoners by Ackbar Khan. General Trecarrel, who had just come in from the Bala Hissar with an escort of the 5th Cavalry, was furious, and wished the cantonment to open with round shot, grape, and canister, on everything and everybody within their range; but grave consideration was necessary now—our little force was so isolated in that hostile land. At the time these events were occurring, the remains of Sir Alexander Barnes's body, cut in pieces, were still hanging on the trees of his garden as food for the vultures, and Ackbar Khan was driving in the Char Chouk, in the carriage of Sir William Macnaughten, whose head he hung there in a bhoosa bag (or forage-net) till it could be transmitted by a tchopper, or mounted messenger, to the Emir of Bokhara; and the poor ladies in the cantonments looked at each other with blanched faces, as they heard of those terrible things.

So closed the night of the 23rd December over our troops in far-away Cabul.

CHAPTER XIII.

HOME IN THE SPIRIT.

"And now for my letter!" exclaimed Denzil, as he hurried eagerly from the excited throng about the cantonment gate to his new quarters, a bungalow of somewhat humble construction, as its low roof was thatched, and its walls built of the unburnt brick peculiar to Cabul. Save his bed and table, a chair, some bullock trunks, and accoutrements, furniture or ornament it had none.

The letter lay on the table, and, as he entered, its black-edged envelope gave him a shock. Audley had not mentioned this circumstance, for he humanely knew that until the fatal conference was over, and Denzil could get it perused, his anxiety would be torture, as "the dim shadow of an unknown evil is worse than the presence of a calamity whose worst is told."

It proved to be from Sybil, and, curiously enough, had been brought from Bombay by Audley Trevelyan! In India, people when "up country" are thankful to get their home letters, even though six months old, and, in the joy of receiving one, the longing to learn all it contained—tidings of those he loved, and who were so far away—Denzil forgot the terrible double catastrophe he had so recently witnessed—the cruel butchery of two gallant gentlemen; he forgot even about Rose Trecarrel, and cast himself into his chair, to enjoy the full luxury of perusing it; but for a time an envious film spread over his eyes when he attempted to read—a film that was soon to turn to tears.

"Ah! England and Sybil," he murmured, "how far, far, I am away from you!"

The letter was dated some months back; and the first few words gave the young military exile a dreadful shock, for they told him of his mother's death:—

"Oh, Denzil, my brother, how my heart yearns for you now more than ever! You know how much she loved us, Denzil, and how much our lives were bound up in each other; thus I cannot convince myself that I am quite alone, that she has gone from this world for ever, and that we shall never see her more—never see that sweet smile which her beautiful dark eyes always wore for us. Our darling mamma! I send you a lock of her hair (you will see that grey had begun to mingle with it); and I send you also a wild violet that grew near the grave where I buried her."

Sybil's writing here became tremulous, almost illegible, and falling tears had evidently blotted the ink. The poor young subaltern seemed to forget his present surroundings; he felt himself a boy again, and, covering his bowed-down face with his hands, wept bitterly.

"Time will soften what we suffer, Denzil; but shall I ever be the same again? I never had any plan or future unconnected with poor mamma, after you left us, and our papa was lost. I fear she wore her life out with thinking of what would become of us—of me, perhaps, more especially—when she was, as she now is, dead and gone. There cannot be two beings more isolated than you and I are now, dear Denzil, and your letters are my only comfort. I am so thankful to find from them that you are a favourite with so many, that General Trecarrel is so kind; and that honest fellow, Bob Waller, too, I feel that I quite love him. How do you like the Misses Trecarrel? Rather giddy, are they not? Has Mr. Audley Trevelyan joined yet?"

Then, as if with the mention of Audley's name other thoughts that were unknown to Denzil occurred to her, Sybil added—

"My music and my sketching days are ended now, Denzil; as some one has it, 'I may put away all the bright colours out of my paint-box, for they have gone out of my life.' Vainly has our rubicund Rector, fresh from his pretty parsonage, his happy family circle, as yet unbroken and unclouded by sorrow, fresh, perhaps, from his sumptuous luncheon and glass of full-bodied old port, besought me to take comfort—that grieving for the dead was useless—and told me that there is One above 'who turneth the shadow of death into mourning,' for I can only weep as one who would not be comforted. The old man is very kind to me, however—bless him! though we have suffered much through that horrid Lamorna peerage story—much at the hands and tongues even of those to whom mamma was ever open-hearted, and all charity and benevolence; but you will remember what Lady Fanshawe says of our common Cornish folks in her time, that 'they are of a crafty and censorious nature, as most are so far from London.'

"My next letter will tell you more certainly of my future intentions, and all that immediately concerns myself. Our faithful nurse, Winny Braddon, whose brother perished with papa, has gone to spend—to end, I should say—her days with old Mike Treherne and his wife, who, as you know, is her sister; and the Rector, who takes care of me—for I am all but penniless now—is to give me an introduction to a lady of high rank, who is about to go abroad; to where I know not—to India itself perhaps. Would to Heaven it were! for then we might meet again."

"My sister a companion—compelled, for bread, to submit to whim, caprice, neglect, and mortification! Oh, my father, has it come to this!" groaned Denzil in agony of spirit.

"The sunlight is setting redly on the rough summits of the Row Tor and Bron Welli. All is quiet—quiet as death around me; I can hear but the beating of my own heart, the most earnest prayers and blessings of which go with these lines across the seas to you, dear Denzil."

So ended this letter, which he read many, many times, heedless of the unwonted bustle which reigned in the cantonments, where the gunners were getting additional cannon mounted, the miners forming barricades and traverses, and other vigorous preparations being made for defence in case of a too-probable attack.

Denzil had learned that within every shadow, however deep, there may be a darker shade; and now that shade within the shadow that had fallen on him was the death of his mother.

His mother dead! Another beloved face gone as his father's had gone—a sweet and winning face he saw in fancy still, yet never should look on again. How much there were of past care and years of love and tenderness to remember now! Then there were his only sister's utter loneliness and helplessness to appal him. How trivial a calamity seemed the coquetry of Rose Trecarrel when compared to sorrows such as these! And she had died the tenant of a humble cottage on the moors—the property of Mike Treherne, the miner, whose son was now a sergeant in his company!

And could it be that for months past, while he had been happy, thoughtless, heedless, and full of merriment among his comrades, that she who loved him beyond her own life, purely and unselfishly as only a mother can love an only son, had been in her dark cold grave, and he knew it not? No thought by day, no vision by night, no intuition or thrill of magnetic affinity (such as that of which we read in the Corsican twins and their mother), had told him of this; and yet it was so.

Far away from where the embattled Bala Hissar looked down on the flowing Cabul, on the Mosque of Baber and the Obelisk of Alexander the Macedonian, from the English cantonments and all their associations, even from thoughts of Rose Trecarrel's auburn hair and tender brown eyes, Denzil's mind, swifter than the electric telegraph, flashed home to the land from whence that letter came—to Cornwall with its mines below the rolling sea; to its granite quarries where the thunder-blast, loud as a salvo from the Bala Hissar, told of the riven rock; to its stone avenues solemn and hoary, and the great rock-pillars of the Fire Worshippers of old; to the dark brown moors of Bodmin, where in summer the drowsy bee hummed over the heath-bells and wild honeysuckle; to the towering bluffs on which the empurpled waves were rolling in the light of the sun as he set beyond Scilly, "the isles of the god of day;" to tarns where the water-lily floated, and to pools where the speckled trout was darting to and fro; to his rugged home, we say, went all his thoughts—to the Land's End with all its masses of splintered rocks, worn and bleached by the seas of ages, split and rent like columns of basalt amid the brine—rocks where the fresh-smelling seaweed and the scarlet sea-anemone clung, and on whose summit the weary miner sometimes sat and rested after his toil to watch the passing ships, or to ponder when next his pickaxe would discover "a lode of tin or a goodly bunch of copper ore" in those burrows beneath the sea over which the keels were gliding, their crews little wotting that human beings were in those lighted mines fathoms deep below;—over all these familiar scenes the mind of Denzil wandered, to settle again in fancy on his dead mother's face; to think of his sister's loneliness—of the vast distance by sea and land that separated them,—of his own now-narrow means; and his heart seemed to wither up within him.

So the long night wore away, and the day began to break. Its advent was heralded by the boom of a 24-pounder from the Bala Hissar, by the merry drums and fifes giving the reveillez, and by strokes on the flat metal ghurries that hung in front of the guard-houses; but Denzil sat heedless, very pale, and absorbed in thought.

* * * * * *

"Come, my dear fellow, don't mope, and don't give way thus—it is no earthly use doing so," said the cheerful voice of Bob Waller on the evening of the second day that Denzil had been permitted to absent himself from parade. "I know what I felt when my own mother died—God rest her! We were on the march to Ferozepore, under General Duncan, when the letter reached me—thought I should die too—wanted sick leave to go home, and all that sort of thing. Come to my bungalow and have a weed, with some brandy-pawnee; or shall I stay with you? By the way, here is Trevelyan's card of condolence. Good style of fellow, Trevelyan: he and the Trecarrels give you their kindest wishes." (This conjunction made Denzil wince.) "Will you come with me to Mabel—Miss Trecarrel, I mean?" added the good-hearted, well-meaning Waller. "She is so sensible, sympathetic, and kind."

"I should prefer being alone," replied Denzil moodily.

"But you can't be alone."

"Why?"

"The whole 37th have come in, and the Shah's 6th Foot from the Bala Hissar. These Afghan beggars have some movement in contemplation to cut us off, and the cantonments are quite crowded."

But for a time Denzil would seek no relief, save in military duty.

CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE FORTIFIED CAMP.

The place of Sir William Macnaghten as Envoy of the Queen was supplied by Major Pottinger, C.B., who, together with Brigadier Shelton, renewed negotiations with Ackbar Khan, and strove to effect a peaceful retreat of our troops from Cabul. After the recent assassinations and many other outrages,—after the reoccupation by the natives of the eleven square Afghan forts that stood around the cantonments, thus almost entirely enclosing and secluding our slender European force,—after all hope of Sir Robert Sale's gallant brigade returning from Jellalabad to their aid, and other hope of succour from our troops in Candahar passed away, matters began to look gloomy indeed; but none could foresee, though many feared, the end.

No attempt was made by General Elphinstone, who, though once a gallant officer, was aged and ailing now, to avenge the deaths of Macnaghten, Trevor, Burnes, and others; to uphold the Shah, then all but besieged in his citadel by rebels under Ackbar; or to assert the dignity of Britain in that remote quarter of the world. Many officers murmured and remonstrated on the necessity for immediate action; but such is the force of discipline and of military etiquette, that not one had the moral courage to assume the serious responsibility of appealing to the troops and usurping the command. Councils of war were held; but it is well known that such councils seldom urge fighting; and all these ended in mere vacillation, indecision, and inanity.

The greatest force of the insurgent Afghans was in Mahommed Khan's fort, which stood nine hundred yards distant from the cantonment guns; but these, being only nine-pounders, were useless for breaching purposes; and as this fort commands the road that leads to the city and the Bala Hissar, supplies from that quarter were completely cut off; and so were they from every other point save the village of Beymaru, where they were procured at vast cost; and when that source failed—our troops, who with their camp-followers, the necessity and the curse of every Indo-British army, made up six and twenty thousand souls penned within the cantonments—the threat of Ackbar, that our horses would yet gnaw each other's tails and the tent-pegs, would become terribly true, unless a successful retreat through the passes were achieved; but for that movement, who now could trust to the promises, the honour, or the humanity of the hostile and exulting Afghans?

Though formed into innumerable petty septs, like the clans of the Scottish Highlands, these people are attached more to the community than the chief of it; and though divided by many bitter quarrels among themselves, they were united enough in their hatred of all Kaffirs and Feringhees, and in the hope of getting all their women and property as spoil. Like a Scottish clan of old, an Afghan tribe never refuses the rights of hospitality to a native suppliant. The fugitive who flies from his clan, even though stained with blood, is protected by the tribe upon whose mercy he casts himself, and war to the death would ensue rather than surrender him. All these little republics were now amalgamated for two purposes—the destruction of Shah Sujah and his family, and the expulsion or destruction of our little army that had enthroned him.

No one ever ventured beyond the secure walls of the cantonment now, and every other day shots were exchanged between the sentinels and scouting-parties of Afghan horsemen who rode between the forts, brandishing their sabres or matchlocks in angry bravado; and now and then the artillery tried a little practice with their nine-pounders on Mahommed Khan's fort. Nor were the Shah's Gholandazees, under his Topshee Bashee, or General of the Ordnance, in the Bala Hissar quite idle; thus almost nightly there floated above the city a red light, that brought forth tower and dome in dark relief, as the gleam of musketry and cannon fell on the atmosphere; the smoke of gunpowder at night is always somewhat of a red tint.

The ladies had got over much of their squeamishness about the discharge of firearms. Poor things, they were learning fast to look, almost without shrinking, on the fall of friend and foe, nor to wink at the flash of a musket, even those who had once shared the old dame's idea with regard to such implements, that, "whether loaded or unloaded, they were apt to go off."

The music of the bands was heard no more, promenades, rides, and drives were at an end now, and General Trecarrel's handsome London-made carriage, with its crimson-lined tiger-skin, the spoil of a splendid animal potted by Waller in the Siah Sung, had become, by the simple law of appropriation, the property of Ameen Oollah Khan for the use of his four wives.

Denzil and Audley Trevelyan did not meet much on duty, as the latter was on the Staff, had little to do with parades, and nothing whatever with guards, pickets, or working parties. Puzzled by the Lamorna peerage story (as Sybil called it), a story so strange and unsupported by proper evidence, Denzil deemed that as yet perfect silence in the matter was his proper plan; thus he was coolly courteous to Audley, whose advances, made in consequence of the secret interest felt in Sybil, he rather repelled.

Audley was sometimes in the mess-bungalow of the battalion to which the company of Denzil was attached; but his staff duties kept him much about the quarters of General Trecarrel, and consequently more in the society of Rose than Denzil quite relished. Since the day of the conference he had never once visited her, and thus he felt with intense bitterness that he had been quietly supplanted there by the son of one who had supplanted him at home in rank and title, and hence more than ever did he loathe the obligation—the debt of gratitude he owed to Audley for the service he had done to Sybil; and under all the circumstances in which he was placed, he felt the sense of it most oppressive.

"And where is Sybil now?" thought Denzil, despondingly; "in what country, and with whom?"

Who was the lady of rank she had referred to? No more letters could reach Cabul now, and months must elapse ere he heard from her again or learned her fate.

No confidences passed between him and Audley; yet the latter, had he known of it, would have risked much to have perused her last epistle, with the single mention of his own name therein, and the current of thoughts it seemed to open up—thoughts to which he alone had the key.

Denzil had a longing desire to do something brilliant, that he might shine in the estimation of Rose Trecarrel. With the combined vanity and diffidence natural to a young man, he sometimes flattered himself that his handsome uniform might regain him favour in her eyes, if no other merit, mental or physical, did so; but in that he reckoned without his host, for Rose was too much accustomed to see regimentals about her—the scarlet of the Queen's troops, the silver grey of the Indian cavalry, the blue and gold of the artillery, and the quaint, half-oriental splendour of the irregular horse. As a flirt she preferred the scarlet, and, perhaps, as one with an eye to a good marriage, the sombre black swallow-tail of the C.S.

With all her constitutional coquetry, she was not without a certain emotion, of compunction at times for the part she had played with Denzil. Of all the admirers she possessed, he had seemed the most earnest, the most bewildered by her beauty, and the most true; but then, as she said to Mabel, "he was so young, and, poor fellow, only a subaltern, so what did it matter in the long run, a little trifling with him, when it amused her, and Cabul had been so dull."

"Going to India to be married," said Mabel, "of course means going there to be married well. Trevelyan is only a subaltern, too."

"But the son and heir of Lord Lamorna; so one may cast one's hawks at him."

"And Polwhele is only a subaltern."

"But with a place that spreads from Cornwall into Devonshire. I shall not make a fool of myself, Mab—yet I shall marry for love, and love only, if I marry at all," said Rose, as her white fingers wreathed up the shining ripples of her hair before retiring for the night.

"Going out" was then one of the matrimonial institutions of Anglo-Indian society; but the P. and O. liners, with the Overland Route, have knocked that institution on the head, or nearly so.

"I told you how it would be, old fellow," said Polwhele to Denzil, who was sad and sombre; "she affects Trevelyan now, and we are all at a discount now, even the cavalry men."

"But Trevelyan has come back to India a lord's son, and is on papa's staff. A deuced fine thing it must be to wake up some morning and find oneself famous in that fashion," said Burgoyne of the 37th, ignorant of how galling his remarks were to Denzil.

And so several days of constant excitement were passed in the cantonments, yet no definite plan as to the future was formed, whether to risk a retreat through Khyber Pass, or throw the whole force into the Bala Hissar, and defend it to the last gasp, as more than once General Trecarrel had urged at the council of war, but urged in vain.

CHAPTER XV.

CHRISTMAS AT CABUL.

The state of suspense endured by our whole force in Cabul, especially those men who had wives and families, was fully shared by Waller, whose chief anxiety was Mabel Trecarrel; yet it could not repress his great flow of animal spirits, and thus his bungalow was always the resort of a few happy heedless fellows, who had no particular care but to kill time when not killing the Afghans, a resource that was yet to come.

Somehow the world reproduces itself everywhere, and though provisions were scant and short, and shot and shell were in plenty and to spare, in the crowded cantonments of Cabul, there were yet space and leisure for fun and flirtation—even scandal and gossip.

It was Christmas-time there too, but, save the blasts of snow that came from the hills of Kohistan, how unlike our Christmas-time at home!

There was no Christmas cheer, to begin with: plum-pudding and roast goose were thought of and remembered, certainly; but no such things were to be found in that fortified camp between the Black Rocks and the Hills of Beymaru; neither were there dark green holly with scarlet berries and mistletoe to dance under, nor Christmas bells to usher in the morn, for even our humble mission-house had been fired by the Afghans; no Christmas gifts, or boxes, or trees full of shining toys to make happy the hearts of those little ones whose parents looked forward with intense dread to the future, and thought regretfully of Christmas in happy England—the merry meetings of parents and home-returning boys. Christmas, we say, was remembered with all its happy and hearty associations of yule, festivity, and wassail, the pledge old as the days when Hengist's Saxon daughter drank Waes Hael to Vortigern; but now, on the anniversary of that day when the star shone over Bethlehem, and a Babe was born to die for all mankind, our half-starved troops were giving shot and shell, grape and canister, with right good will, and the sombre night closed down upon red flames in the towering city, and its silence was broken, not by music, or carols, or chimes, but the voice of many a jackal and hyæna as they preyed on the corpses that lay unburied by the Cabul river.

Waller's bungalow had several visitors on the following evening; among others, Jack Polwhele and Denzil, who had returned from the village of Beymaru, where they had partly purchased and partly looted, and most successfully brought into camp at the point of the bayonet, a vast quantity of ground wheat and dhal or split peas, from the stores of a bunneah or corn-contractor. With these they also brought in several head of cattle for the use of the troops.

"Supplies but for which," as Waller said, "the morrow might have found us starving, or having only the resort of the Polar bears, who, in time of scarcity, find a pleasure in licking their paws. You'll come to my bungalow," he added, as the foraging party came in double quick through the Kohistan gate. "Trevelyan's coming—he and Polwhele; Trevelyan is one of ours now, so we four Cornishmen shall make a night of it. I have a round of beef that is getting small by degrees and beautifully less, a gallant jar of Cabul wine that I looted in the house of a kussilbash, and no end of cheroots. Deuce! I'll take no excuse," said Waller, on seeing how flushed and sombre Denzil became on hearing Audley's name.

"I shall take care to bring him, Waller," said Polwhele, as he went off to his quarters, full of excitement with his recent success, and singing the refrain of the old song,—

"And will Trelawney die?

And will Trelawney die?

Then thirty thousand Cornishmen

Shall know the reason why?"

"I wish we had but the third of those thirty thousand here to help us out of this beastly place where it has pleased her Majesty we should set up our tent-poles," said Waller. "I expect Burgoyne also to-night, and he will be sure to bring us the last news from the city, as he has accompanied Brigadier Shelton to another conference with those children of the prophet."

"Another conference?" said Denzil.

"Yes, by Jove! risky and plucky, is it not?"

"Awfully so, after what has happened to poor Burnes, Macnaghten, and the rest."

"But needs must, for we cannot choose now."

For on this evening fresh and, as the event proved, nearly final negotiations had been opened between the General and Ackbar Khan, to whom he had sent Brigadier Shelton, Major Pottinger, and Burgoyne. Thus the ladies in camp and all the white women, whose persons had been demanded as hostages, were in no ordinary state of anxiety to learn the result.

Polwhele and Denzil were betimes in Waller's quarters, where two officers of the 37th and two of the 54th had dropped in. Trevelyan had not arrived, and Denzil in fancy saw him hanging over the chair of Rose, as he had seen him last. He was nervously jealous, somewhat afraid of his own temper, and hoped the night should pass without an unseemly quarrel. He was in wretched spirits, for Sybil's letter and her future weighed upon his mind. This air of gloom was unheeded by his companions. What was the demise, so far away, too, of one whose face they never saw, to them, who were daily and hourly front to front with death himself? Yet he strove to join in their conversation, while cigars were lit and Waller's jar of wine passed briskly to and fro, and the cold round, with flour chupatties, was in great request.

"As things go now," said the host, who lounged on a couple of bullock-trunks, "we are thankful to get even the leg of a wild sheep—a regular Persian doomba, with a tail a foot broad, and can only think regretfully of choice entrées, of pâtés de foie gras from beautiful Strasburg, of boned larks and truffled turkeys of Paris—croquettes, côtelettes, and kidneys stewed in Madeira, caviare from the Don, and ortolans from Lombardy, and a thousand other nice little things we shall never see, till the cold white cliffs of the South Foreland are rising on our lee bow. Oh! soul of Lucullus and of the noble science of gastronomy!"

"Waller, you are irrepressible," said Polwhele. "Devereaux, how is the General? have you heard?"

"Trecarrel?" asked Denzil, colouring.

"No. You think, perhaps, there is no other General in the world. I mean poor Elphinstone."

"The old man is going fast."

"And the evening of his life is full of dark clouds, without a single star," added Waller.

"You grow quite poetic, Bob."

"Then it is amid the veriest prose of life."

"I had a narrow escape from a juzail ball," said Denzil, rather pensively. "It passed through my forage-cap, and I have no wish to be killed as a subaltern."

"A bullet won't feel a bit the more pleasant if it hits you as a captain," said a 37th man, laughing.

Would Rose regret him? had been Denzil's secret thought; and now amid the gay clatter of tongues around him, the speculations as to the treaty on the tapis, the chances of a peaceful retreat, the pros and cons of why Sale did not cut his way back from Jellalabad, and some of that banter about women which seems inseparable from the conversation of young men—more than all, of military men—he was startled by some of the things that were said of Rose Trecarrel, and which, though bitter to hear, served to divert his grief. His self-esteem—his amour propre had been severely wounded, and he had to conceal these emotions from Waller and Polwhele; yet they suspected that "something was up," by his ceasing to go near the Trecarrels, at whose villa near the Residency he had been almost a daily visitor.

Could the young man have foreseen it, in his bitterness he might have rejoiced that the Afghan sabre was ere long to cut the Gordian knot of all his difficulties.

Jack Polwhele, who had been eyeing him silently with a comical twinkle in his black eyes, said, in a low voice—

"So, Devereaux, the mistress of your destiny has proved slippery after all! Laugh at the whole affair, and you'll soon forget all about it. Were I in your place, she might—as the song has it—go to Hong Kong for me."

Denzil knit his brow and reddened with irritation; but, tipping the ashes of his cigar and watching the smoke thereof as it ascended to the straw-roof of the bungalow, Jack resumed, in a voice so low as to be unheard by Waller—

"With a vast amount of espièglerie, Rose, I must admit, has many physical attractions; and, Denzil, you were her pet flirtation for the nonce—every fellow saw that—nothing more. It is a fine thing to talk to a handsome girl about 'elective affinities and the union of souls,' that 'marriages are made in heaven, and not in the money-market' or the shop of some sharping lawyer; but it often grows perilous work for a griff, with a girl like Rose, who cannot care very much for any one."

Denzil still sat smoking in silence, and felt somewhat perplexed by the extreme candour of his brother-officer. In short, he knew not quite how to take it.

"Could she only have been flirting with me?" thought he, and we fear Rose would have answered in the affirmative. "No two persons, I have heard, have exactly the same or correct idea of what flirting is (he had not): talking a deal to a pretty girl, or laughing much with her, are called so; but surely there may be deeper flirting, at times, in silence. Oh! we were not flirting: I loved her—I love her yet—and thought she loved me, when glance met glance, and eye answered to eye the unasked question!"

"I know her style perfectly," resumed Polwhele, oddly enough proceeding to crush the unuttered thought; "so does Burgoyne; so do Grahame and Ravelstoke, of the 37th, and ever so many more. She asked you tenderly about animal magnetism—showed you the whiteness of her ungloved hand, and asked you, no doubt, about the trimming of her dress; but you were to be friends—the dearest friends only, and all that sort of thing."

Poor Denzil was petrified; but these words were partly effecting a cure, and he strove to laugh.

"Don't quiz me, Jack," said he; "but, upon my soul, I could be guilty of any folly for that girl—yet it would be madness, you know. What would the General say, and the mess think and say, too?"

"I don't precisely catch your meaning,—folly and madness are pretty synonymous in a matrimonial sense; but what did you think of committing yourself to? a proposal—eh?"

Denzil did not reply; he could only sigh and smoke viciously.

"Take your wine, old fellow, and don't bother about it," said Waller, who had just begun to listen. "I nearly went mad for love myself in my first red coat; but the Colonel saved me by detachment duty; and when last I saw my inamorata, after seven years of matrimony, her figure quite spoiled for waltzing, and a squad of little squalling infantry about her, I laughed at my escape."

Denzil remembered the bantering remarks of the cavalry officer at the band-stand; and their estimate of Rose seemed to tally unpleasantly with that of Polwhele.

"Fool that I have been!—yet could I help it?" he thought. "Could I help doing so again—though she is one that makes of love a jest and a scoff?"

He felt that she had lured him into a passionate declaration merely to cast him off wantonly and laugh at him, perhaps, with Audley Trevelyan. She might not care for him, and yet dislike to see him, care for another. Hence rage prompted him one moment to try and fall in love with some other girl (there was not much choice in the cantonment, certainly), and the next he felt cynically disposed to hate her and all womankind. Anon that emotion would pass away, and he felt himself still her very slave, who would plead for a word, a glance, or smile.

To abstain from visiting as before would soon excite remark; and yet to resume his visits would be to see, with bitterness and humiliation, another too palpably preferred, where he had deemed himself the chosen favourite.

"And is it actually true that Waller is booked at last?" said Polwhele.

"Deuce! how can I tell?" replied Denzil, curtly, blowing away a ring of smoke.

"It may be all gossip—for he is one whom hitherto the female world have found impossible to entrap; but here comes Trevelyan," he added, as the Hindoo servant placed lighted wax candles on the table, and Audley entered, looking, as Denzil thought, provokingly handsome, cool, self-possessed, and fashionable in bearing.

The first questions asked were, whether any tidings had come from the city, for after late events, the risk of death and decapitation run by those who ventured to confer with Ackbar and the insurgent Khans was indeed a painful and terrible one. Neither Brigadier Shelton, Major Pottinger, nor Burgoyne had returned as yet; so the conversation speedily fell back into its channel of light-heartedness.

"So, Trevelyan," said Waller, quite forgetting the presence of Denzil, and blundering on a most unlucky topic, "I heard that you have been flirting furiously all day with Rose Trecarrel; but then, as the aide-de-camp, you are quite a friend of the family."

"Oh! ours is an old affair," replied Audley, laughing heartily, as he selected a cheroot; "like the 'Belle of the Ball,'" he added, profoundly ignorant of Denzil's regard for her, "Miss Rose

'Has smiled on many, just for fun—

I knew that there was nothing in it;

I was the FIRST, the ONLY one,

Her heart had thought of for a minute;

I knew it, for she told me so,

In phrase that was divinely moulded;

She wrote a charming hand, and oh!

How sweetly all her notes were folded!'

We were old friends at home in Cornwall; besides, she is so lady-like and pretty—almost beautiful."

"That I grant you," said Polwhele, who saw—that which Denzil did not—that Audley's tone and manner had nothing of the lover in them; "but Rose has always more strings than one to her bow."

"Or, more beaux than one to her string," said Waller, laughing.

"Never puts all her money on one horse anyway. Bagging a sub. is to her like snipe-shooting in an Irish bog; poor sport after all; but a power sight better than none," said Ravelstoke, of the 37th Native Infantry, at whose freedom of speech Waller frowned.

And this was the consolation to which Denzil was treated.

How little he knew that at that very time, Audley Trevelyan, in his heart, was contrasting Sybil's pure and loving prattle, her genuine enthusiasm in poetry, art, and all that was beautiful in nature, with the occasional rantipole of this garrison belle.

"What is that?" said Waller, suddenly, as a drum was beaten hurriedly outside.

"The guard of ours, at the Kohistan gate, getting under arms," replied Ravelstoke; "Brigadier Shelton has come with tidings, and his head on his shoulders—we shall soon know our fate now!"

The sound of hoofs trotting fast through the Cantonments was heard, as the gate was closed and secured; and in a minute or less, Burgoyne, of the 37th, came in with his sword under his arm, and a brace of loaded pistols in his waistbelt.

He looked pale, excited, and weary indeed!

"Now, Burgoyne, for your news?" said Waller; "but take a pull at that wine-jar first."

Burgoyne did so, with an air of thirst and lassitude, though the atmosphere was intensely cold.

"Is the Brigadier safe?" said Polwhele.

"Yes."

"And Pottinger, too?"

"Yes; we have come back unharmed."

"And no attempt was made to assassinate or detain you?"

"None; but what think you is the proposal now—nearly the same as before—for we are checkmated here, and these insurgent scoundrels know it. Lawrence, Mackenzie, Conolly, and some other Europeans are still alive in their hands, and kept as hostages. These they offer to exchange, if the General will leave in their place all our married officers and their families; the entire treasure in the military chest; all our cannon, except six; and that we depart at once; our rear to be covered by four hundred armed Kohistanees, who, if handsomely paid, will march with us so far as Jellalabad, where, according to the news brought by a cossid, Sir Robert Sale is so closely besieged that those among us who survive to reach the plains, will have to cut their way in with the cold steel."

Mingled expressions of rage and indignation were uttered by all save Waller, who looked singularly pale and calm.

"And what was the reply to these degrading proposals?" he asked, while quietly selecting and lighting a cigar.

"It was answered that a British General might, if he chose, leave or give certain officers as hostages, but that he had no power over their wives and families. That without the full consent of husbands and parents, the ladies and children would not be left behind."

"I should think not—left, d—n it, to certain destruction!" exclaimed Polwhele, his dark eyes flashing fire. Burgoyne resumed:

"It was then that Ackbar said to us, mockingly, 'If you save your lives, what do the lives or honour, as you call it, of your wives or sisters matter? They are only women, and, as women, are spoil, like your horses and camels, yaboos, shawls, pipes, and gunpowder. Allah! you Kaffirs are strange dogs.' And there, for to-night, the matter rests. News came, however, that the Queen's 16th Lancers, the 9th, and 31st Regiments have come up country, as far as Peshawur; but that is fully two hundred miles distant; the defiles are full of snow, and they cannot be here in time either to assist or save us."

These details, which are matters of history, now filled all in that isolated camp with extreme dismay. Every hour provisions were growing more scarce; every hour the snow was falling more heavily, and thus the tremendous mountain gorges through which the route lies to Jellalabad or Peshawur, were hourly becoming more and more impassable.

To move or quit the fortified Cantonments without the solemn promise of safe conduct from the vast hordes in arms, was perilous in the extreme. To remain was but to die by slow starvation or the sword. So the question asked by the Khan of Khelat, was likely to have a terrible answer.

"Major Thain," writes Lady Sale, "was now sent round to ask all the married officers if they would consent to their wives staying, offering those who did so a salary of 2000 rupees a month! Lieutenant Eyre said, that if it was to be productive of good, he would stay with his wife and child. The others all refused to risk the safety of their families. Captain Anderson said that he would rather put a pistol to his wife's head and shoot her; and Sturt declared that his wife and mother should only be taken from him at the point of the bayonet; for himself, he was ready to perform any duty imposed upon him."*

* "Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan." Major Thain belonged to H.M. 21st Foot, but was then on the Staff.

Sturdy old General Trecarrel swore that he would take his Company of the Cornish Light Infantry, put Mabel and Rose in the centre, and force a way through the Passes at all hazards, rather than leave them to a fate which none could foresee. At the worst, they could all die there together, and there could be little doubt of the event if we marched without terms, for tidings came from Taj Mahommed, the Wuzeer, that Aziz Khan, with 10,000 Kohistanees, had beset the road at Tezeen; and that the warriors of the Ghilzie tribe (which numbers 600,000 souls) were in possession of all the heights overlooking it.

Tears and distress were visible on all hands now; sickness and suffering increased rapidly, while every night the bugles sounded to arms, and cannon and musketry were discharged at the armed bands of horse and foot which menaced the front and rear gates, or sought plunder in the now abandoned Residency, and the villas previously occupied by General Trecarrel, Captain Trevor, and others.

Pale women clasped their children to their breasts, and men their wives, as if the parting hour of all was already come. The eyes of the soldiers filled and flashed with honest pity and manly indignation at the idea of yielding up civilized women, tender English ladies and helpless little children, to such barbarians as these; while the sick and wounded in hospital were full of horror and dismay at their own helplessness.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE MORNING OF THE RETREAT.

War, dread war, is one of the greatest games in life! "It is a passion even in the lower ranks of the soldiery; while for those in command it is the most intoxicating, the most imperious of passions. Where shall we find a wider field for energy of character, for the calculations of intellect and the flashes of genius? In him who is inflamed by glory, hunger, thirst, wounds, incessantly impending death itself, produce a sort of intoxication; the sudden combination of intermediate causes with foreseen chances, throw into this exalted game a never ceasing interest, equal to the emotion excited at long intervals by the most terrible situations of life!"

In the movement we are about to narrate, there was no room for the display of generalship, though more than enough for endurance and the most heroic courage; but some such enthusiastic reflections as these were floating in the mind of Denzil, when, by the prolonged notes of the trumpet, and the long roll on the drum, the entire troops in the Cantonments, horse, foot, and artillery, began to get under arms on the morning of the 6th of January, to commence that which eventually proved to be one of the most disastrous retreats on record.

How often had the unfortunate Trevor, Waller, Burgoyne, and others, exclaimed, in their weariness of heart—

"Let us fight our way down, destroying everything ere we leave the Cantonments, and at least one-third of us shall reach Jellalabad!" And now the time had come.

It had been finally arranged by the Staff at Headquarters, to pay more than fourteen lacs* of rupees to Ackbar Khan, Ameen Oolah Khan, Shireen Khan of the Kussilbashes, the Ghilzie Chiefs, and other treacherous villains, that our troops might march unmolested; Osman Khan undertaking, with his tribe, to escort them so far as Peshawur, the gate of British India, towards Central India. The money was negotiated on the spot by a Cashmere merchant and some Hindoo schroffs or bankers in Cabul. In vain did Major Pottinger and many other officers raise their voices indignantly against this measure of the feeble and aged Elphinstone.

* A lac is one hundred thousand.

"Never before," they exclaimed, "were British soldiers compelled to buy a way out of an enemy's country; to repay with gold the debt contracted by steel!"

But the bargain was struck; Ackbar Khan and his allies were avariciously resolute that it should be adhered to by us, at least.

Silently and quickly the troops, 4,500 strong, were formed by Regiments and Brigades; but the confusion around them, in the streets of bungalows or huts, was great, from the number and terror of the camp-followers, now diminished by death, sickness, or desertion, to somewhere about 12,000. Hammocks had been prepared wherein to carry the sick and wounded through the passes; but as the snowfall was deep, this was thought to be impracticable; so in virtue of the species of armistice, nearly the whole of these unfortunate creatures, officers, soldiers, and camp followers had been conveyed into the city, where they were to be left to the care—to the mercy, of the Afghans, certain medical officers casting lots for the perilous duty of remaining behind to attend them, and these devoted Samaritans proved to be Drs. Berwick and Campbell of the 54th Infantry.

As a foretaste of what was soon to happen, the bearers, returning from the city with the litters, were fired upon, and all shot down by the Afghans; and on this very morning, as the grey dawn began to steal down the mountains from their reddened summits to the plain, the dark corpses of the Hindoo dhooley-wallahs could be seen dotting all the expanse of snow between the Cantonments and Cabul; while, to still the growing clamour, three pieces of cannon, and the greater portion of our treasure, were made over to the rabble.

In rear of his company, awaiting the order to march, Denzil stood leaning on his sword and muffled in a furred poshteen which he wore above his uniform, as the thermometer was below zero and all the troops were in those blue great-coats usually worn by our soldiers in India. The Europeans looked pale, thin, and haggard, and the dark Bengal sepoys seemed of a livid or pea-green tint, as the cold daylight stole in.

How often Denzil had watched the great sun of the Eastern world rise red and fiery above those eternally snow clad peaks of Kohistan; and now he was, he hoped, looking on its rising for the last time there.

Alas! many more were looking on it, that were never to see it set.

Notwithstanding the desperation of their affairs, many were in excellent spirits at the prospect of a change of quarters; and he heard the voice of Rose Trecarrel, talking gaily to one or two officers, as she, Mabel and some other ladies came forth mounted, to ride for surer protection among the cavalry. With them were Lady Sale and the widowed Lady Macnaghten, who had vainly offered princely bribes for her husband's mutilated body, and had now to depart with the harrowing knowledge that it was still exposed in the public marketplace. Some of the ladies were on camels, others in dhooleys with their children nestling beside them for warmth; but the Trecarrels were mounted on fine Arab horses, and wore sheep-skin spencers called neemches over their riding habits, for comfort and also for disguise, which they had further to aid by having turbans twisted round their heads, so Rose could not help laughing heartily at the oddity of her attire.

"Good-morning," said she, in her sweetest tone, to Denzil, who had been watching her wistfully.

He was as a very slave in her presence, he loved her so, and now when she held out her hand, chill though the air, ungloved (for a moment of course) the presence of others alone prevented him from, perhaps, kissing it.

"You have a cold journey before you," said he.

"And you a most toilsome march afoot. Heaven tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, we are told; I wish it would temper the wind to me," said Rose, with her teeth, short, beautiful and white, chattering as she spoke.

"What have you been doing for all these days past? In what part of the Cantonments have you hidden yourself?" she asked in a low and soft voice.

"Oh—you speak to me kindly—almost tenderly, do you?" said Denzil, with bitterness in his tone; "have you obtained leave from your friend on the Staff to address me!"

He looked at her with eyes in whose expression anger and sorrow mingled, while she looked at him smiling and deprecatory, more than half flattered by his jealous outburst amid the terrors that menaced them all.

"You are surely in a frightful humour this morning," said she; "I shall certainly pity the Afghans if you fall foul of any of them."

"Cold-hearted Rose," replied Denzil, who was in no humour for jesting; "I would not have your ungenerous nature, to hold that title of which, as yet, fate deprives me, though that might make you love me again—even if you ever loved me at all."

"Is this a comedy, Denzil?" said she, smiling more than ever.

"I would to God we had never met," said Denzil in a low voice, while his lip quivered, for he conceived that the secret story of his family had affected her towards him; "you have been but amusing yourself with me; passing the hours that would have been dull here, in playing with my heart—my feelings."

"Why, Denzil Devereaux—you talk like a girl; who ever heard of a man's heart or feelings being trifled with?" said she, with a little silvery laugh as she moved her horse, to speak with some one else.

"Dear Mabel," said Waller in a tender and earnest voice, as his fiancée checked her Arab for a moment by his side, and gave him her hand with a bright confiding smile; "to-day begins, I hope, the first stage of our long homeward journey."

"'England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,'" said she, laughing as she rejoined her sister, and her lover, who was somewhat of a critic, thought she was the handsomest girl he had ever seen on horseback.

Bob and Mabel had already begun to fashion mental pictures of a home-life in England, a happy home, a dream life; a pretty house in some sequestered spot, where the old Cornish elm trees might echo to merry children's voices, while the days went by in peace and happiness; but here the troops were called to "attention," and General Trecarrel, who was "mounted," led his daughters to where the advanced guard was posted, and where all the ladies were placed among the cavalry, to the great delight of a couple of cornets who complacently stroked the fair fluff that would in time become moustaches, and begged them not to be in the least alarmed, as they had a most efficient escort.

"Rose," urged Mabel, who had more power of character than her sister and less of folly in her disposition, "it is cruel of you to make such a victim of that poor lad, Devereaux—he is so handsome too."

"That is the reason; but do I ask him to love me?"

"No; you only lure him into doing so; you are incorrigible, and laugh at being so."

"There is no need to think of marrying—the idea is absurd; though one may get up a liking."

"Oh fie!" said Mabel, smiling in spite of herself.

"How sensible and solid we have become since Waller came to the point, and made it all square with papa."

"He has certainly asked me to become his," replied Mabel, with a bright, soft smile.

"I would rather be my own," said the laughing coquette.

This whispered conversation was now interrupted by a terrific yell outside the Cantonment walls; it rent the air, and the ladies grew pale as they looked inquiringly in each other's faces. General Trecarrel grew very white, and instinctively drew his sword. On that morning, when he knelt in prayer beside his daughters, ere they left their abode to mount, he had been thinking that in such a place and under such circumstances as theirs, how happy was the man who was alone in the world; how to be envied the soldier, who had only his firelock and knapsack to care for; who had only himself to think of, and had no dread for the sighs, the tears, and the danger of those he loved best on earth!

Thousands of Afghans and fanatical Ghazees were now crowding close to the walls, impatient for plunder and rapine, hissing like serpents, spitting like tiger-cats, and brandishing their bare weapons with an air of ferocity and grimace peculiar to Orientals only; but as yet contenting themselves with throwing stones, which the Afghans do with a strength and precision exclusively their own. By one of these Sergeant Treherne was struck nearly senseless to the earth, when in the act of receiving some order from Waller, who became, for him, unusually excited.

"D—n it!" he exclaimed, "why don't we slew round a bastion gun, and by one dose of grape send a few of these turbaned warriors by the short cut to Paradise, or elsewhere!"

"I should like to see a few of them tied to the lips of six-pounders—for matters are looking decidedly serious," added Polwhele, as the red glare of flames, with columns of lurid and murky smoke, now shot high into the snowy air from the houses of the Envoy, Captain Trevor, General Trecarrel, and others, which had been fired by the predatory horsemen who covered all the plain.

An order was now given to fix bayonets and load with ball-cartridge—the artillery with round shot and grape!

"The troops are to move off from the right of regiments, in open column of sections," cried Audley Trevelyan, repeating the feeble voice of the old General, as he rode from one slender column to another.

"The front to be diminished, if necessary, when we enter the pass," added Major Thain; "Her Majesty's 44th Foot, one squadron of Irregular Horse and three mountain-guns, under Brigadier Anquetil, to form the advance guard. The 54th, the Shah's 6th, the 5th Light Cavalry, and four Horse Artillery guns, will cover the rear."

These corps, already reduced to skeletons, were speedily formed in front and rear of the main column, with which went the baggage, the remaining treasure, the rest of the artillery, and some sick and wounded in litters, and on yaboos or Cabul ponies.

At eight o'clock precisely, the order was given to march, and fresh yells, as if all the fiends of Pandemonium had broken loose, resounded from the plain, as the rear-gates of the Cantonment were thrown open; the bands struck up the "British Grenadiers," and the advanced guard began to defile out upon the road that was to lead them, as they hoped, to Peshawur.

A half-stifled shriek burst from all the ladies, and they implored the troopers of the Irregular Horse to close about them for protection, for the scene around was one replete with terror, a confused and mighty mass of dark, ferocious visages, black, gleaming eyes, white, grinning teeth, and flashing weapons; so that even the usually irrepressible Rose Trecarrel was completely silent, subdued, and so awed, that she could scarcely breathe.

From the hills of Beymaru the odious Ackbar Khan and others, his adherents, were looking down on our toil worn soldiers as they issued forth with all the honours of war, the colours flying on the wind, with all their brilliant silk and gold embroidery; the bright bayonets pouring onwards like a stream of rippling steel above the dark columns, for, as already stated, the troops were in their greatcoats; the neighing of the horses, the dull rumble of the artillery wheels, the clatter of sponge and rammer, and of round-shot in the caissons; and over all, the varied music of the bands, the shrill yet sweet notes of the fifes and the regularly measured resonance of the drums, came upward to his listening ear, with the yells of the Afghans, and the report of the occasional firearms which they began to discharge among the helpless camp followers in the very wantonness of mischief, or Asiatic lust of cruelty.

"Let them go," hissed Ackbar, through his clenched teeth; "the hungry vultures and the wild Khyberees are alike in waiting; the dark wings and the avenging sword of Azrael will soon be above them in the air, and the jackals and the Ghoule Babian will batten on their bones!"

And some there were with him, whose eyes seemed chiefly attracted by the group of white ladies who rode on horses or camels, amid the brilliant ranks of the Irregular Cavalry.

"Dare they meddle with us, who are British troops, and all in order for battle?" was the confident thought of many a brave officer, yet of all those 16,500 human beings who issued on that eventful morning from the fortified camp at Cabul, only TWO were fated to reach Jellalabad alive, and that city is only ninety miles distant.*

* There quitted the cantonments, Europeans, 690; cavalry, 970; native infantry, 2840; camp-followers, 12,000. The Queen's 44th mustered 600 of all ranks.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE HALT BY THE LOGHUR RIVER.

Quickly marched our retreating forces, so menacing was the aspect and daring the conduct of the Afghans, that all felt as if something was to be got over, and that the sooner it was faced boldly and gone over, the better.

Prior to leaving the Cantonments, Rose had thought of dropping her whip en route, so that one of the handsome young cornets might have to dismount and pick it up; and thus, that by the consequent delay, they should be enabled to ride a little apart from the ladies and the escort; now—all such coquettish schemes and follies were forgotten.

Her Arab had been sidling along, coquetting with its own shadow, and rendering an officer's hand on the reins requisite now and then. Even of that attention Rose was oblivious now; laughter and fun had passed away, and a cold shiver passed down the poor girl's spine as she looked around her.

Hemmed in and crowded on by the invading rabble, the march of the columns became speedily disordered, and the music of the bands ceased. The moment our troops were clear of the Cantonments, a vast tide of Afghans, some eight thousand at least, rushed in to pillage the bungalows and other buildings, and then gave all to the flames; thus an indescribable tumult took place. Elsewhere, parties of armed horsemen made cruel and reckless dashes—literal charges—through the long and straggling procession of helpless camp-followers, and even through the column which had the baggage, cutting men down on all sides, and carrying off whatever they could lay hands on, in some instances tearing white children from the arms of their shrieking ayahs and bearing them off at the saddle-bow, to future slavery or death. Corpses soon encumbered all the route, and the snow became reddened with blood.

The air seemed to become laden with a Babel of tumultuous sounds; the fierce yells of the Afghans encouraging each other to rapine and slaughter; the more maniac-like cries of the fanatical Ghazees; the wild wailing of the Hindostani servants, as they, their wives or children perished, under the sabre or the occasional pistol-shot; the roaring of the frightened camels; the bellowing of the artillery bullocks; the voices of the European officers, seeking for a time to control the fury of their men, but succeeding for a time only, for the last file of the rear guard was barely out of the Cantonments, when from the whole line of the western wall, volleys of red flashing musketry were opened upon us by the Afghans, with their juzails, matchlocks, and even those percussion muskets which Sir Robert Sale was not permitted to take to Jellalabad. Lieutenant Hardyman, of the 5th Cavalry, fell from his horse, shot through the heart, and fifty more were killed or wounded at the same time; but though the 54th, to which corps Waller's company was attached, commenced an independent file-firing, facing about from time to time as they retreated, the Afghans still pressed upon the columns, discharging their long rifles with sure and deadly aim; thus, ere long the retreat became a flight, leaving on all sides Hindoos, men, women, and children, expiring of cold, starvation, exhaustion, or wounds.

Imitating the example of Polwhele, Denzil sheathed his sword, and arming himself with a dead man's musket, fired till his hands and elbows ached with the exertion of loading.

Tents and baggage of every kind, even a piece of cannon, were speedily abandoned to the Afghans, for the native servants and drivers fled on all sides, thinking to save their lives, but only to be eventually slaughtered in detail; while slowly and laboriously through the snow the troops moved towards a gorge in the hills of Siah Sung, in hope to get through the Khoord Cabul Pass before nightfall.

The forms of our half-starved soldiers who had been long on scanty rations of dhal, wild radishes, rice and ghee, were wasted and thin; their faces were hollow and wan; their whiskers were matted by mud and blood, the powder of bitten cartridges, and, in many instances, icicles hung from them as the breath froze on their moustaches.

With the baggage, all the remaining treasure became the spoil of the enemy; many a handsome Hindoo girl was borne off by the horsemen, who, though they galloped in bold defiance along the flanks of the retreating force, did not, as yet, attempt to molest the solid array of the Queen's 44th Foot. It was as in the song of Pindara:—

"Deeply with saree, doputta, and shawl,

Jewels and gold the lootera is laden;

Silks and brocades, and what's better than all,

We have the choice of the matron and maiden!

Zenana and harem

Ring forth the alarm—

Vainly their riches and beauties are hoarded!

Hoora! hoora!

Quick with the damsels,

For hills must be clambered and rivers be forded!"

From the rocks of Siah Sung, as the gorge was entered, more than one juzail ball found its way into the ranks of the advanced guard. The two fair-haired Cornets of the Irregular Cavalry, mere boys, in most brilliantly elaborate uniforms, fell; both were shot down to perish miserably amid the snow and mud. They sank in succession under the hoofs of the horses ridden by Mabel and Rose, and were left to the Afghans, whose knives would soon end their miseries.

"Oh what a sight for English ladies to look upon!" exclaimed Audley Trevelyan, feeling acutely the horror of all they were subjected to, while the tears they were forced to shed became frozen on their pale cheeks by the icy mountain wind.

Mabel had her riding switch shot away by a casual bullet; Lady Sale had one of her arms wounded by another, and several balls passed through the skirt of her riding habit.

Down below the hills into which they were advancing, and far away in the rear, a sheet of fire still enveloped the whole oblong area of the Cantonments, and the plain through which the Cabul flows was enveloped in rolling smoke, amid which the square masses of the Afghan forts loomed darkly forth; but few cared to give a backward glance as the troops toiled doggedly into the mountain gorges, where darkness, the winter-storm, and the treacherous foe went with them.

Snow, snow everywhere; the chill atmosphere was full of it; aslant the white flakes were falling to join others on the leafless planes and poplars, on the upturned faces and stiffening bodies of the dead. There was no horizon; all trace of it had disappeared; the Afghan horsemen hovering on the flanks were like shadows or spectres in the gloom—but shadows from whence a red flash came forth at times, and then a bullet whistled past on its errand of death. After a time these wild cavaliers rode into the ravines, and nothing was seen in the grey obscurity but the white flakes falling silently athwart it; and there were thawing and freezing—freezing and thawing at one and the same time.

It was misery, intense misery, all, and Denzil had but one thought, that on the ruddy, shiny, auburn billows of Rose's hair, and of her sister's too, these flakes were falling now.

With nightfall the firing had ceased; the soldiers marched sternly and silently on in the dark, and even the least callous among them had ceased to shudder now when treading softly on the limbs or breasts of the dead who encumbered the way. And to those in the rear, it seemed as if all in front were perishing.

"Meanwhile, amid all this horror, where is she?" thought Denzil; "with my precious cousin no doubt—yet, I pray God, that he may be able to protect her."

More than once on that disastrous march, however, had Audley ridden back to the rear guard to see if Denzil was safe, and to kindly proffer the use of his brandy flask. And now, by a miserable destiny, instead of advancing that night straight through the Khoord Cabul Pass, the inane old General allowed the Afghans to take possession of it, while he, most fatally, ordered his forces to encamp on the right of the Loghur river, if encamping it could be called, when the tents and baggage had alike been lost, the troops were without fuel and had only the snow to lie upon, and the falling snow to cover them.

"The bugles of the advanced guard are sounding a halt," said Waller; "it may be unwise, but I thank Heaven, as I am ready to drop, and shall have to snooze like the rest amid the snow and our glory. Glory—pah! I would rather have a glass of brandy-pawnee hot, than all the glory to be got in British India. Polwhele, make the company pile arms when we come to the halting-place—and now to look after the Trecarrels—God help them!"

As corps after corps came up and halted, friends and comrades could enquire as to who had been killed or lost on the march; wounded there could be none, as all who sank behind were certain to perish by cold or the long trenchant knives of the Afghans, who had a particular fancy for decapitating all the victims that fell into their hands.

Officers and soldiers were alike maddened with fury against the infamous treachery of those who had been paid in such terms to let them and their families depart in peace; and on all sides were heard the bitterest execrations of Ackbar Khan and his adherents. These became mingled with loud lamentations and cries of despair, when husbands found that their wives, wives that their husbands, or parents that their children, had been lost—hopelessly lost—on that long and terrible path of death and suffering, which led down the mountains to the rear, a path where none might dare to return or search for those they loved.

In cold and starvation those who had succeeded in bringing their little ones thus far on the way, could only pray, and weep the dire necessities of war, and marvel in their hearts if the time would ever come when swords should be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks, and "when nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." As yet, that piping time of peace seemed a long way off.

A few sentinels were posted in the direction of the enemy, and their posts some of them never quitted alive, being found frozen and dead when the relief went round an hour after. A little fire was made for the ladies by burning Audley's pistol-case and an ammunition keg; and full of pity, compassion, and horror, that women delicately and tenderly nurtured as they had been, should be subjected to miseries such as these, Waller, Denzil, Ravelstoke, and a few others procured by great exertion a sepoy pall, or tent, from the back of a baggage pony that lay shot in the pass; and then, scraping away the snow, pitched it for their use.

Therein, Mabel, Rose, and seven other ladies passed the night, nestling close together on a xummul, or coarse native blanket, with the skirts of their riding habits wrapped about their feet for warmth.

Audley Trevelyan, General Trecarrel, and other mounted officers kept beside their horses for the same purpose; and muffled in their poshteens and blankets, Waller and Denzil lay to leeward of the ladies' tent as a shelter from the biting wind.

So passed the remainder of the morning.

When day began to dawn and the cold light stole down the mountains upon that melancholy bivouac, it was found that the Shah's 6th Regiment, six hundred strong, had gone off in the dark, deserting to the enemy with all their arms; but there was another circumstance which created greater alarm still among the Europeans.

Rose Trecarrel was missing, and no trace of her could be found.

CHAPTER XVIII.

SPIRITED AWAY!

All unaware of the evil tidings that were awaiting him, Denzil, stiff and well-nigh frozen, aching in every limb, staggered like a tipsy man to his feet, so sore and cramped were every joint and limb. As the dawn came slowly in, he gazed around him. Waller was already awake, and had been to look after his men. He proffered his cigar-case, saying:

"Have a weed, Devereaux—it's all the breakfast you are likely to get. We are as ill off here as Mother Hubbard's ill-used cur."

"Are the ladies stirring yet?" asked Denzil with chattering teeth.

"No—and Lady Sale has not had the bullet extracted from her arm yet."

Once or twice during the dark hours that were passed, a little hand cased in lavender kid and drawn from a warm fur-lined riding gauntlet, had come out from under the wall of the tent, and Waller's lips had touched it, for it was Mabel's, and gloved though it was, the touch of that little hand, especially under circumstances so terrible, made big Bob Waller's honest heart to vibrate with emotion. Once Rose, in her old spirit of waggery, had put out her hand in the same way and laughed when Waller, who was just dosing off to sleep in the wretched cold without, kissed it with great empressement, for she too wore pale lavender kids under her riding gloves.

"Look round, Waller," said Denzil, as he lit the cigar; "did you ever behold such a scene?"

"Never—and hope never to see such again!"

The lofty mountains and impending rocks that overhung the Pass, and that fatal route back to the hills of Siah Sung, being covered with snow, looked singularly close and nigh. The sky was clear now; and far as the eye could reach the way was studded by the dead bodies of human beings, camels, horses, baggage yaboos, artillery bullocks, cannon and waggons, drums, weapons and abandoned dhoolies, the inmates of which might be either living or dead; the latter most probably, for everything there lay half buried in the white winding-sheet of winter, with the black vultures settling in flights over them.

In the immediate vicinity of where Denzil stood, many men who in the night had perished of cold and exhaustion lay frozen hard and firmly to the earth, with their muskets beside them. The corpses of the Hindoos and dusky Bengal sepoys seemed like pale Venetian bronze in the frosty air. In the eyes of the survivors, by over tension of the nerves, and the fierce wild excitement they had undergone for some time past, but more particularly during the preceding day and night, a keen and unearthly glare or glitter was visible. Each was aware of this hunted-expression as he looked in the worn face of his comrade. General Trecarrel seemed to be sorely changed by the sharp anxiety he suffered for his daughters' safety. Thus the usually bluff and florid looking old soldier had become pale, wan and haggard in face, and wild and defiant in eye, like the rest.

Sergeant Treherne, a powerful and hardy Cornishman, had tumbled a dead Hindoo out of a wooden litter, and breaking it to pieces, made with them a fire near the tent of the ladies, for whom, with all a campaigner's readiness, he was quickly preparing some hot coffee in a camp-kettle, while the old General, his countryman, sought to warm himself by the blaze, when the voice of Mabel startled all who were near, as she hurried from the tent, exclaiming,

"Papa—papa—where is Rose—is not she with you?"

Denzil started forward, but paused, for at the same instant Audley Trevelyan, who had been fraternally sharing some dhal (or split-peas) with his horse, and of whose interference he felt nervously jealous, sprang towards Mabel enquiringly. General Trecarrel stared at her with an air of utter bewilderment, as he had not seen Rose since the tent was pitched for the use of her and others on the troops halting, when she came as usual to be kissed by him before retiring, just as she had been wont to do, ever since childhood. Then he said hoarsely:

"Speak at once, Mabel—what has happened—speak?"

But Mabel could only clasp her hands. She thought Rose had been with him, and terror now tied her tongue; she dared not speak or question him, for "any suspense is better than some certainties;" and one fact was here certain and palpable; that Rose had left the tent unseen, and none knew why, wherefore or with whom!

When so many were perishing hourly by the most terrible deaths, we are shocked to admit that, such is the selfishness of human nature, the fate of one girl, even though a pure European, did not create much excitement for any length of time, save among those more immediately interested in it; and as the retreat was to recommence in an hour, there was not much time for the unrefreshed and starving troops investigating it. Moreover, the rear-guard of yesterday was to be the advanced one of to-day, as the army, if that disorganised multitude could so be called, was to move off in inverted order—the left in front.

Generosity, chivalry, and humanity, inspired Audley Trevelyan like many other officers to be up and doing something; they scarcely knew what. Denzil felt heart-wrung and stupefied, while Waller, in addition to his own emotions, was alarmed for the effect this calamitous event might have on Mabel; but General Trecarrel, together with the horror inspired by great anxiety and love, felt an ardour of intense hatred against the Afghans who had reft from him his youngest born; she, who from childhood had been his pet, and his stricken heart seemed full of unuttered prayers for her.

The entire camp was speedily searched; not a trace could be found of the lost one. She could neither have gone nor been taken to the front, as the snow lay there pure as it had fallen, untrodden and unsullied by footsteps. To the rear then only could she be looked for. Such was the hasty report made to the unhappy father by brigadier Shelton, Audley, and other officers who crowded about him.

The ladies were full of compassion and a terror that was not quite unselfish. What had happened? If she had vanished thus mysteriously, whose fate might be next? They trembled in the frosty morning wind as they gazed at each other; but Mabel's beautiful face, by the terrible and haggard misery of its expression, inspired them all with sympathy, and they grouped about her like a covey of frightened doves.

Like Denzil, she felt as if half her life—half herself, had suddenly passed away. A looker-on might have thought that the death-warrant of all had been written in an instant, for Denzil, Waller, Audley, Mabel, and poor General Trecarrel stared at each other in blank horror and amazement.

Death by the sword, the lance, and bullet; death by cold, starvation, fire, sack, slaughter, and every horror incident to such a retreat, had been, and were even now, close around them; but what unthought-of personal calamity was this? Breathlessly, and almost void of all power of volition, father and child gazed at each other. Their eyes seemed to say "Where is my daughter?" "Where is my sister?" But who was to explain this terrible mystery?

Nine ladies, we have said, had crowded together in that small tent, sleeping closely side by side for warmth; and the eight remaining admitted that they had slept soundly in the heavy slumber that comes of intense weariness and keen anxiety. Denzil, in his half-dreamy doze outside the tent, had been conscious of soldiers hovering near it, but thought they were simply seeking for food or fuel.

Happy, thoughtless, heedless Rose, with all her flirting and pretty coquettish ways—where was she now? Dead, butchered, or dying in misery amid the snow, or a captive; and, if so, in whose hands? A captive kept for worse than death, too probably! It was an episode that was maddening to her sister; to her old father, who loved her so tenderly; to Denzil, who doted on her shadow, and whose heart was full of the memory of that happy day by the Lake of Istaliff; to Waller; and all who had known and liked her, or laughed and danced with her in the happy time that was past.

"Oh, God!" murmured the poor General, half audibly, as he raised his eyes and tremulous hands upwards; "give my child back to me, or take me to her! Lord, Lord, let me not go mad!" he added piteously. "To find her lying dead would be better than to be thus ignorant of her fate—of her sufferings—of her end!"

Life seemed to die out of his heart; yet he breathed and lived, and had speech and hearing left.

"Those scoundrels who levanted in the dark, the Shah's Sixth, have something to do with this," said Burgoyne; "they furnished the chain of sentinels towards the rear."

"Right," exclaimed the General hoarsely, "and in the rear must she be sought."

"The enemy are already in motion and in sight," said Brigadier Shelton, who was examining the distant portion of the Pass through his field-glass.

"I care not if all Afghanistan was there," said Trecarrel, mounting; "come with me, Trevelyan! Ladies, I entreat you to look to Mabel while I go in search of my lost one."

"Papa, papa," implored Mabel, "don't leave me."

"You are safe for the time," he replied, checking his horse for an instant; "but I must go in search of my lost darling—to find her, or to die."

And now the old man rode wildly to the rear, followed by Audley, who had to ride with caution among the frozen dead and other debris, as the horses were ill-roughed, the Nalbunds, or native farriers, having all deserted.

"Captain Waller," cried Brigadier Shelton, "this is mere madness; Trecarrel and Trevelyan are throwing their lives away, for the Afghan skirmishers will soon be close at hand! Take your Company to the rear in extended order, and keep the rascals in check if you can. A Ressallah of the 5th Cavalry will support you if necessary."

"Very good, sir," replied Waller, mechanically and coolly, as if on parade, lowering his drawn sword in salute, and obeying with alacrity, in the desire and hope to overtake and protect the father of his Mabel. "Company, forward, double quick;" and forward his men went briskly, with their arms at the trail, and in line, till clear of the bivouac, when he extended them from the centre, and they loaded while advancing.

In active and dangerous military duty like this, there is always some relief from mental torture. A man in grief may sit at his desk, toil with the spade, the shuttle, or the hammer, enduring a sickness of the heart that nothing can allay, and time alone may cure; but in the fierce excitement of mortal strife, the ills of life seem lessened, and a great sorrow may be half forgotten. Hence, to grapple with the enemy, and especially such an enemy as those Afghans, was as a balm to the excited hearts of Denzil and Waller, and forth they went with a will over ground that was singularly repulsive and horrible in aspect. In his keen sense of the terrible event of last night, the former forgot even his jealousy of Audley; they could have but one common cause now—vengeance on the abductors.

Corpses lay thick everywhere, and half covered by the snow.

How terrible seemed the last rest of all those dead people, who, since only yesterday, had learned the great secret of Time and Eternity, and more that mere mortal can never know; their jaws relaxed; their eyes, unclosed by friendly or loving hands, were staring stonily and sightlessly to Heaven, as they slept the sleep from which the thunder of all the cannon in the world would never waken them. The ashes of the Christian would receive no Christian burial; and those of the Hindoo would never mingle with the waters of the Jumna, or his holier river, the Ganges. For the remains of all would ere long become the prey of the wolf and hyæna, and already the vultures were there in sable flights, settling over all the fallen.

In some places under the soldiers' feet, the snow was crimsoned by large patches of frozen blood.

A long line of abandoned dhooleys, full of women, children, and wounded men, were passed. All the occupants of these were dead; and to their ghastly banquet thereon, the scared vultures returned with angry croak and flapping wings, when Waller's men went further from them.

On a little knoll the General and Audley Trevelyan were overtaken. They had reined up their horses, and were looking about them sadly and hopelessly, for no trace of the lost one could be discerned; but the shouts of some exulting Afghans were borne towards them on the morning wind.

A body of cavalry, divided into two parties, were coming along the steep rocks of the Pass on both sides, for the mountain horses of that wild region can climb like cats or goats. A green silk banner floated from a glittering lance, announcing that they formed the Resallah, or troop of Amen Oollah Khan; and each horseman had a juzailchee, or rifleman, mounted, en croupe, behind him, after the fashion of the French Voltigeurs.

These they dropped fresh, unwearied, and ready for action; and the firing began at once from behind the rocks or stones, over which they discharged their long barrelled rifles in perfect security.

The Afghans are excellent skirmishers, and their native juzails carry much farther than our regulation muskets; thus, before Waller's men could return their fire, one of his corporals uttered a yell of agony, bounded a yard from the ground, and then fell flat on his face, dead. A bullet had pierced a mortal part.

"Close up—close up, forward," cried Waller, leading them on, sword in hand; "those devils have got our range exactly now."

While he spoke the bullets were sowing thick the snow about General Trecarrel and Audley, who, being mounted men, were prominent figures. Meanwhile the horsemen had disappeared; but the wily Amen Oollah was merely making a detour to turn the flank of a group of pines that grew upon the steep slope, intending thereby to get into the rear of Waller's skirmishers and cut them off.

"Get under cover, lads, as best you may!" cried he, as his bugler sounded to "commence firing;" and with a dark, stern, and desperate expression in their hungry faces, his soldiers knelt behind rocks and stones, dead horses and camels, dhooleys and abandoned baggage-boxes, and proceeded to return the fire of the Afghans (about a hundred in number), who were taking quiet pot-shots at any head that appeared above the snow-clad rocks, behind which they were lurking.

Now and then a fiend-like yell, and pair of brown booted feet, or swarthy dark hands appearing wildly in the air, announced when an English bullet found its billet in a Mussulman body; and then the soldiers smiled grimly to each other, as they thought "there is one the less in the world, at all events."

This serious musketry practice, and the wailing of women and children, were the only morning reveillé in that melancholy halting place on the bank of the Loghur.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE SKIRMISH.

Gratitude to General Trecarrel, who had been kind to his dead mother, to Sybil, and ever so to himself, with a natural regard for the old soldier as the father of Rose, made Denzil linger near him, and beseech him to retire and not to expose his life needlessly. Absorbed in his great grief the General made no reply; with his face pale, his eyes bloodshot, and his teeth set, he sat on horseback and watched the turns of the skirmish.

The juzailchees fired with deadly aim as they levelled their long weapons over rests, or the rocks behind which they were crouching; thus some ten or twelve of Waller's skirmishers had fallen; of these five were dead, and others were creeping wounded to the halting-place, which some of them were not destined to reach, as they died of exhaustion, loss of blood, or another bullet by the way.

His company continued to advance steadily by front and rear-rank files alternately, each man darting forward and getting under the cover of some rock or bedana (as the wild mulberry bushes are named), till they were all within half musket shot of the foe. The reports of the firing were reverberated among the snow-clad cliffs, tossed from peak to peak, and so often repeated, that it seemed as if four times the number of men were engaged; but though each soldier had forty rounds of ammunition when leaving the Cantonments, cartridges were failing already, for their stiffened and frost-bitten fingers dropped more than they discharged, so that the living had soon to supply themselves from the pouches of the dead.

Suddenly a cry of pain escaped General Trecarrel, and he fell heavily from his horse, which swerved madly round, and fled into the Pass, with saddle reversed and bridle trailing. An exclamation of mingled rage and commiseration left the lips of Waller, who glanced back hastily in the humane hope that Mabel did not see this calamity, of which, however, she was so soon to hear.

A ball had pierced her father's body, going fairly through the chest and back, and he was dying in mortal agony, with the blood welling from his mouth and nostrils.

"Rose—Rose and—Mabel!" he muttered, as he slowly lifted his empty arms upward in the air, and then turning fairly round with his face to the snow, amid which his white hair mingled, he expired.

The whole catastrophe occurred in less time than is taken to write of it.

"How shall I break this fresh sorrow to poor Mabel!" said Waller, in a low voice, through his clenched teeth; but he had little time for reflection now, as a shout on the right flank announced the approaching Horse of Amen Oollah Khan, as they swept tumultuously round the pine wood, and came on at a hand-gallop, down ground that was frightfully steep.

"Rally—close to the centre—form company square!" cried Waller, holding his sword aloft. He looked to the rear; the promised support from the 5th Cavalry was not to be seen; but he heard a bugle in the camp sounding the "retire;" thus recalling his skirmishers, a most necessary measure, as a body of more than six hundred Horse, led, as it eventually proved, by Ackbar Khan in person, were now advancing through the Pass.

Waller's company formed a rallying square, and began to retire, still firing, however, while Denzil, assisted by Sergeant Treherne, endeavoured to bring off the body of General Trecarrel, by placing it across the horse of Audley, who had dismounted for that purpose. This caused a delay which proved fatal, as it separated them from their party. Twice the poor corpse slipped from the saddle, and they were in the act of replacing it for a third, time when, with a yell of,

"Shookr-Joor vestie!" (Praise be to God) four Afghan horsemen, riding far in advance of their comrades, were down upon them.

One of these, a gigantic fellow, wearing a flaming yellow head-dress, and a scarlet chogah or cloak, struck off Audley's cocked hat, and grasping him viciously by the hair, dragged his head close to the saddle-lap, intending to cut it off by a slash of his long knife. Audley ran his sword into the bowels of this barbarian's horse. It reared furiously, and threw the rider, whose hold never relaxed, for he and Audley rolled over each other in close and deadly grapple, till Denzil passed his sword through the quivering body of the Afghan—a task which he had to repeat twice, as such fellows are hard to kill, ere he could release and save his kinsman.

Sergeant Treherne shot the second and bayoneted the third, a thrust from whose lance he narrowly escaped; but the fourth, whom a stray shot from the still retiring square had dismounted and wounded in the sword-arm, cried imploringly on his knees,

"Aman! aman!" (quarter—quarter), so Denzil arrested the charged bayonet of Treherne, which in another moment would have pinned him to the earth.

"Retire—retire, I command you both," cried Waller, whose voice was distant now.

"Thank heaven, Audley Trevelyan, I have repaid Sybil's debt to you—we are quits at last," was Denzil's thought, and he was turning away to hasten after the Company, for not a moment could be lost now, if he wished to save his own life, when suddenly he received a dreadful blow on the back part of the head—he heard the explosion of a pistol—the light went out of his eyes, or a darkness seemed to descend upon him; he fell forward on the snow with outspread hands, and remembered no more.

The wretch whose life he had just spared, had felled him to the earth by a stroke from a ponderous iron-butted pistol, and then discharged it at Audley, without effect, however, as the ball missed its object.

Treherne, who by this time had reloaded, shot the Afghan through the head, and then he and Audley Trevelyan had to run for their lives, as by this time the six Ressallahs of advancing Horse were close at hand, and cries of "Ullah ul Alla" loaded the frosty air.

"Poor Devereaux—gone with the rest!" exclaimed Polwhele.

"Yes," said Waller, "how many a poor fellow, gayer and happier than he apparently was, goes into action, confidently believing the bullet is not yet cast that shall floor him, and is shot for all that."

"Well—it may be our turn next, sir," said Sergeant Treherne, philosophically.

Fain would Waller and the rest have made a rally to bring him off dead or alive, at the bayonet's point, together with the body of Trecarrel; but the bugles of the rear-guard—first two, then four at once—were sounding, as if angrily, the order to retire so, to "retire" he was compelled, or sacrifice perhaps his whole Company; and with tears in his eyes, where tears had not been since he was a child, in a white pinafore, at school, he drew off the survivors of the futile skirmish, and rejoined his brigade.

"Where is Papa?" asked an agitated voice. It was Mabel who addressed him, her face whiter, if possible, than ever.

Waller pointed with his sword towards the Pass and mournfully shook his head.

"Wounded?"

"Oh, my darling—killed, and poor young Devereaux, too, I greatly fear."

Mabel heard him as if turned to stone. Rose gone, and now her father too! Poor Denzil she never thought of, for great grief is selfish at times.

"Dearest Mabel," said Waller, "I do not ask you 'to compose yourself,' as people always say in such cases; I am a bad comforter perhaps—can't quote Scripture and all that sort of thing. The poor old man had not many years before him any way, and I can only implore you to submit to the will of God."

But she could only weep upon his breast, heedless of those around them.

"Where was he struck?" she asked, in a choking voice.

"I don't know," replied Waller, looking down.

"Did he die easily?"

"Yes."

Neither of these answers was true: but he knew that details would only harrow her feelings the more.

So the old General was left unburied in the Pass, and Mabel was smoothing caressingly with her fingers and then treasuring in her bosom, a thin lock of his silver hair, which Audley had cut for her, and which recalled the dead so powerfully in presence, as it were, that her heart seemed to brim with tears. There was no relic left of him now save this; unless we add a pair of his pipeclayed gloves, which he had given her to draw over her own for warmth, and somehow, they too seemed to embody his presence, and to bring before her by their very shape, the kind old hands that never tired of caressing her and Rose from infancy—the hands of him who was left without a grave in yonder fatal place, for the army was again in full retreat, and leaving, even as it left all yesterday, its dead and dying on every hand.

Audley thought with intense compassion of Sybil, whose previous bereavement he had learned from Waller; and all unused to grief, he rode among the Staff in a state of utter bewilderment, considering whether he should write her, and if so, in what terms he was to tell her of her loss.

For a time Mabel clung to Waller's neck, in her great despair of mind, like one in dreadful bodily agony. She cared not for onlookers; for the men of the 44th, or the sepoys, with their black glossy wondering eyes.

"Oh, Waller; I have no friend in the world now—no friend but you!" said she, in a strange and weak voice, as she laid her face, thinned and paled by grief and suffering, on his breast.

Waller's bright blue eyes were dry now; but in their expression tenderness alternated with something akin to ferocity, for all this suffering, and all those deaths that were occurring hourly, were the result of Afghan treachery; and his fair English face seemed to darken as he looked back to where Denzil, the General, and so many more were lying, and the interment of whom was impossible. The enemy was coming on, the bugles were sounding for the advance—if a retrograde movement can be called so—and already the whole force was en route towards Khoord Cabul.

Mabel was soon once more on horseback, and rode with the rest of the ladies, many of whom were widows now, and could share their grief with her.

Her heart had

"Fallen too low for special fear;"

to her acute mental misery a kind of apathetic stupor followed, and she was in that state as the Retreat again began.

CHAPTER XX.

IN THE KHYBER PASS.

We almost shrink from the task of telling the story of that awful retreat, in which the Rider on the Pale Horse followed the steps of our troops, so closely, so terribly, and in such ghastly triumph!

All the plans of Ackbar Khan had been long prearranged, and among those, as an intercepted despatch from him to a Ghilzie chief announced, was nothing less than a Holy War, for he adjured all, in the name of the Prophet, "to rise against the infidels, whose chief," he adds, "I have slain with my own hand at Cabul, even, as I trust, in like manner to slay the chief of the Feringhees, Sale, in Jellalabad."

The six hundred Horse that had been seen advancing, were met by two of our officers, Captain Skinner, of the 61st Native Infantry, and Lieutenant Burgoyne, who bore a flag of truce. They demanded what their intentions were; and the fierce Ackbar who rode at their head, muffled in a robe of the costliest furs, played with the lock of a pistol, and seemed with difficulty to restrain himself from using it. However, he replied,

"I have come on the part of the great chiefs of Afghanistan, to escort you as far as Jellalabad; but we demand hostages that you shall march no further on the way than Tezeen, ere Sale Sahib evacuates the city, wherein he has no right to be."

"Wherefore hostages, Khan?" asked Captain Skinner.

"Lest when you effect a junction, you may all come back to Cabul. The lives of the hostages should answer for this, and I take yours in the meantime, as an earnest thereof!"

And as he spoke, he drew his pistol, and deliberately shot poor Skinner through the head; so Burgoyne, full of rage and pity, returned with the message alone.

Notwithstanding this new crime, other interviews took place, and ultimately Major Pottinger and two other officers were given up as hostages; but all this pretended diplomacy was merely a trick on the part of Ackbar to cause delay, until he got the lower portion of the Khyber Pass manned completely by the armed tribes, and even barricaded by felled trees against our retreat, for the force was too slender now to admit of having skirmishes or scouting parties moving along the summits of the cliffs, collaterally with the retiring column.

"Yield who may," was the cry of Waller and many others, "we at least, as Englishmen, as British soldiers, shall fight our way through the passes with courage, discipline, and the fury of despair. All cannot perish; come on, lads—forward!"

"Forward—steady, Jack Sepoy!" the Queen's troops would call to those of the East India Company.

But it was now urged by the Sirdir, that the wild hordes in possession of the passes, and over whom he pretended to have no control, would destroy all the women and children; and, fearing that such a calamity could only be escaped by some diplomacy and an affectation of trust in Ackbar, General Elphinstone, then at the point of death, and therefore heedless what fate was in store for him, gave himself up as a hostage, together with most of the principal officers, the whole of the ladies, children, and wounded, who were immediately conveyed back to Cabul; and the doomed army once more resumed its march, while famine and disease added to the horror of the occasion; "but when men destroy each other without pity, why should not Death come and lend them a hand?"

The reader may imagine the emotions of Waller, of the officers, and other Europeans, when they saw their wives and daughters, or those they loved as well, separated from them, to become the hostages for a certain military movement, the guests, the captives—it might too probably be the victims—of a barbarian prince. Many may yet remember the fear, shame, and compassion this event, the sequel to a series of blunders, excited at home, when tidings came of their abandonment, and the fate of our troops, whose terrible career we have scarcely the heart to follow.

The parting of Mabel and Waller was bitter, though in her soul the bitterness of death itself seemed past, and her tears were such as seem to come from the heart; but others as well as she were parting from their dearest, and there is a strange communion in grief.

Ackbar conveyed his prizes back to the city, treating them with apparent kindness, for he considered white women nearly as valuable as the horses of the Usbec Tartars; but by that time nearly all the babes at the breast and the little toddling things that made many a father proud and mother happy, had perished, even as the strong man perished, for in some places the snow was so deep, that soldiers disappeared bodily into it, and were never, never seen again.

Ackbar probably meant to keep them all till richly ransomed, for he was overheard to say to Amen Oollah Khan, in his hypocritical way,—

"What saith the Koran? 'Unto such of your slaves as desire a written instrument, allowing them to redeem themselves, on paying a certain sum, write one, if ye know good in them, and give them of the riches of God, which he hath given you.'"

"But, by the soul of him who wrote these words," replied Amen Oollah, "I would not give up that damsel with the red, golden hair for less than a crore of rupees."

As a crore is ten lacs of rupees, a high value seemed to be set on poor Mabel Trecarrel, who was here indicated.

In the deep shadowy gorges of those winding passes, through which the route of the troops lay for miles, the impending cliffs were covered by clouds of yellow-turbaned Khyberees and Ghilzies, who poured down upon them a remorseless and incessant fire of musketry, and in some places from caverns which were full of juzailchees. In others they daringly rushed in bands into the ranks of the weary and half-famished soldiers, whose ammunition was nearly expended, and made there a terrible use of their swords and long daggers; and thus, at a place called the Jungle Tarechee, or Dark Pass, the whole of the 54th Native Infantry were destroyed. There, too, fell Graham and Ravelstoke.

The dead were always stripped, and then mutilated, or terribly gashed with wounds.

"Death to the infidel dogs—death! death!" were the incessant cries by which these fanatics inspired each other.

"What says the Koran?" cried one whose camise was literally steeped in blood; "'it is unlawful to plunder the living,' but there is no prohibition about the dead; so death to them all!"

The fugitives were so wedged en masse in the narrow way, that every shot told fearfully. All along that route, many a wounded soldier, as he fell behind, gave to some favourite comrade the last words that he, poor Bob, or Bill, or Jack, was never fated to carry home; many a dying officer gave his papers, ring, or locket to the friend who, in a few minutes later, was also stretched on the ensanguined snow.

At one brief halt a few ponies were killed and devoured raw!

All hope was dead now in every heart, yet on they struggled—on, and on—till a place called Jugdulluck was reached, and then in all the sullenness of fury and despair, the wretched survivors, Horse, Foot, and Artillerymen, resolved to make a resolute stand. Cheering wildly, as if to welcome death and the foe together, the poor fellows stood shoulder to shoulder, many bleeding with undressed wounds, all breathless and flushed, their eyes gleaming, their once comely English faces distorted by hate and bitterness.

In sheets of lead the heavy juzail balls tore through them on every hand, and they fell faster than ever. Her Majesty's 44th Regiment was now reduced to two hundred men, and every man of the two hundred perished where he stood. But this bravery enabled some of the other corps to proceed farther, and the last final stand was made by those unhappy men on the morning of the 13th January, on the knoll of Gundamuck, when twenty officers, sixty soldiers, and three hundred camp-followers alone survived.

Polwhele was the first who fell here; two balls pierced his chest; and there, too, perished all that remained of Waller's Company. If the fire slackened a moment, the clash of knife and bayonet was heard, with many a yell and groan.

"Dear Bob," cried Polwhele to Waller, as he lay choking in blood, "if you cannot carry me out of the field, take my sword and this ring for my—my poor mother."

But Waller could do neither, for over Polwhele's body there thickly fell a heap of killed and wounded.

After his ammunition was expended, Sergeant Treherne, whom rage and desperation inspired with a fury resembling madness, laid wildly about him, and with the heel of his musket dashed out the brains of more than one tall Afghan. This stalwart son of the Mines had come of a race that in their time had been greater men than miners in Cornwall—Huelwers, who were rulers then in the land before, perhaps, a stone of Windsor or Westminster had been laid; and now he stood like a hero on that fatal knoll of Gundamuck, beating down the foe with the butt-end of his clubbed weapon, till he fell, riddled with bullets, upon the corpses of his comrades.

Seeing all lost, Waller, his heart swollen almost to bursting, had now to seek his own safety. Concealed by the smoke and some wild pistachio trees, he found shelter in a cavern, though fearing that traces of his footsteps in the snow might lead to his discovery, and there he lay on the cold rocky floor, more dead than alive with excess of emotion and all he had undergone, panting, feeble, and well nigh breathless.

He had only his sword now, and even if he escaped the Afghans, wolves, bears, or hyænas—the mountains teemed with all of them—might come upon him in the night.

Being well mounted, Audley Trevelyan and two medical officers effected their escape, but were closely pursued by Amen Oollah Khan, and compelled to separate. One was overtaken and slain within four miles of Jellalabad. Audley's horse was shot under him, and he concealed himself till nightfall in a nullah or ravine.*

* At Gundamuck "the enemy rushed in with drawn knives, and with the exception of two officers and four men, the whole of this doomed band fell victims to the sanguinary mob."—Memorials of Afghanistan, Calcutta, 1843.

Long prior to this event, Colonel Dennie, of the 13th, made a curiously prophetic speech. "His words were, 'you'll see that not a soul will escape from Cabul except one man, and he will come to tell us that the rest are destroyed."—Sale's Brigade.

Ackbar Khan is said to have uttered a similar prediction.

The despatches record that of all the sixteen thousand five hundred who marched from the Cantonments of Cabul, ninety miles distant, Dr. Brydone, a Scottish medical officer of the Shah's service, bleeding, faint, covered with wounds, and carrying a broken sword in his hand, alone reached the city of Sir Robert Sale's garrison; but Trevelyan came in four hours after, to confirm his terrible tidings of the total destruction of our army and all its followers, for all who were not slain were made slaves by the captors.

CHAPTER XXI.

WALLER'S ADVENTURES.

"Run to earth at last!" groaned Bob Waller, whose subsequent perils were so varied and remarkable that they alone, if fully detailed, might fill a volume.

In that cavern or fissure, one of the many which abound in the rocks there, he lay the whole day, untraced and undiscovered, for the Afghans, after having stripped and mutilated in their usual fashion, the dead on the snow-covered knoll, had retired. He knew that he was only sixteen miles from that bourne they had all hoped to reach—Sale's little garrison in Jellalabad, and that if he ever attained it at all, the attempt must be made in the night. He was without a guide; he knew not the way, and his dress and complexion would render him to every shepherd, wayfarer, and marauding horseman, apparent, as a Feringhee and an enemy.

The whole affair, the retreat, and the result of it, seems to be what a French writer describes as "one of those especial visitations of Fate, which draw on the devoted to their ruin, and which it is impossible for virtue to resist, or human wisdom to foresee."

After seven days and nights of incessant fighting; after the perpetual ringing of musketry, the yells of the Afghans, the varied cries of those who perished in agony under their hands; after all the truly infernal uproar and mad excitement in those dark and narrow Passes, the unbroken silence around him now, seemed intense and oppressive. He could almost imagine that he heard it; stirred though it was only by the low hum of insect life among the withered leaves and coss, or wild mountain grass, that lay drifted by the wind in heaps within the cave, and on which he lay so sad and weary.

"Now," thought he, after some hours had passed, "now that this horrible row is all over, I'll have a quiet weed—smoke a peaceful calumet of Cavendish;" and he drew the materials therefor from the pocket of his poshteen.

Waller had always been solicitous about the colouring of that same calumet, as he styled his meerschaum pipe, which, by the bye, had been a gift from his friend Polwhele—poor Jack Polwhele—who was lying under that ghastly pile of dead on the knoll, where his jovial soul had ebbed through his death-wound, and where in his kind heart, and on his pallid lips, as he breathed his last, his mother's name had mingled with that of his God;—and so, as Waller smoked amid the silence and gloom of the wintry eve, tears rolled over his cheek—the bitter tears of a brave man's rage and grief.

This was not war but carnage!

To Waller it seemed as if a gory curtain had fallen between him and all his past life. Where were now his companions of the parade, the mess, and the race-course? Where the brave rank and file, that had stood by him shoulder to shoulder, and every man of whom deemed Captain Waller a friend, as much as an officer? Where were the faces and voices of all he had known and loved? As he lay there alone in cold and darkness, his emotions were somewhat akin to those described as being felt by the last man, when the whitening skeletons of nations were around him, and when all the human world had—himself excepted—passed away.

"Mabel and Rose—my own Mabel, where is she?" he muttered again and again.

Love left his heart with her; she was, like others, a hostage—a thing unheard of in modern wars;—a prisoner—too probably a victim! In such terrible hands, what worse fate could she have? She had been diplomatically torn from him, by a treaty that proved futile, and which cast dishonour on our arms. Duty had compelled him to march with his men; for the stern duty of the soldier had to rise superior to the soft affection of the lover, and now he was there alone, with the memory of her last tearful kiss lingering on his lips.

"My beautiful darling—my loved, my lost Mabel!" murmured the usually matter-of-fact Waller; "oh, why were you reft from me? God," he added, looking up imploringly in the gathering gloom, "shall we ever meet again?"

He knew that no fear of future vengeance would deter the Afghans from committing any outrage on their captives. In their utter ignorance of the locality, the nature, and vast resources of Britain, they can form no correct idea of her power by sea or land. They vaguely know all Europe by the general term of Feringhistan, or the Country of the Franks; and that ships from there come to Bombay and Bassora (the Bassora of Sindbad the Sailor), to Madras, and Calcutta; and that a Queen rules one portion of it—a dreary island somewhere in the sea; and their learned Moollahs were wont to assert, that her red soldiers, by their close resemblance to each other, the extreme similarity of their uniform and motions, must all be the sons of one mother.

An intense thirst, which successive handfuls of snow failed to allay, hunger, and extreme cold from lying so long in that dark den in such a season, made Waller hail the descending night, and with sombre satisfaction he quitted his lurking place, to seek on foot the road to Jellalabad.

"In England," thought he, "the Poor Law guardians have studied at times to discover upon how little mankind can be kept alive; and there have been learned philosophers who declared it possible for people to exist without food at all! By Jove, I wish they had been on this retreat from Cabul, and all their problems would soon have been solved."

He heard now the voices of the jackals revelling over their ghastly meal on the hill of Gundamuck, and shudderingly he turned away in the opposite direction. Snow covered all the country; but the footsteps and horse tracks of those who had pursued Doctor Brydone were, for a time, a sufficient indication of the route he was to follow. He had lost his shako in the late conflict, but the loonghee of a dead Afghan supplied its place.

The night was clear; the deep blue sky was full of brilliant stars; around him the stupendous mountains of the Khyber range towered on either side of the way in silence and solemnity, that proved something awful to the then oppressed mind of the poor fugitive, who wished from his soul that he had been as dark in complexion and as black of eye as his friend Polwhele; for Waller's face and hair were of the thorough Saxon type, and hence any attempt to pass himself off as a fair-visaged Oriental was impossible, for swarthy indeed is the fairest of them. He had never possessed such a hand-book as "Afghani before breakfast," or "without a master," if such a thing ever existed; but he had contrived to pick up enough of the strange polyglot medley forming the language of the natives, to have aided any disguise, could he have found one.

Voices and the clatter of hoofs, the latter partially deadened by the snow, fell on his ear, before he had proceeded a mile; and, on the whiteness that stretched in distance far away before him, appeared the dark figures of a group of mounted men approaching rapidly.

Near the roadside there stood, and doubtless still stands, a little musjid, or temple, and over its tiny dome one giant poplar towered skyward, like a dark gothic spire. The strangers might halt and pray there, profuse piety being an element in the Afghan character; but it was equally probable they might not; so, as it was his only hope of concealment, he hastened to avail himself of it—but too late; he was already observed, and a series of wild shouts made his heart sicken, as the horsemen came galloping up, unslinging from their backs their long juzails as they advanced.

These people proved to be Amen Oollah Khan, a warrior known as Zohrab Zubberdust (i.e., the overbearing), and others, who had that forenoon pursued Doctor Brydone almost to the gates of Jellalabad, and, on the way, murdered his hapless companion, Doctor Harper, whose horse had failed him within four miles of the city. They were richly accoutred; each had a gilded shield slung on his back, and wore a round steel cap, furnished with a flap of chain-mail covering the neck, and two upright points, like spear heads, that glittered in the starlight.

"Death to the Kaffir! death to the Feringhee!" they cried with one accord.

"I am no Kaffir," replied Walter (standing on the steps of the musjid, and ready to sell his life dearly), "but a Mussulman, like yourselves."

"Liar, and son of a liar! I see the dress of a red Feringhee under your poshsteen," said Amen Oollah, and in succession he, Zohrab, and two others, snapped their matchlocks at him; but they had become so foul by recent and incessant use, that the balls had been forced down with difficulty, the powder and matches were alike damp, and fortunately not one would explode.

"Hah!" said Waller, with great presence of mind, though fearing he might be recognised by Amen Oollah, who had frequently seen him in the streets of Cabul, "you see that the hand of the Prophet interposes, and does not permit you to kill me."

"We shall soon prove that," replied the Khan, unsheathing his sabre; but impressed, nevertheless, by what seemed the genuine belief in fatalism, which is a peculiarity of the Mohammedan faith; so he deliberately placed the edge on Waller's throat, and said—

"To the proof of what you assert. If you are a Mussulman, repeat the Kulma; if in one word, however small, you fail, your head and heels shall lie together on the snow."

Waller had his own sword drawn, and was prepared to run it through the heart of Amen Oollah if he felt himself failing. It was a critical moment; he knew that the edge of an Afghan sabre was sharp as a razor; he felt that he was never born to be a religious martyr; so thinking in his heart—as, perhaps, the great Galileo thought, when in the bonds of the Inquisition—"May God forgive me!" by a little stretch of memory he repeated the entire Kulma, or creed of Mohammed, on which Amen Oollah seemed satisfied, and sheathed his sword. But now Zohrab Zubberdust, a handsome and dashing Afghan gentleman, one of those soldiers of fortune who possessed only his sword and his horse, and thus served Ackbar Khan for three rupees per diem, said,—

"Khan Sahib, how comes a true believer to have a face and beard so fair?"

"A Persian taught me to dye my beard yellow; and as for my face, I am a Turk of Stamboul," replied Waller, boldly.

As not one of them had ever seen a Turk of Feringhistan, these answers seemed to perplex them.

"Then why here?" asked Zohrab, suspiciously.

"I served Shah Sujah, and have left him, for fate is against him, and he shall never reign in Afghanistan," said Waller, thinking in his heart, "How many falsehoods must I tell to deceive these artful savages?"

"You are right," said Amen Oollah, grimly; "but as we deem that in serving the Shah you have been guilty of a crime, I give you as a slave to Nouradeen Lai. You shall help him to plough the land."

"Salaam and thanks, Khan Sahib—I have need of a sturdy servant, as I shot one in a fit of passion lately," said a horseman, a powerfully built and venerable looking Afghan, to whose horse-girth Waller speedily found himself attached by a rope which was passed round his waist. To resist, would be simply to court death; and he was thus conducted, a prisoner, into a valley of the mountains. In fact, his captors were probably too glutted with slaughter to kill him, and so spared him for the time. But he felt that his existence would be at the caprice of his owner, Nouradeen Lai, whose first act of power was to take away his regimental sword and belt, after another acquisitive Afghan had possessed himself of his gold repeater, his purse and rings.

"What fools, and sons of burnt fathers, you Feringhees were to come among us here in Afghanistan, to put upon our throne a king we loathed, in lieu of Dost Mohammed," said Nouradeen, as they proceeded; "you will now know how true it is, that though two Dervishes may sleep on one carpet, two kings cannot reign in one kingdom. But the will of God be cdone! The whole world depends upon fate and fortune. It is one man's destiny to be depressed—the other's to be exalted."

"Canting old humbug!" thought Waller, who learned ere long that his agricultural owner was especially a man of proverbs, like Sancho Panza.

The farmer, and two other horsemen, with much ceremony bade adieu to Amen Oollah Khan; but the latter only waved his hand and said—

"Adieu till we meet again—most likely before Jellalabad," and, with his armed followers, galloped into that terrible pass, where an entire army, with all its debris, strewed the way for miles upon miles, back even into the gates of the burned cantonments.

"So those rascals think of beating up Sale's garrison," thought Waller, with reference to the parting words of the Khan.

As Nouradeen entered the hedgerows which bordered the compounds of his farm-house and yard, he unslung his juzail, which seemed in somewhat better order than those of his companions, and, wheeling half round in his saddle, fired a shot rearward, Parthian-wise, and brought down a large eagle that was soaring high in mid air.

"Steel commands everything, and now in addition to the steel—the swords and lances of our forefathers—we have bullets, praised be God!" he exclaimed, flourishing his clumsy old matchlock, exactly such a weapon as might have figured at Marston Moor, or the field of Kilsythe.

Perceiving that the shot excited Waller's admiration, he drew a long brass pistol from his girdle, urged his horse to full speed, and a picturesque figure he seemed, with his flowing robes and magnificent beard floating on the wind. He then threw a lemon over his head, and, twisting his body completely round to the left, fired at it from the off flank of his horse, and pierced it as it was in the act of falling.

"Now," said he, with a grim smile, "should you attempt to escape without ransom, my ball will follow you thus surely—yea, did go far as the arrow of Arish, which was shot at sunrise, and did not fall till sunset. A soldier, you should remember, that even were you to conquer all the world, death at last will conquer you."

"It is unlawful to make a slave of a true believer," said Waller.

"One may repeat the Kulma, and not be a very true believer after all," replied the shrewd old Afghan, with a gleam of intense cunning in his glittering eyes; "nay, nor even a Turk of Roum," he added, meaning Constantinople; and hence Waller knew that he was suspected.

The farmer's wife—Nouradeen Lai had but one helpmate—saw how pale and wan their prisoner looked, and speedily set some food before him; a pillau of rice, dhye (or sour curds), odious stuff, which he ate with his fingers in the fashion of the country. One or two of "Malcolm's plums" (as the Persians and Afghans call the potato), with a little ghee or clarified butter, completed his simple repast. As he ate, falling to without uttering "Bismillah!" an omission which his captors did not fail to remark, he thought that cookery must be a sublime science at home—a veritable branch of the fine arts; but hunger is ever an excellent seasoning to any meal.

The snow had now begun to melt fast, and for four days Waller was kept a close prisoner, without a chance of escape, though he brooded over it incessantly, and writhed in spirit to be thus detained from his duty in Jellalabad, where doubtless the task of vengeance—it might be the deliverance of the unhappy hostages—had already begun. Besides, he was intensely bored by the hypocrisy of having to enact the part of Mussulman, by the pretended prayers and genuflexions, upon a piece of coarse felt, for the old man Nouradeen watched him closely. In all this Waller salved his conscience by the conviction that one is scarcely answerable for an act committed under a power one cannot resist.

On the morning of the fifth day the hills appeared in all their greenery; the sunshine was bright, and the atmosphere was clear and calm.

"The snow is gone," said Nouradeen; "when spring comes, the bones of your people will be whitening like ivory among the long green grass in the passes of the Khyber and Khoord Cabul."

These words came fearfully and literally true, as the Afghans never interred one of the slain.

"But sit not there so moodily," he added to Waller; "grieve not over that which is broken, lost or burnt; after prayer we go to plough; come with me."

"Willingly," replied Waller, and his breast filled with a hope that was soon extinguished; for when he found himself between the stilts of the Afghan plough, which was of the most primitive construction, and drawn by two oxen—a machine of the mode of working which he was utterly ignorant—he perceived a little old humpbacked fellow, armed with a loaded juzail, watching all his movements, and with an expression of face which showed how much he longed for some sign of an attempt to escape, and Waller, remembering the skill of the farmer with his firearms, resolved not to risk it.

He managed to direct the team, and for a few hours it occupied his mind. Waller ploughing!—Waller, the crack man, the pattern officer, the best round-dancer in the Cornish Light Infantry—he felt the situation to be intensely ludicrous, and he could have laughed but for the circumstances the situation represented—and the dreadful doubt that hung over the fate of Mabel, of Rose, and others; and frequently he paused and looked wistfully towards the hills, as he thought that, but for yonder old Mohammedan beast, with his cocked matchlock, he should make a clean pair of heels and be off. Anyway, through his ignorance of the task in hand, and the pre-occupation of his thoughts, Bob's furrows had all the curved line of beauty, and would have made a Scottish ploughman, so vain of his straight lines, faint on the spot.

So the fifth day passed and he had but one thought, the yearning to see Mabel, with the haunting terror of all she might be enduring, and that he might never see her more!

Learning by chance that he was to be secured to the plough by an iron chain the next day, he determined that, come what might, he should escape in the night. Unarmed, he had but his courage and strategy to rely upon, in a country where all men's hands were against the European, where the laws have little force, and where whatever morality there is among the people, it depends entirely upon their religious sentiments and their attachment to their khans or chiefs. Two hundred years ago, an Englishman might have found himself in pretty much the same predicament in some parts of the Scottish Highlands.

On examining the chimney of the apartment in which he was confined, he found that although the barred windows defied egress and ingress alike, he might achieve a passage to the external air by removing the bricks of unburnt clay, of which the wall was composed. He proceeded to pick out the lime with a nail softly, after darkness had set in, and after removing one, the cold night breeze from the Khyber hills blew gratefully upon his flushed face.

Another and another were speedily removed now, and in less than half an hour—during which he frequently paused with a palpitating heart, lest he might make some unlucky sound or be discovered by old Lai—he had achieved an aperture wide enough by which to creep out. He did so, and drew a long breath, as if he respired more freely now. All was still, and the darkness was profound as the silence, and a prayer of thankfulness rose to the lips of Waller, as he quitted the compound around the farmer's establishment and hastened towards the hills, with the full knowledge that in whatever direction he went, some hours must elapse before his flight could be discovered, and there was no snow by which to track his footsteps.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHANCE BETTER THAN DESIGN.

He was unarmed, but he never thought of the wild animals which abound on the hills and in the forests of Afghanistan. Lions are rare; but tigers, hyænas, bears, and wolves are plentiful enough, and the terrible passes of the Khyber mountains had peculiar attractions for the latter now. Yet Waller's sole anxiety was to avoid, not these, but their rivals in cruelty, the natives.

He had no guide; but he knew, by the way the range of mountains rose between him and the sky, that the great plain or vale, wherein Jellalabad is situated, and which has an average breadth of ten miles, must, when he quitted the farm-gate, lie on his right hand and not on his left. Other indication he had none, and he set out in the hope of being within sight of its walls by daybreak, or at least soon after.

The improved appearance of the highway as he proceeded, afforded proof that it led to some large city, and he pressed on with a confident and hopeful heart, sometimes between orchards containing a profusion of apple, plum, quince, and pomegranate trees, which the coming summer should see in full bloom and bearing. Now and then, softly, almost breathlessly, he would pass the skirts, but never through the straggling street, of a village, such being usually closed at each end by gates; and occasionally he crossed a little brawling stream, a tributary of the Cabul, spanned by pretty bridges of stone, ornamented with tiny towers at each end.

Anon some pariah dog, prowling out of doors—for the poor dog is in great disrepute among Mohammedans—would bay out upon the night breeze, causing him to pause and shrink for concealment close to the nearest tree or hedgerow. And now, with growing hope and heartiness, he had proceeded from the mountain-farm fully five coss, or ten English miles, on the Jellalabad road when day began to dawn on the mighty peaks of the Khyber range, and the ruddy sunlight stole gradually down their slopes into the gloomy passes and rocky ravines which intersect and separate them.

When day was fairly in, Waller began to think of seeking a place of concealment till night again fell, when he felt certain that a few miles more along that open highway must eventually bring him to some gate of Jellalabad; but an abrupt turn of the road brought him suddenly upon a village, the gates of which stood open. There in the little street some armed horsemen were grouped around a well, and many people were astir previous to departing to their work in the fields; for all the country there is beautifully cultivated, and ever covered by a profusion of the richest vegetation.

He was seen; there was a shout—spurs were applied to the horses, flight was impossible, and in half a minute he was again a prisoner, the lances levelled at his throat menacing him with death.

"A Kaffir—a Feringhee! kill him, kill him!" cried the villagers, male and female, as they crowded in wild tumult around him; even the tawny children raised their little hands against the weary wanderer, for the place was the abode of Ghazees, the wildest of Mohammedan fanatics.

"Bismillah! there is one yet alive!" exclaimed a horseman.

"But what said Ackbar Khan?—may the sun be his star, the new moon his stirrup-iron—one was to be left to tell the tale," exclaimed another, mercifully interposing his lance between Waller and the others; "and this is he."

"Nay, one Kaffir has already got into Jellalabad—it is enough; let us have this one's head," was the general cry which rose to a mingled yell, and dark eyes flashed, and white teeth were ground around him. So poor Waller began to fear that he was the 'last man' after all, and worse off than when ploughing for old Nouradeen Lai. However, he kept close to the young chief who seemed disposed to protect him, and who was accoutred with a steel cap and shield.

"The Prophet wrote at birth on each man's brow the day he was to die, and your time is to-day, O Kaffir!" exclaimed one, making a vicious thrust with his gaily tasselled lance, which, had it not been struck up by his protector's hand, had ended Waller's career there and then.

"What business has a dog of a Feringhee with such a beard as that?" cried a woman; "it is unendurable."

"I didn't make it," said Waller, simply.

"Oho. This is the Toorkoman of Roum!" said the young horseman with the steel cap, in whom Waller now recognised Zohrab Zubberdust; "he has escaped from old Nouradeen Lai; well—he shall not escape from me. These Feringhees are excellent grooms, and I want one. Bismillah! it is written—let us go—I shall protect you."

Like many a Christian, Zubberdust the Mussulman had the spirit of avarice and treachery in his heart; but as an Afghan mountaineer it was tempered with something of honour; for, strange to say, honour may exist among Mohammedans, as well as among Christians, without an atom of morality.

So Waller found himself marched off in a direction precisely opposite to that which he had been pursuing; and he had the additional tantalisation of seeing, about six miles distant, the picturesque Bala Hissar, or citadel of Jellalabad, which he could recognise from an engraving he had once seen; and ere midday he was conveyed by Zubberdust and his people to one of the numerous little castles or fortlets called kotes, that stud all the country in the neighbourhood of the city, which has always been the winter residence of the kings of Cabul; and there he was set at once to groom the horses, with a distinct notice that if he attempted to quit the fort, which was a square edifice furnished with a round loopholed tower at each angle, and surrounded by a wet ditch, wherein innumerable pink and white water lilies floated, he would be shot without mercy.

Before the gate were two brass six-pounder guns, taken from Elphinstone's unfortunate army.

Waller acquiesced with a groan in his breast. Well, thought he, working as a groom and rubbing down Zubberdust's beautiful horse, which had come from the land of the Usbec Tartars, was more congenial than ploughing; and hope suggested that the very animal he tended might gain him liberty; but his new master seemed to be merely a visitor at the fort, which belonged to an old Hazir Bashi of the King's Guards, and after remaining there for ten days, he departed to rejoin Amen Oollali Khan. Prior to doing so, with great liberality he presented Waller, as an excellent groom, to a wealthy grazier of camels, named Jubar Khan, who was passing that way with several of these solemn-looking quadrupeds and some yaboos or Cabul ponies, which he meant to dispose of in Bhokara.

Seeing that Waller appeared crushed by the prospect before him, Zohrab said, ere he went,

"Think yourself happy, for if Ackbar Khan were to get you, he might do as he has done to others, chain you to a stone in a vault, dark and cheerless as the tomb of a miser. Dogs!" he added, true to his overbearing nature: "you came hither thinking to make us crumb-eaters of Shah Sujah! Bah! the cup of the covetous, saith the proverb, is filled with the dust of the grave. And where lie the covetous now? in the passes of Khoord Cabul!"

With something of despair gathering in his heart, Waller set forth in company with the grazier and others whom the latter employed as syces, and who were all well armed.

To dissemble he felt was his best plan, and he affected such perfect cheerfulness, made himself so useful in tending, watering, and grooming the camels and ponies, that he quickly won the entire goodwill and confidence of Jubar Khan, so much so that, after journeying for three days towards the hills of Hindoo Kush, on a valuable camel falling quite lame, he actually left Waller in care of it, at a species of camp formed by some Afghan shepherds and their families, whose tents of coarse black camlet were pitched in a sheltered spot by the bank of a beautiful stream.

Jubar Khan passed on his way, desiring Waller, in whose skill he trusted much, to rejoin him with the camel on a certain day at a khan or caravanserai among the mountains,—one of those one-storied, quadrangular edifices, full of bare rooms, built by the wayside for the accommodation of travellers, and the erection of which is considered one of the most meritorious acts that a Hindoo or Mussulman can perform.

Waller gladly saw the dark figures of Jubar Khan, his people and property, vanish into a pass of the mountains, where they seemed to go right into the setting sun, which shed through it a blaze of crimson light; and then he set himself zealously to tend the ailing camel, in the hope that when well he should depart therewith on a journey of his own. In three days the camel was quite restored; but on the morning of the fourth, when Waller went as usual to groom it, the animal was gone!

It had been stolen in the night, by whom, all pretended ignorance; and Waller, who immediately affected great anxiety to rejoin his master the grazier, was told that he must remain where he was, "as a hostage for the missing camel, and that as so excellent a groom could not be an indifferent shepherd, he would be useful in tending the sheep."

A crook was put in his hand, a brass lotah for drinking, a few chupatties for food were given him, and he was set to watch a flock of dhoombas, or those Persian sheep that have tails nearly a foot broad, are almost entirely composed of fat, and form the most valuable stock of those nomadic dwellers in tents among whom he now found himself. By the poor agriculturists he was however treated with great kindness.

Farther than ever from Jellalabad now, without money, arms, or a horse, his clothes in rags, his boots almost worn away, Bob Waller sat like one in a stupor by the side of a rivulet that trickled through the pasture where the sheep were grazing; and as he looked from the green mountains to the black tents that dotted their slope, he asked of himself, whether his present existence or his past was the dream.

"So here have fate and the fortune of war cast me! a Turk, a ploughman, a groom, a shepherd," he sighed; "by Jove! what the deuce shall I be next? The ancient sceptics doubted the reality of everything—and I begin to think they were right."

All was still, save when a stork or crow alighted on the granite rocks that overhung the mountain rivulet, or a fleet antelope shot like a spirit across the valley; and so would pass the weary day, Bob Waller not watching the sheep, but the mountain shadows, changing from the eastward to the westward, while he sighed for a glass of Madeira and a biscuit, a glass of pale ale and a "quiet weed," and thought of the old time of tiffin in the jolly mess-bungalow, and the faces of those he should never see there again.

At night, crouching on a piece of xummal (or coarse blanket) and covered with sheepskins, Waller would dream at times of Mabel's bright face and merry laugh; but more often, perhaps, of those terrible seven days and seven nights of the retreat through the snowy passes, where the living trod sullenly, doggedly, on over the dead, till they too fell, to be trod on in turn. Horrid phantoms haunted him. Had he outlived, out-trodden all? Alas, it almost seemed so. Shots would seem to ring in his drowsy ear, and he fancied it was the Afghan juzailchees again; anon he would think himself at home in pleasant Cornwall; that he was after the brown pheasants within sight of the sounding sea, or among the quails on wild and rugged Lundy Isle; and then he would start to wakefulness and lie for hours, revolving in his mind the means, the chances of reaching Jellalabad; but, alas! so much time had elapsed, that he might only reach it to find that the garrison had abandoned it to save the hostages from death, or that the city was besieged by the victorious Afghans!

But now he was to have a proof of how often chance was better than the deepest laid design.

Joharah, the wife of the shepherd with whom Jubar Khan had left him, and whose name when translated signifies "a jewel," was a woman of singular kindness of heart, sweetness of disposition, and not without moderate pretensions to beauty. She was unusually kind to Waller, and did all in her power to alleviate the wretched condition to which fate had reduced him. Her husband was wont to boast that "she knew the language of the birds," and hence that they would inform her if Waller attempted to escape, for to understand the language of the feathered tribe was peculiarly one of the boasted sciences of the Arabians. The art is frequently referred to in the "Thousand and One Nights," and tradition records that Balkis, Queen of Sheba, had a lapwing which conveyed all her messages verbally to King Solomon. Waller could have smiled on being told all this; and he wished in his soul he had no other informants to dread than the birds that twittered about the valley.

Joharah, the Afghan woman, had remarked the growing depression that seemed to prey upon the spirit of Waller, and she was not without some interest in him, for the fairness of the European complexion contrasted in her eye pleasantly and favourably with the extreme darkness of the people around her. She had more than once detected him with a lock of Mahel Trecarrel's bright brown hair in his fingers, and with a woman's acuteness she speedily divined that thereby hung "a tale." One day she surprised him thus occupied when he was seated moodily and alone under a pistachio tree that grew near where their tents were pitched. Approaching softly, she laid a hand timidly on his shoulder, and after glancing hastily about to see if they were observed, she bent her dark bright eyes on his, and said—

"I dreamt of you last night."

"Of me?"

"Yes; even by the side of my husband," she added, with a smile, that was not without a dash of coquetry in it.

"Indeed!" replied Waller, perplexed, and fearing that if this was the prelude to a flirtation, his troubles would be thereby seriously increased.

"I saw you clad in green, our holy colour, and accept that as a sign that I must befriend you, and send you to her you love."

"I thank you; 'to her I love,' repeated Waller tremulously, while a flush suffused his cheek.

"You are very sad and gentle," said Joharah.

"The thoughts of her make me so," said Waller.

"Ah! the perfume of her presence is about you still," said the Afghan woman in her figurative language; "she has been unto you what the rose was to the piece of clay in the little story of Sadee."

"I do not understand you."

"'One day,' says Sadee, 'when I was in the bath, a friend of mine put into my hand a piece of sweetly scented clay. I took it between my fingers, and said,

"'Art thou musk or ambergris, for thy perfume charms me?'

"'I was but a humble piece of clay,' it replied; 'but I was some time in the society of a rose; the sweet quality of my companion was communicated to me, otherwise I should be only a bit of clay, as I appear to be.' So has it been with you."

"Perhaps so," replied Waller, smiling at this strange anecdote.

"It is Jellalabad you would reach?"

"Yes; how far are we from it?"

"Fifty cosses."

"A hundred of our miles!" thought Waller, and his spirit sank.

"Undisguised, you can never escape my husband's people, or hope to reach it safely; but I shall provide for all that."

"You will not deceive me?" said Waller anxiously, as he feared some snared

"No, I swear it; be of good courage and you shall soon be safe."

The following day, when most of the shepherds had gone to prayer at a musjid among the mountains, leaving the women and female children behind, as the sexes never pray together in the mosques, she conducted Waller into the inner portion of their tent—her own apartment—where discovery would have ensured him instant death. With scissors she clipped off closely his long fair beard and mustaches; she stained his face, ears, and neck with walnut juice and wood ashes; his hair she disguised by smearing it with more ashes and ghee—a process under which Waller, usually so dainty in his toilet, rather winced. She took away and buried his poshteen and tattered uniform, and made him, in its place, put on the red dress of a Hindoo Fakir. She slung a brass drinking lotah to his girdle of cord, gave him some chupatties and other food, and, placing a staff in his hand, showed him the route to pursue, a narrow path among the mountains, by which he could avoid a rencontre with the returning shepherds, and strike on the direct road for Jellalabad.

Waller's heart was filled with genuine gratitude; but he had only his earnest thanks to bestow on this good woman, who hastened his departure; and in less than two hours after she had thus transformed him, he had left the black tents of the shepherds several miles behind him.

In no other disguise than this could he have been so safe from discovery. In the character of a Fakir he might beg with impunity, revile and anathematise with a vociferation that inspired terror, or he might remain obstinately silent, according to the pretended humour or real emergency of the moment. Thus, as none might dare to question his motives, his supposed sacred calling rendered him safe alike from interruption, inquiry, or suspicion, and he went on his way rejoicing.

He had many strange and quaint adventures, but encountered no more perils by the way he had to pursue on foot. His great stature and sturdy figure won him the special favour of the women, particularly of those with whom he conversed at the wayside wells; and in many instances he discovered that pleasant little perquisites must often fall to the share of Fakirs and Dervishes; for ladies contended for the honour of feeding him, and pressed upon him tillas, and even mohurs of gold, to have refused which would have been totally untrue to his clerical character. Once he had a narrow escape from encountering Osman Abdallah the Arab Hadji, the same fanatic whom he had run through the body on the day the Envoy was assassinated, and whom he saw asleep, too probably intoxicated with bhang, on a piece of mat, at the door of a village khan. On another occasion he had to endure for several miles the society of a rival Fakir—a Pandarom enthusiast, who wore an iron garden-gate, of considerable weight and size, riveted round his neck as a penance, which excited the charity and fear of all who beheld him; but on the fortieth day after the retreat from Cabul began, Waller, to his joy, saw once more before him the vast and fertile plain of Jellalabad, the stately city with all its white wails and round towers, and its green background of magnificent mountains, many of them being wooded to the summit; but, to his eye, the most pleasing features in the scene were the scarlet coats of the sentinels on the ramparts of the Bala Hissar, on which the union-jack was waving in the morning wind.

Waller was, perhaps, not much given to prayer, but his emotions of gratitude to Heaven were great and keen when at last he found himself passing between the Piper's Hill and the old Mosque that stands south of the city, round the walls of which he had to proceed between the Shah's garden and the great citadel to reach the Peshawur Gate, where a guard of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry (Prince Albert's own) was posted; and the astonishment of the soldiers, when they heard themselves accosted in pure English by a Hindoo Fakir, was intense; but the officer in command, Lieutenant Sinclair—the same ingenious fellow who had built the pleasure boat during the previous and happier winter at Cabul—now came hastily forward.

"Waller—Bob Waller, by all that's wonderful!" he exclaimed, recognising an old friend in spite of his filthy disguise; "so you, too, have escaped, after all?"

"Yes, I—but poor Jack Polwhele, Devereaux, Burgoyne, and all the rest, have perished—all—all!" replied Waller, with deep emotion, as the men of the 13th crowded about him. "The bravest and the best are always cut off first; but, save me, all who came through the Khyber passes have gone to God!"

"Trevelyan of yours, and Dr. Brydone, of the Shah's army, are safe with us; so three have escaped that terrible carnage."

"And what of the hostages?"

The face of Sinclair—a Scot from the banks of the Thurso, and, like all his surname, tall, grey-eyed, and fair-haired—grew dark as he replied,

"Elphinstone, the general, is dead—he expired in the hands of the enemy, who insulted his body, and beat the head with stones. The tribes are all in arms now—a regular 'gathering of the clans,' we should call it in Scotland. Ackbar Khan has fulfilled his threat, we are told, by sending the ladies for sale to the chiefs in Toorkistan; but nothing is certain save that, by a combined movement on Cabul, we are about to take a terrible vengeance."

Waller groaned, and ground his teeth in silence, for he was too much of an Englishman to make a scene, or give vent to the emotions that maddened him as he thought of Mabel, of her helpless companions, and the awful mystery that overhung the fate of Rose.

The hostages, to the number of eighty-eight officers and soldiers, with thirty-three females (three being wives of soldiers) and children, were at the mercy of barbarians, and what might have happened to them by that period? How many of them, husband and wife, parent and child, must have caressed and embraced each other despairingly from time to time, with only one idea in their minds,—that the lips they touched, the eyes they looked into with tenderness and love, the form they held, that was warm and living, might all belong to a dead and mangled corpse ere the dawn opened or the night closed!

CHAPTER XXIII.

DENZIL A NAWAB.

When consciousness came back to Denzil he found himself alone—alone with the dead. He knew not what time had elapsed since he had been struck down by the treacherous wretch whose life he had sought to save; and no vestige of the retreating troops remained, save those whose bodies dotted all the wintry waste. Angrily and sadly the rising wind howled from the mountain pass, blowing before it over the frozen snow the long leaves of the coss, or dead grass, the fir cones and pistachio nuts from the thickets close by; and some of these cones, that fall from the jelgoozeh, or mountain pine, are larger than artichokes. The dark and tortuous pass had apparently swallowed all his comrades; yet through it now his way must lie, and, staggering up, he strove to follow the blood-stained track; but the landscape, the mountains, the abandoned cannon, dead horses, camels, and bodies of soldiers, of the Hindoo dhooley-wallahs, and of many women, seemed all to whirl round him, and he nearly fell on the snow once more. Benumbed as he was, stiff and cold in every limb, with a dull crushing sense of pain in the back region of his head, from which the blood, now crusted and frozen, had flowed freely, he felt that he could only remain there and wait for death or succour, the former too surely, for already the gloom of evening seemed to be setting over the mountains, and he looked about him wildly and despairingly.

He had been in love, and had lost hope; but he was in love yet, and had lost his mistress, which was sadder still, and was now likely to lose his life.

The bodies of several men of his company lay near, all mostly in attitudes expressive of the agony in which they had expired, with their wan and ghastly faces turned to the winter sky; but the body of General Trecarrel was gone; at least, he could nowhere see it. Had Polwhele and Sergeant Treherne succeeded in removing it? If so, why was he left to his wretched fate? Or had a wolf—but that idea was too repugnant, and he shrunk from it.

An European woman, young and pretty, in her night-dress (as many ladies were who left the cantonments in litters), lay half in and half out of a dhooley, from the bed within which she had apparently been escaping when overtaken, and the snow was falling alike on her white bare breast and the pale face of the little babe she had been in the act of nourishing when the bullet of some relentless Ghilzie had slain her; so her child must have soon followed. It was a piteous sight; and let those who have seen death amid all the hushed solemnity of a sick chamber in a land of peace imagine such a scene as this, and death under auspices so horrible and revolting.

Though sick and feeble, Denzil contrived to draw the dhooley a little way from the body of its late occupant, and crept within it for warmth. Prior to doing so, on seeing near him the Queen's colour of the 44th, or East Essex Regiment, lying in the hands of a dead ensign, he tore it from the staff and wrapped it over his poshteen, as an additional garment, and with a soldier's natural desire to save so important a trophy from the enemy. To this trifling circumstance, as it eventually proved, he owed his life; and there he lay in a species of stupor, neither quite asleep nor quite awake.

Ere long the hungry vultures began to alight upon the bodies in the snow, and one, after flapping its dusky wings on the roof of the dhooley, actually perched upon his breast; but on receiving a blow from his hand, it fled with an angry croak. Denzil was now thoroughly aroused, and his action would seem to have been observed, for twelve Afghan horsemen who had been scouting near, each with a juzailchee riding en croupe behind him, came cantering up, accompanied by, or rather escorting, Shireen Khan of the Kuzzilbashes, who was mounted, as usual, on a great solemn-looking camel, and armed, among many other weapons, with a formidable lance.

Seeing that Denzil was alive, one of the Kuzzilbashes (a pale-faced and black-bearded fellow, who wore a prodigious red cap, and had dangling at his neck the watch presented to General Trecarrel by Sir John Keane, after Ghuzni) made a thrust with his lance that must have killed him on the spot had not the Khan interposed, and commanded all to spare his life. Instinctively Denzil had drawn his sword, but Shireen said, with a grim smile,

"Sheath your weapon, Kaffir; I, too, wear a sword, but I am an old man now, old by more than thrice your years, and I have learned to know that the sword is but the sickle of death—it destroys much and reaps little."

Denzil thought this moral reflection came somewhat late, but the Khan added—

"Your life shall be spared—pesh" (i.e., forward), and stroked his beard, which is the silent form of an oath with the Afghans.

The singularity of his costume, the regimental colour of bright yellow silk with its massive gold embroidery, amid which the sphynx was conspicuous, with the mottoes "Badajoz, Salamanca, Bladensburg, Waterloo," and so forth, appeared so remarkable, that the old Kuzzilbash chief conceived, in his simplicity, that he had captured at least a great Nawab or Bahadur of Feringhistan, whose ransom or value as a hostage could not fail to be of importance. Hence, resolving to say nothing of his prize to Mohammed Ackbar Khan, of whose power he had already become jealous, Shireen ordered four juzailchees to alight, sling their rifles, and carry the dhooley with its inmate to the rear, naming some place to which the prisoner was to be conveyed, and they obeyed, but grumbling under their beards that they were only "carrying that which ought to be killed." Moreover, they were not without serious fears that, instead of being a Nawab or lord, Denzil might be a sorcerer, for these sphynxes and gold letters looked necromantic in their sight, and he might possess the power by a word to turn his bearers into yaboos or four black stones.

He remained perfectly passive and, perhaps, indifferent in their hands. His wound had bled profusely, and he was now in that state of extreme prostration which usually succeeds a great loss of blood, when the senses wander, and wild dreams, tangled and incoherent visions, disturb the brain of the sufferer. He felt very heedless of life; but there are times when death seems to avoid those who are so, and who fear him not. In all the misery of his condition he had but one consolation—that Sybil knew nothing of it. As his bearers trod on, he heard them, when occasionally they stumbled against a dead body, burst out into anathemas against the Feringhees, whom they stigmatised as "dogs, devils, sons of Shytan, sons of burnt fathers, and base-born Kaffirs," all of which gave him little hope for his ultimate safety.

The dusk of the January eve was closing in, when, after passing for some miles through a sheltered and well-wooded valley, the sides of which were studded by several castles or bourges, the strongholds of Nawabs and Khans of military tribes, the dhooley-bearers arrived at the arched gateway of the great country residence of the chief of the Kuzzilbashes.

It was, as usual with the Afghans, whose state of society is pretty much what it was among the Scots in the feudal days, a square fort, measuring about a hundred yards each way, with solid wa;ls twenty-five feet in height, and flanked at each corner by a strong half-circular bastion. A fausse-bray and deep ditch surrounded it, the latter being filled by a canal cut from the Cabul river.

The zunah-khaneh, or private dwelling of Shireen and his family, occupied the centre of the great square, and was surrounded by an inner wall or barbican, all loopholed for musketry, while traverses mounted with cannon, guarded the entrances. The devan-kaneh, or hall of audience, through which Denzil was borne, was literally crammed with the plunder gleaned up from the retreating army—bullock trunks filled with wearing apparel, barrack furniture, tents, arm-chests, musical instruments, and utensils of all kinds. It was decorated with much of barbaric splendour, and had its wall on one side composed of carved and gilded wood, wherein were six great panels inscribed with passages from the Koran, amid green and gold arabesques. These opened into apartments beyond, and could be slid up and down at pleasure (like windows in Britain) for the free circulation of air in summer.

Into one of these apartments Denzil was borne, placed on a couch made up chiefly from the bedding that was in the dhooley, and then a hakim came to examine his wound.

Amid all his deep grief, and mortification for past events, he felt himself thankful for a cup of golden coloured mellow Derehnur wine, which the hakim gave to restore his wasted strength; "for it is the law of human nature, that the claims of the living must become a counterpoise to the memory of the dead."

As loss of blood was the chief ailment of Denzil, on his wound being dressed he recovered rapidly, and in three days was able to sit on a kind of divan—for chairs were unknown in that part of the world—at a window, which overlooked a garden and the long wooded valley, at the extreme end of which, and in the dim distance, rose a high, green, conical hill which he recognised, and knew to look down on the plain and city of Cabul. His hakim was experienced enough in the art of dressing bullet holes and sword cuts; but his ideas of physic, beyond a charm written on paper, and washed into a draught, were somewhat perplexing and peculiar; thus he prescribed and proffered various kinds of pills, powders, and potions, from the medicine chests of Doctor Brydone and other medical officers, in the belief that if one thing failed to insure perfect recovery, another might do so.

Denzil knew that he had been spared in the belief that he was a Nawab, and he feared to undeceive his captors as to that circumstance, lest they might kill him after all; while he feared also that if he left them in error, they might detain him for years, or seek to extort some enormous ransom. He knew nothing of the total destruction of the army, or of the existence and retention of other European hostages for the evacuation of Jellalabad. Thus he resolved, as he had no resort but patience, to await the pleasure of Shireen Khan, who was still absent, and hoped that he might find a more powerful, and less avaricious protector in the person of the Shah, of whom our Queen was the friend and ally. Moreover, through his wuzeer Taj Mohammed, some light might yet be thrown upon the fate of the lost Rose Trecarrel.

The Kuzzilbashes, in whose hands he was a prisoner, are a powerful military tribe, who formed exclusively the Royal Guard of Dost Mohammed, and can always, with ease, muster five thousand fighting men. Distinguished by their scarlet caps, they are of Persian descent and form a peculiarly Persian party in Afghanistan, where as being Sheeahs, they remain apart from the other Afghan people (who are bigoted Soonees), and are so exclusive that they have their own quarter of Cabul fortified against all the rest. Hence, though their chief was outwardly, and when it suited his own interest, actually an adherent of Ackbar Khan, he had been secretly and deeply implicated in political intrigues with the late Envoy, whose remains yet hung in the market place.

From the hakim, Denzil learned that one of our officers, named Colonel Palmer,* had been cruelly tortured in the city by having a rope tied round his bare leg, after which it was twisted tight by a tent-peg (like the old French boot), and this made him more than ever anxious to reach the presence of the Shah, who still held the Bala Hissar with a few adherents; the remnant of the Native army we had organised for him under British officers, all of whom, of course, had left him now. From his strange medical attendant he learned also of the old General's surrender, and subsequent death.

* Of the 27th Bengal Infantry.

"Bosh!" added the hakim; "your General Elphinstone, sahib, blew his trumpets and beat his drums before Cabul, like a hen that cackles when she has laid an egg. It was with him, as it is too often with the hen—premature exultation; for as little may become of the egg as has become of his army—for the former, instead of being in time a crowing cock, may become sauce, pillau, or pudding!"

The snow passed rapidly away; the weather became pleasant and warm, and though Denzil saw nothing of the Khan, from his window he could see the ladies of his household in the garden below, where as usual with the upper class of Afghans, they spent much of their time in chatting among the bowers, talking scandal and listening to the songs of an occasional wandering musician, who played the saringa, or native guitar. It was once, while sitting listlessly looking into this garden, that Denzil had his hopes of succour from the Shah, crushed for ever.

No ladies appeared that day, but he perceived Shireen Khan, to whom another Kuzzilbash was speaking, gesticulating violently, and as they drew nearer his window, which was on the third, or upper story of the zuna-khaneb, he could overhear their conversation.

The stranger, Zohrab Zubberdust, now a Hazirbash, in the Body Guard of Ackbar Khan, was a handsome but fierce looking young man, with a high aquiline nose, heavy black moustache, and a face of almost European fairness. He had a tall plume in his scarlet cap, which was braided with gold; but, as the hilt of his sword, and the right sleeve of his yellow camise of quilted silk, were thickly spotted with blood, it was evident that he had been concerned in some recent outrage. There was sternness on his brow, a sneering expression on his lips, and a wild glitter in his eyes, as he said in a mocking tone,

"Khan, what mean you by this indignation? Solomon had seven hundred wives, and old Shah Sujah, whom the queen of Feringhistan sought to befriend, had one hundred more, because he deemed himself wiser than Solomon; but with all his wisdom, where is he now?"

"In Cabul."

"No—on the road near Shah Shakeed—dead."

"Dead, say you?"

"Yes; dead as that Solomon of whom I spoke—dead as a dog!" he added savagely.

"What new horror is this?" asked Shireen, starting back.

"Bah," replied the other, adding in the true style of Afghan cant, "there has been nothing new since God put the sun in the firmament, and touched the stars with his fingers to send them through the sky. Everything that is now, has been before, and shall be again."

"Did not the Shah, according to agreement, leave the Bala Hissar to go to Jellalabad?"

"This morning he did so; but it chanced that last night, the son of Zamon Khan placed in ambush fifty of his juzailchees secretly among some wild tamarind trees, and when about the hour of morning prayer, the king's retinue reached the spot, a cry like that of a jackal was heard. It might have been a signal. I do not say it was; but oddly enough, the juzailchees rose as one man, and fired a volley. One ball, pierced the Shah's brain, and three his breast, while seven of his soldiers fell dead. Then we rushed on him, and took from his litter the crown, the royal girdle, his sword and dagger, his jewelled robe, and as they could be of no use to him now, we rode off, and laid them at the feet of Ackbar Khan."

"May he who planned this deed be stung by a scorpion of Cashan!" exclaimed Shireen, with great emotion, as he wreathed both hands in his venerable beard; "in all these affairs I ever meant that the life of the Shah should be sacred!"

"Whatever you meant, Khan," replied the other with a mocking smile, "the King of kings ordained otherwise, and Azrael, the angel of death, must be obeyed."

And significantly touching the hilt of his sword, the speaker made a low salaam, quitted the garden, and Denzil saw him no more. Shireen remained for some time sunk in thought.

"And this has been your morning's work, son of Zamon Khan, when I thought that you and your fifty juzailchees were on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Lamech, in the vale of Lughmannee!" he muttered, as he walked slowly away, referring to a white temple which covers what is alleged to be the grave of Noah's father, and is a favourite place of pilgrimage among the Afghans.

Denzil felt alike saddened and depressed on hearing of this unforeseen event; but to it, in some respects, he owed his future safety, and the circumstance that Shireen Khan retained him in his own hands, and did not deliver him to the terrible Ackbar, as from the day of the unfortunate Shah's assassination, the Afghan chiefs were split into two factions—the Kuzzilbashes taking part with one, and the tribes of Cabul and the Kohistanees with another.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A MEETING.

Day after day had gone past in utter monotony till Denzil's heart began to ache in the great weariness of the life he led; it was so calm and seemed so still after the fierce and keen excitement he had undergone. Had he entered upon a new state of existence? he asked of himself; if so, it was an intensely stupid one.

One evening when seated as usual on the divan at his window, looking dreamily out upon the long vista of the green valley, and the conical hill that terminated it, dim and blue in distance, he was feeling the balmy breath of the spring breeze with pleasure, and with all an invalid's relish was watching the young buds expanding, and the first flowers of the season beginning to peep from the teeming soil, when the Nazir, or steward of the household, a tall man of venerable aspect, whose beard flowed to his girdle, and the middle of whose head was shaved, came with an invitation from the Khan, to join him and his family at their evening meal.

Denzil bowed his acceptance, and in his sorely worn uniform, made what toilette he hastily could, for a Khan like the head of the Kuzzilbashes, who could bring into the field five thousand well-armed men, chiefly splendidly mounted cavalry, was assuredly a man of considerable note and power in the land, and his favour or protection were of some value in that far-away corner of the world.

In an apartment, the walls of which were prettily decorated by painted and gilded arabesques, with passages from the Koran around it, in lieu of a cornice, he found the Khan sitting on a musnud, or species of cushioned seat, that is usually reserved for persons of distinction. A lady was seated by his side, and both were so intent upon a game of chess, that neither looked up when Denzil entered.

Seated on the floor, but on rich carpets, were the wife of the Khan, a woman of some forty years old, very sallow and passée, her long camise of green. Cabul silk, ornamented with golden crescents sewn on; her hair, as yet untinged with grey, arranged in countless plaits, her hands odiously reddened to the hue of coral, and her two daughters, passably pretty women, with their hair loose and their trousers white, in token of being unmarried, and all three wearing many chains of gold and strings of Venetian sequins.

Denzil bowed low, and paused irresolutely, waiting to be greeted by the Khan; but that personage was bending over the board deeply intent on the game, his long white beard floating above the ivory chessmen, his bushy brows and wrinkled forehead full of thought, his brown and thick-veined hands contrasting strongly with the slender snow-white fingers of his opponent, whose hand was indeed a delicate and lovely one; her face, however, was concealed by her position, and the mode in which she wore her veil; and Denzil knew the peril of seeming too curious.

Like those of the other three ladies, her dress was of the finest Cabul silk, but of a rose colour, and covered her whole figure, as a night-robe would have done; like the Khan's daughters, her trousers were also white, her slippers high-heeled and shod with iron. Crescents of silver were sewn over all her loose hanging sleeves, and the breast of her dress was literally a mass of them, so that it shone in the sunlight like a cuirass.

The wife of the Khan clapped her hands, the ordinary mode of summoning attendants in the East, as she wished the trays with refreshments introduced. This caused Shireen and his companion to look round, and an exclamation of profound astonishment, in which joy and something of deep anxiety mingled, echoed through the apartment, when Denzil and Rose—Rose Trecarrel—recognised each other!

On this, one of the Khan's daughters hastily assumed, but for a few minutes only, her bourkha or veil of white muslin, which had a space of open network for the eyes; and the other whispered to her mother some indignant remark concerning "the effrontery of a Kaffir coming into their presence with his jorabs (i.e., shoes) on."

If it be true that "among a crowd of total strangers an acquaintance ranks as a friend," how great must have been the emotions of the volatile Rose, on meeting her avowed lover among those odious and horrible Afghans!

"Rose!"

"Denzil!"

After all they had mutually undergone, the sound of their own names and their own language, had in them so much of home and the past, that both were deeply moved; and heedless of those who were present, forgetting all about them in fact, the impulsive girl flung herself into his arms, and he pressed her to his breast. So, to the undemonstrative Orientals, they formed a very unexpected tableau. She had undergone so much and her agitations were so complicated, that for some time she was quite incapable of speech and could only sob hysterically. She was very pale and worn, but he was so too.

"So you also are a prisoner—do you forgive me now, Denzil?" she asked in a low voice.

"Forgive you—oh Rose, I could die for you!" he responded, passionately.

How often in the visions of the night and in the reveries of the day—those trances of thought to which all at times abandon themselves—had Denzil pictured to himself Rose Trecarrel reclining in his arms, even as on that day by the lake, Rose so bright, so fair and beautiful, and now he held her in reality!

But though she had deceived him once and might do so again, no such fear occurred to him then, and forgotten too were all the bantering remarks of Polwhele and Burgoyne (now, alas, no more) which had excited so much pique, jealousy, and fury in his heart. She was, he knew, so lonely in the world, and she looked so lovely and so helpless. After a time, she said, anxiously,

"There has been great slaughter, I have heard; poor Papa, he has escaped I am sure, and dear Mab and Waller are safe, and all the rest?"

"All cannot have escaped!" was Denzil's vague response; "yet you have done so, and that is enough for me, darling."

She now poured upon him questions, some of which he dreaded to answer. When and where was he taken prisoner? Whom of those she loved had he seen last? Of her father, of Mabel and Waller Denzil professed total ignorance. He only knew that the body of the poor General had disappeared, and of subsequent events he knew nothing save that many ladies and officers of rank were retained in Cabul, held there by Ackbar Khan, as hostages for the future evacuation of Jellalabad; so hope and lightness of heart began to dawn on Rose, for neither she nor Denzil were aware of the exact state of matters, or of all the calamities that had befallen their friends.

"And Mabel—dear, dear, Mabel," she exclaimed in a touching voice, "how often do I dream of her, and fancy at times that I feel her cheek, wet with tears, against mine; for though but a little older than I, she has ever been as a mother to me, and these visions are passages of intense emotion, Denzil. Our mamma, who died so long ago, comes to me in my sleep and poor papa too, looking just as when I kissed him last, ere we went to rest, in that wretched tent in the snowy Pass; so my heart is wrung with suffering and I shed tears, Denzil—hot salt tears in my sleep—I, who used to be so merry and thoughtless!"

The Khan and his family were, for the time, utterly forgotten; so was his game of chess, and he gazed alternately from the rooks, pawns, and castles, to the lovers, in great and grave bewilderment, for in the empressement of their meeting, there seemed something more than the mere joy of two friends, or natives of the same country recognising each other. Were they brother and sister, or husband and wife, or what?

"But how came you to be here—what happened?" asked Denzil.

Her story, with all its apparent mystery, was both short and simple. She had heard shots in the night, and was peeping from the door of the tent, while her weary companions slept. A crowd of Afghans were passing,—the Shah's 6th Regiment were deserting en masse. A loonghee, or turban-cloth, was cast over her face by one of them, who twisted it across her mouth in such a manner as to stifle her cries completely; a havildar, mounted on a stolen horse, dragged her up beside him, and thus she was borne off, unseen in the dark, as they evidently believed that a white woman would be deemed the most valuable species of loot by some wealthy Khan or Nawab. When day broke they found themselves among the Black Rocks, near Cabul, and then a vehement dispute ensued between the havildar and her first captor as to to whom she should belong—whether they should keep, sell, or cast lots for her. Knives were promptly drawn; but some Kuzzilbash Horse came up and solved the difficulty by sabreing them both. They then carried her off to the fort of Shireen Khan, who had treated her with marked kindness and hospitality; and now she and Denzil turned towards him, and the latter expressed his extreme gratitude for all he had done for them both, adding, that he hoped they would be mercifully permitted to rejoin their friends and people.

But Khan Shireen shook his head, and replied, "Sahib, you know not what you ask, or how your friends are situated. Your army has been destroyed on its downward march to Jellalabad, and the hope of Ackbar is, that if the Sirdir Sale quits that city for Peshawur, the wild Khyberees and Ghilzies will soon annihilate his army too."

And such was indeed the hope of those in power at Cabul.

"Then our forces suffered severely, Khan?" said Denzil.

"So severely, that but one remained alive to tell the tale."

Denzil smiled at this, believing it to be mere Oriental hyperbole.

The entrance of servants with trays, on which were plums, peaches, and other fruit preserved in sugar, sweet chupatties, and a flask or two of yellow Derehnur wine (though forbidden by the Prophet), enabled Denzil to address some apologies to the ladies of the house, who invited him to seat himself on the edge of their carpet, an unwonted honour; and then the simple collation proceeded without the use of spoons or forks, which are alike unknown in that region.

Fresh southern-wood was thrown on the fire, and its fragrance filled all the apartment with a powerful perfume.

Rose felt herself constrained, but most unwillingly, to resume her part of chess-player, which she did in silence, as she scarcely knew a word of the Khan's language, but he had been delighted with her on first learning that she could play the knightly game, and play it well too, as chess is peculiarly an Oriental pastime, and was brought into Europe originally by the returned Crusaders.

"Shabash!" (Bravo) he exclaimed, and patted her kindly on the shoulder, as she again took her place near him; but her eyes ever wandered from the chess-board to the face of Denzil, whom the Kuzzilbash lady and her daughters overwhelmed with questions, many of which they had long since asked Rose. Among these were the three invariable queries, whether the East India Company was a man or a woman; if it was true that our ruler in Feringhistan was a Queen, and if the men in that region wore trousers, while the women did not. They conversed with him freely, and without constraint, for among the Afghans, unlike other races which profess the Moslem faith, intercourse between the sexes is somewhat on an European footing, and the home of the Afghan husband is one which deserves to be accounted such, as all his leisure hours are spent with his wife and children; and he leads his guest without fear or scruple into the family circle. Hence, with all their ferocity, the passion of love is neither unknown nor unhonoured among them.

Two or three days elapsed after their meeting before Denzil and Rose Trecarrel became aware that so many hostages were retained in the hands of Ackbar as pledges, to answer with their lives, or at least with their liberties, for the final withdrawal of all our troops from Afghanistan, including Sir Robert Sale's Brigade in Jellalabad and General Nott's division, 9000 strong, in Candahar; and now they found that, owing to a split in the enemy's camp, and a coolness between the Sirdir and the Khan Shireen, the latter was detaining them in secret as hostages on his own account.

"Set me free!" she had frequently implored of him.

"Not if you gave me all the lost riches of Khosroo," he replied, referring to the supposed buried treasure of Cyrus.

She had next besought aid of his wife, who shook her head, and said laughingly—

"Ere long, you will too probably be sold to a chief in Toorkistan, and live in a castle, or perhaps a tent, as his wife; if he chooses to make you such before the Cadi," added the Kuzzilbash lady, gazing with her great black eyes into the clear hazel orbs of the shocked and perplexed English girl, and feeling herself the while as much embarrassed in their difference of ideas as if her guest had come from Jupiter, Saturn, or any other of those planets which to her were but as lamps set in the sky by God or the Prophet, she knew not which, as the moollahs were somewhat uncertain on the subject.

But now the great event of having the society of Denzil made Rose, who had previously felt herself so friendless and forlorn, so desolate and lost, much more hopeful and contented; and something of her old coquetry came to the surface again, when daily he walked with her in the garden of the fort, as they were never permitted to go beyond its walls. They had both undergone much, and witnessed some frightful scenes; but it was with them there, as with those who dwell "in the countries where earthquakes are frequent, and where in almost every century some terrible convulsion has laid a whole city in ruins—the inhabitants acquire a strange indifference to peril till the very instant of its presence, and learn to forget calamities when once they have passed."

CHAPTER XXV.

MARRIED OR NOT?

Under the magic influence of Rose's presence, Denzil felt almost content for the time, and his heart swelled with mingled love and joy; then obstacles would seem to give way, fears to fade, and he felt his heart endued with a new strength. The hope of rescue or the chances of escape together, formed a fertile and endless source of conversation and surmise for these two isolated beings; but Rose had to humour the Khan by playing chess with him whenever he requested her to do so, while his wife and daughters quite as frequently compelled Denzil, who knew Hindostanee, to read for them an Oriental poem of which they never seemed to grow weary. It was a handsome volume of exquisite Eastern penmanship; all the pages were perfumed, and no two of them were alike, all the vignettes of birds, of gilded mosques, of black-bearded emirs and bayaderes, the elaborate borders and chapter heads being radiant in colours and gold. It described the petrifaction of the City of Ishmonie, a place alleged to be in Upper Egypt, where all that were once animated beings were by an enchanter changed in an instant to stone, and where they may still be seen, in all the various positions of sitting, or standing, eating, sleeping or caressing each other—a legend which obviously arose from the circumstance of the vast number of statues of men, women, and children that are, or were, in the place; but this poem so palled upon Denzil that he shivered with weariness whenever the subject was named to him.

And now as a certain assurance of safety came into the mind of Rose Trecarrel, she began to resume some of her old coquettish ways with him; thus one day as they were promenading in the garden of the Khan's fort, where the early flowers of Spring were maturing under the genial shelter of the high embattled walls, when he familiarly addressed her as "Rose," she said, with an assumed pout on her ruddy lips,

"I must really forbid you to call me Rose—even here."

"I called you so once, unchecked—by the lake, on that day which you must remember," he urged gently.

"That day is past."

"But its memory remains. What then am I to call you? To say, 'Miss Rose', or 'Miss Trecarrel,' after the events of that day would seem both strange and distant. You are always 'Rose' to me—in my heart, I mean."

"Fiddlestick! do be sensible. Call me—well, you need not call me anything that may compromise either the past, the present, or the future."

"Oh, how unkind of you," said he, eyeing her with a somewhat dubious expression.

"Poor Denzil," she replied, looking down; "I would to Heaven you were not so fond of me."

"Fond, is not the word, Rose—but why?"

"Because I was only flirting with you, as I have done with others," replied the laughing girl, with a cruelty that was perhaps unintentional, as she was indeed older than her years, for there are some women who in mind and body are more rapidly developed than others.

Denzil was only somewhat past twenty, and his love for her was fresh as the flowers that were springing up around them. It had been wasted on none yet, and Rose was the first who seemed to fill up all the soft illusions of the mind, as being the only one he could love, and the touch of whose hand or arm would send a thrill of ecstasy to his heart.

Could hers really be so elastic? he now asked of himself; did one passion really efface another in her breast, even as the waves efface the footmarks on the sandy shore? Could she love more than one, and perhaps more than one at a time?

She sat on a garden seat with her handsome white hands folded before her. A jet cross which had escaped the pillagers was on her snow-white neck, when it rose and fell with the undulations of her breathing. Her long lashes and delicate lids were drooped over the clear brown eyes, that could be so waggish, droll or cold and calm, as fun, or passion, or prudence, swayed her. The whole pose, her aspect, the contour of her head, the exquisite turn of the white and stately throat, so like that of Mabel, were not lost on Denzil as he gazed, and in gazing, worshipped her.

"A penny for your thoughts, friend Denzil," said she, looking up with a laughing face and breaking a silence of some minutes' duration.

"They are priceless, Rose, because they are of you."

"Well, like Paul, you may be most tender and full of truth—the latter a rare virtue in men; but I can never play the part of Virginia."

"Why?"

"Because I am too giddy, perhaps," replied Rose; yet with all her coquetry she was not without an emotion of genuine pride at the conviction of having inspired so handsome and earnest a young man with an attachment so devoted and pure.

But what was to be the sequel to all this?

As Artemus Ward says, "one is always inclined to give aid and comfort to the enemy, if he cums in the shape of a nice young gal;" and doubtless the old Khan of the Kuzzilbashes seemed to think so too; for to Rose he was unusually kind, and somewhat unwisely was wont at times to praise her to his wife. Once he said,

"The girl is beautiful as a bird of paradise."

"Yes; but quite as dumb and useless—there is nothing in her," replied the lady.

"She knows her own language, not ours. She has splendid eyes, at all events; they might get me six good horses among the Usbec Tartars."

"Yes, lovely eyes certainly; yet they seem out of place anywhere, save in a seraglio," was the sharp response of the Khanum, who evidently disapproved of the praise and the chess-playing; "send her to Ackbar Khan."

"Nay; that suits not my purpose, either for her or her friend," replied the Khan, on whose mind some remarks made from time to time by his wife were beginning to have an effect.

He had seen the open and free intercourse of the Feringhee sahibs, male and female, at the bandstand, at the race-course, in the Cantonments, in the gardens, and other places in and about Cabul, during the previous winter; he had also seen them together in Sinclair sahib's wonderful boat; but there was something in the footing of Rose and Denzil that sorely puzzled him. They were too familiar to be mere friends, and she was not tender enough apparently to be a lover; so, after closely observing them for some days, he came to the conclusion that they were married, and if not, that they ought to be.

Thus with the native suspicion of an Oriental, he began to think that they must be married, and concealed the fact from him for some reason or purpose of their own. He even spoke pretty pointedly on the subject to Denzil, and hinted that if she were his wife, it might prevent her from being sold to the Toorkomans; but the circumstance of her being married to an infidel would not have made much difference to those sons of the desert.

Denzil was alarmed and knew not what to think of this new feature in their affairs. Rose would not have much fortune in England; Denzil had less, and to marry on his subaltern's pay and allowances, even in India, might prove ruinous to both; but here they were isolated from all in the outer world—in Afghanistan; in a land where steam and printing were unheard of; and where forks and spoons, clocks, and even toothbrushes were as much unknown as they were to Father Adam and Mother Eve.

Shireen Khan might solve all their difficulties by slicing off Denzil's head and selling Rose to the highest bidder in Toorkistan, if the whim to do either occurred. In his alarm Denzil admitted that they were affianced to each other, a state of matters beyond the comprehension of the old Kuzzilbash, as a Mussulman in choosing a wife usually relies on his mother, or a female friend who does this office for him.

"Did your mother select her for you?" asked the Khanum, who was present.

"No," replied Denzil.

"She treats you ill, I fear; a little beating would do her good," suggested the lady.

"A beating!" exclaimed Denzil, with astonishment.

"Yes," said Shireen; "among us men are allowed by the Koran to beat their wives, so long as they do not bruise the skin; for the Prophet has ordained that women shall not be treated as intellectual beings."

"Why?"

"Lest they aspire to equality with men."

Denzil translated all this to Rose, who had been listening and turning from one speaker's face to the other; she burst into a saucy little laugh, and said,

"Tell them that their Prophet was a precious old——"

What she was about to designate him of Mecca, we know not, for Denzil placed his hand on her lips. The sharp black eyes of the Khan detected something in this action. They sparkled, while his face grew red as his cap with sudden anger, and with hands clenched and uplifted, he exclaimed,

"Now by the seven heavens and the veil of unity, through which the Prophet passed in his vision, but this is too much! You are either married or not? Do you laugh at my beard, Kaffirs? If she is your wife, I shall respect her, nor send her, as I intended, to Bhokara or Toorkistan for sale; if she is not, then so much the worse for her!"

And, as he spoke, the softness of his Persian dialect turned, in his anger, hoarse and guttural as that of an Afghan.

"Your wife, Denzil," exclaimed Rose, blushing with mingled amazement and annoyance, when the first part of this speech was told her; "I do care more for you than for any one else—but—but—"

"What, dearest Rose?"

"This is a little too much."

"Consider—the danger—the alternative."

"Must I pass myself off as such?"

"It would appear so, dear Rose, for your own sake dissemble."

"Assume a virtue if I have it not!" said she, with some asperity.

"It is unavoidable, what are we to do?"

"Why—is this a conspiracy between you, for it looks very like it?"

"On my honour it is not," replied Denzil, earnestly and tenderly; "but Toorkistan—think of that."

"Yes—Toorkistan!" repeated the Khan, detecting the word, resentment still gleaming in his eyes that a Kaffir girl should dare to laugh at or mock him.

And in this pleasant dilemma we must leave them for a time.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE WANDERER.

We must now ask the reader to traverse with greater speed than even the electric wire possesses, both sea and land, and, annihilating time and space, accompany us once more to the opening scenes of our story—even to the grey, sea-beaten cliffs, and broad brown moors of Cornwall.

In an early chapter we referred to a certain hostelry named the Trevanion Tavern, as a place where sundry beverages were procurable, and to which General Trecarrel (whose poor old bones were whitening now with others in the Khyber Pass) sent Mike Treherne and his comrades on that exciting evening when Audley Trevelyan rescued Sybil Devereaux from the terrors of the gloomy Pixies' Hole.

It was the sweet season of spring, and the flowers of balmy April were in all their bloom; the young and fragrant buds were bursting in the woods of Rhoscadzhel, and the willows that gave a name to the long narrow glen, forming the avenue to Porthellick, were as green, as leafy, and as graceful in their droop, as when Constance, dark-eyed and pale-faced, sat at the windows of the pretty white villa, watching for her husband, Richard, cantering his horse to the little portico, where Derrick Braddon awaited him; Denzil going forth to whip the trouting-stream, or Sybil sitting, sketch-book in hand, under a tree, to shade her from the sunshine.

The Trevanion Arms, over which creaked and swung a signboard decorated with the arms of that old surname, a fesse between two chevrons, with three escallops (for old Jack, like every Cornishman, had a pedigree), is a picturesque little old-fashioned house, partly built of granite and partly of straw and mud beaten into a consistency that is pretty enduring. Four boulders that had lain for ages on the promontory where it stands, had been improvised as corner-stones by the first builders of the edifice, and then the erection proved easy enough. It is square, with a trellised porch, which is always a mass of flowers and leaves; two windows are on each side of this, and five above, while there are other little quaint dormers that abut from the roof, which is conical, or pavilion-shaped, to write more correctly: and the edifice was then, from its foundation to its apex, chimneys included, literally a mass of clematis, dark green ivy, jasmine and sweet briar, so matted and interwoven as completely to conceal where the wall ended and the roof began; and in the pairing season the snug recesses of this leafy covering were all alive with teeming nests and twittering birds, whose gaping bills and glittering eyes peeped forth at times when a frocked waggoner or dusky-visaged miner drew up at the door for a pot of creamy ale, or a quart of sharp, foaming Devonshire cider.

Though April, the night on which we visit this place is bleak; the rain is swooping in torrents on the drenched land, and tossing sea; black clouds envelop all the Bristol Channel, the wild waves of which were rolling in snowy foam against the bluffs of Tintagel, along Trebarreth Strand, and all that iron shore from thence, perhaps, to Cape Cornwall, for it was just such a night of storm as the old Cornish wreckers would have loved, and hung their lanterns on the cliffs to mislead doomed ships at sea.

Seated alone, gazing intently into the sea-coal fire that burned low in the grate of the humble tavern parlour, smoking a short pipe, and taking occasional sips from a tankard of ale, was a somewhat tattered, but well-bearded, grizzled, and weather-beaten man, about sixty years of age. His features were rather Cornish or Celtic in type; the nose and cheek bones high, the eyes keen and glittering, when the firelight shone on them; his sturdy figure and well-embrowned hands showed that his life had been one of hard work, and, by the peculiar mode in which he carried his head, it was easy to see that he had been drilled as a soldier in the ranks.

Intently thinking, he sighed deeply once or twice, and, looking round the room as a gust of the storm without roused him from reverie, he said aloud,—

"So here you are at last, after all that has come and gone—here at last, and for what, Derrick Braddon?"

For Derrick Braddon he was—Derrick, the faithful attendant and follower of the late Richard Pencarrow Trevelyan—Lord Lamorna! His fate and adventures had been strange; for since the steamer Admiral, of Montreal, had perished at sea, Braddon had seen more of the world than he ever expected to behold again, and been so circumstanced, that he could never communicate with England, even in this age of ease and appliances; or his letters had miscarried; and now when he found himself once more at home—but, as it eventually proved, a home filled with strangers—his heart grew soft, and his eyes suffused, albeit that he was somewhat unused to the melting mood.

The purple moorlands, the great grey standing stones, the mines teeming with men and lights, and strange sounds, their giant works and grimy gearing; the granite carns and the dark oak woodlands had all spoken of home and his boyhood to the returned wanderer, the faithful old soldier, and caused him to be doubly sad; nature was the same, but many a voice was hushed, and many a familiar face was gone for ever.

The Trevanion tavern was unchanged even to the leafy tendrils that clambered over it, shrouding every inch of wall and roof, and hiding more than the half of each window; but his old comrade, Jack Trevanion, whilom drum-major of the Cornish Light Infantry, who had left a leg in the Punjaub, and with whom he had smoked many a pipe, by that same hearth (where he now sat alone), talking of old times, and of the old regiment, where even their names were forgotten, was gone to his last home by Lanteglos church (the burial place of the Trecarrels, too), and another host occupied Jack's place in the bar-parlour.

Old Mike Treherne and Winny Braddon had quitted their native place, and gone to Plymouth, from whence Derrick had travelled thus far on a pilgrimage to Rhoscadzhel, when his heart began utterly to fail him.

From his sister Winny, the old nurse of Sybil, he had heard, with honest indignation, the details of that futile and remarkable visit paid to Rhoscadzhel, and how Downie Trevelyan had treated their now dead mistress. He was told, too, of her hapless lawsuit, marred, as it was believed, by the low practitioner, who, to gain some notoriety, had thrust himself unasked into the case. But he could only further learn "that Master Denzil was somewhere far away in the Ingies," and that Miss Sybil, the sweet-voiced and gentle-eyed Sybil, who had slept in her bosom in infancy, and whom she had seen develope into a lovely young woman, had, after seeking in vain to sell her drawings, gone penniless to London, after which she could hear of her no more.

"Gone to London?" repeated Braddon, with a groan; "and penniless, too!"

He knew that amid the human tide of that mighty Babylon she might be lost as surely as if she were among the waves of the ocean; and then, as the old soldier thought of his proud dead master, and how he had loved that little daughter, he sighed again bitterly.

From the breast-pocket of his well-worn pea-jacket (Derrick was attired somewhat like a sailor) he drew forth a rusted and battered tin case. It was thin and flat in form, and he surveyed it long and silently. Then he opened the lid, as if he was often in the habit of doing so, mechanically and as if to assure himself that the contents were safe; and he was, perhaps, about to draw them forth for inspection, when a sound startled him, and he hastily consigned the case to its keeping-place, just as the landlord ushered in a man, who was dripping with rain, and whose personal appearance, the soaking of his somewhat seedy habiliments had by no means improved.

Derrick courteously made way for the stranger, who ordered some "gin and water hot," and after desiring the landlord to let him know when the "first return fly," by which he meant a brougham, passed for some town that he named, he proceeded to drink Braddon's health, and to dry his shabby black garments by the rotary process of turning, as if in a roasting-jack before the fire, raising the limp tails of his coat from time to time over his long and awkward-looking arms and lean bony hands.

"A wet night, sir," said he.

"Yes; but I have seen a wetter," replied Braddon.

"The dooce you have!"

"Aye, at sea; on a night when I was precious near having a cold water cure for all my sufferings."

"How?"

"By being drowned."

"Your fate is perhaps a drier one. You are, I suppose, a seafaring man?"

"I am an old soldier, and have served in the Cornish Light Infantry, as boy and man, for one-and-twenty years, and have earned my shilling a day from the Queen, God bless her! so don't crack your stale joke on me," said Derrick grimly and emphatically, as he surveyed the new-comer, whose face, somehow, seemed not unfamiliar to him.

He was attired in clothes a world too wide for him; the collar of his coat rested on the nape of his neck, and its sleeve cuffs fell well nigh over his fingers; the legs of his trousers flapped loosely over his broken boots, and the tall shiny hat which he had deposited on the deal table, after carefully wiping it with a coloured handkerchief, had evidently seen better days upon another and perhaps honester head. His brow was low and narrow; the frontal bones projecting over keen eyes of a nondescript colour, and a mean turned-up nose. Mistrust, acuteness, suspicion and avarice, were the leading expressions of his face, which would have horrified a disciple of Lavater; yet, in the tone of his voice, and in his manner, there was an affectation of deferential suavity, as if he sought to win rather than to repel a confidence that few, unless very simple indeed, would accord to one with lips so thin and cruel, and whose ears, like those of a cat, were nearly on the line of his pericranium, which was covered by a few wisps of thin, grey, and dead-looking hair. Yet this ugly personage has been described to the reader before.

Perceiving that his jest had not been appreciated by the veteran, he resumed the conversation in a different style.

"Know these parts?" said he, drinking his gin-and-water, and fixing his eyes furtively on Derrick.

"Think I should," was the curt response.

"Ah"—

There was a pause; then the other said,—

"Many hereabout will be surprised to hear of old Derrick Braddon coming to earth again."

The shabby stranger started, and the iris of his cunning eyes dilated and shrunk again in a somewhat feline fashion, as he asked eagerly,—

"What! were you the groom to Captain Devereaux who—well, occasionally—lived at Porthellick?"

"To the Right Honorable Lord Lamorna, if it is all the same to you," replied Derrick, stiffly.

"It is quite the same. What on earth is up! Is the sky about to rain larks, eh?"

"It is pouring a torrent anyhow, at this moment," was the dry response, as a fresh gust without clashed the leaves against the window-panes, and the cry of the red-legged Cornish chough, driven from his eyrie in the cliffs, was heard on the passing tempest.

"Where have you been all this time—nearly nine months, now?"

"That is too long a story to tell a stranger."

"And where is your master?"

"In his grave, God rest him!—in his grave, if the great sea can be called so."

"How long have you been in England?"

"Three weeks."

"And in Cornwall?"

"I have just arrived."

"Then you may not have heard of me, William Schotten Sharkley, solicitor, who acted as your mistress's agent in her case which failed for want of legal or documentary proofs. I did all that I could to befriend her—"

"And pocketed her last shilling, as I have heard."

"Law is an expensive amusement, and lawyers must be paid. I did my best."

"For that I thank you, Lawyer Sharkley," replied Braddon, taking in his hard honest hand the damp, unwholesome fingers of the solicitor, adding somewhat awkwardly, "if you have a bad name, perhaps you can't help it."

Mr. William S. Sharkley's face darkened, and his eyes dilated and shrunk, but he was too craven in spirit to manifest the least annoyance.

"And it was through the lack of certain papers," resumed Braddon, "that my lady's case was lost, and her heart broken?"

"Yes; the doubtful letter she produced referred to a certificate of marriage and a will in favour of her and her two children; but these documents, if they ever existed, no doubt perished with the captain, your master."

"They did not, as they are here—here—in the pocket of my old coat, Master Sharkley; so it is of more value than it looks, for it contains a peerage and an estate," replied Braddon, with gleaming eyes, as he slapped his breast emphatically.

For a moment Sharkley sat silent and bewildered, for the energy and perfect confidence of the speaker could not fail to impress him. Then he said,—

"You of course mean to turn them to account somehow?"

"When the right time comes."

"And to show them—"

"To the right man when he comes."

"And who, and where is he?"

"Young Denzil Trevelyan—Lord Lamorna—now in India, with the old Regiment. Could I but get there—there to the young master—" continued old Derrick with fervour; "but I might as well wish myself in the moon; for I am a poor friendless old fellow. One thing, Master Sharkley, I sha'n't trust the papers with you."

Sharkley was silent again; Braddon's mistrust of him was open and unconcealed, and he saw but one way of obtaining a sight of papers so important, and that was by exciting his indignation by a sneer.

"Ah—the lady at the villa was very much attached to your master—very handsome, and I doubt not—"

"What more?"

"Very expensive, as these kind of folks usually are."

"What do you mean, sir?" asked Braddon, sternly.

"I mean what my words imply; she could not prove herself a wedded wife, so her case had not a leg to stand on; yet I was her friend and adviser."

"You think thus ill of her, and yet thrust yourself into her case."

"My dear sir, I am a lawyer, and lawyers must feed."

"Which is too often feeding what ought to be hung," replied Braddon, with all a soldier's contempt for the other's cloth.

"I repeat that I was her friend," urged Sharkley.

"God keep us from such friends, if all I have been told is true."

"But giving a mere sight of those papers can do you no harm."

"And you small good; however, see them you shall," replied Braddon, with something of grim triumph, as he drew them from the before-mentioned tin case.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE LOST STEAMER.

The first document which Derrick produced and spread upon the table was the Père Latour's certificate of the marriage; the second was an undoubted will, duly stamped and signed, wherein the testator, Richard Pencarrow Trevelyan, Lord Lamorna, of Rhoscadzhel, in the Duchy of Cornwall, left all he possessed to Constance Devereaux, his wife, for the term of her life, and after her death to their two children absolutely.

The cunning and avaricious eyes of Sharkley seemed to devour the documents, and his trembling fingers indicated the eagerness of his heart to possess them, as he saw that beyond all uncertainty they were genuine, authentic, and of vast legal value to the son and daughter of his late unhappy client; nor were they of less worth to their opponent, if their existence could be terminated, ere it was known. Here was a means of triumph over the Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole—the solicitors of Downie Trevelyan, the present titular lord—who, as more respectable practitioners than Sharkley, had ever treated him with undisguised contempt.

Frequently his long lean fingers approached the papers, which were faded and yellow in aspect, having been stained by saltwater in the shipwreck; but Derrick Braddon, aware of the man he had to deal with, had taken from his pocket a large clasp knife, with which he usually cut his tobacco, and which had been of much and varied service to him in his recent wanderings; and with the point of this suggestive instrument he indicated the dates and so forth, while its production seemed to hint that any attempt to appropriate either the certificate or the will might be attended by an unpleasant sequel; for old as he was, Braddon would have given a stronger antagonist than the village lawyer "a Cornish hug," that might have been little to his taste.

When Sharkley had perused the papers which he was not permitted to touch, Braddon deliberately replaced them in their case and carefully stowed the latter in his inner pocket, the cat-like eyes of the attorney watching all his motions, while a kind of sigh seemed to escape him. He drained his gin and water to the last drop and then said,—

"No doubt, Mr. Braddon, these papers are of great value; but what do you mean to do with them?"

"Keep them for young Denzil. Once they are safe in his hands, he'll march in and take possession with colours flying."

Sharkley smiled at the old soldier's idea of the mode of succeeding to a title and heritage; but, as the storm had not yet passed away, and no "return fly" had yet been announced, he resolved to improve the occasion, by worming himself into Derrick's confidence, and drawing all the information from him that he could win.

"But if your master was drowned, as you say he was, how came these important documents into your possession?"

"Drowned as I say he was! Do you doubt me?"

"Nay, nay; you misunderstand."

"Well, you shall hear all about it. Have another drain of gin and I shall have one more pot of ale; I have not tasted such good old English tipple for many a day."

Then, after a little pause, Derrick began his narrative, which we shall give in our own words rather than his. The accounts of the wreck which Constance had read in the public prints, were scarcely a correct version of the catastrophe in all its details.

The ocean steamer Admiral had not been more than four days' sail from the mouth of the River St. Lawrence, when her engines broke down; thus she was forced to continue the voyage under canvas, and being but ill calculated for sailing purposes, while endeavouring to beat against a continual head wind, she was driven so far south out of her direct course, as to be somewhere within seventy miles of Corvo, the most northern isle of the Azores, when she should have been breasting the waves of the British Channel.

When she had been three weeks at sea, the wind one night became a gale, and from a gale it freshened to a regular tempest; and most of her crew, not being seamen, but such as are usually bred in coasting steamers, handled her extremely ill. Much of her canvas was split, rent to ribbons, or blown out of the bolt ropes; and thus, by the time three bells in the middle watch were struck, the wind was howling through her bare rigging, for there was nothing left upon her save a staysail and trysail, by the aid of which four men at the wheel strove to steer her under direction of the quarter-master.

Apprehending no danger, Richard Trevelyan was quietly seated in the cabin, endeavouring to write up his diary, by the light of a single lamp, which swung madly to and fro from a beam overhead; his desk was open, but was secured to the table, for every loose thing in the cabin was flying from port to starboard and back again, as the vessel lurched and rolled. Derrick was standing, rather swaying to and fro behind his master's chair, as they conferred together concerning the exact date of some incident which he wished to record, and while conversing they heard a crash on deck, as the staysail sheet snapped in the fierce gust; and as the ship broached to, that is, was taken aback on the weather side, the seas flew in wild foam, and in fierce succession over her, from stem to stern. Then was heard the voice of the mate in charge of the watch, shouting to, "haul down the staysail, and bend on the sheet anew."

Ere this could be done, a wave some twenty feet in height took the crippled steamer right on her broadside, and tore away the boats, the entire bulwark, four signal guns, and half the crew, washing by a mighty volume of water, and at one fell sweep, all and everything overboard into the black and seething sea!

With an astounding crash, the funnel and mizenmast went next by the board; but the lower portion of the mainmast remained, with all its top-hamper hanging about it. The last lamp in the cabin went out; but not before Richard Trevelyan, who never lost his presence of mind, had secured the two documents in question, placed them in an inner breast-pocket of his coat, and calling on Derrick to follow him, went on deck, where a terrible and unexpected scene presented itself, in the aspect of the ship, changed now to a total wreck.

They had barely staggered along the slippery main-deck, so far as where the stump of the mainmast yet held on, when another wave, its mighty head cresting and curling with foam, that seemed all the whiter amid the blackness of the night, burst over the doomed ship.

"Hold on, my lord," cried Derrick, "for the love of Heaven, hold on!"

"Yes—and for the love of my poor wife," added Richard, as they simultaneously grasped some of the belaying pins at the base of the mast, and as soon as the mountain of bitter water passed away to leeward leaving them drenched and half-blinded, a more fearful sight was visible by the pale light of the stars.

The entire poop, from which they had just issued, had been torn away from the ship; the wheel, with its four men, the skylights, the upper deck, and all that was in the cabin below, were gone, and all was ruin, and all was silence there save the seething of the angry sea. Some twenty of the passengers and crew were still clustered on the forecastle, seeking shelter between the bunks and windlass; but water was pouring fast into the ship, and as a portion of her deck was beginning to break up, Richard, who was powerful and brave as most men, grasped his faithful servant by the arm, and was assisting him towards this temporary and comfortless bourne, when some of the planking parted below him, and he was suddenly enclosed nearly to the waist, in the jarring woodwork. Then a double shriek escaped him, for both his thighs were broken, and he was so peculiarly jammed among the wreckage, that at that particular time no human power could either aid or save him.

Derrick could only remain near him, helpless, bewildered, and uttering exclamations of commiseration, which mingled with Richard's groans, the hiss of the sea, the roaring of the wind, and the piteous ejaculations of the passengers.

"Oh, Derrick, what a wretched thing I am now," said he, through his clenched teeth, "and what a proud, hale man I was some five minutes ago! Well, well, a six pound shot might have done as much for me elsewhere; but Derrick, God and myself alone know the agony—the awful agony I am enduring. Would to Heaven it were all over—even though I shall never see them more—Constance—Constance, and the children!" he added, while nearly gnawing through his nether lip, in the intensity of his pain and despair.

He made more than one frantic effort to wrench his crushed limbs, and torn and bleeding flesh out of the sudden and terrible trap into which he had fallen; but all such attempts were hopeless and futile, and he would pause exhausted and as pale as a corpse, with the perspiration wrung by agony, mingling with the spray on his temples. That he must soon be drowned, or die in an ecstasy of suffering was but too evident.

"I have often thought to die, Derrick," said he, in a husky voice, "and knew that the day and hour must come to me as they come to all; but I never thought to die thus. Blessed be God, that she knows nothing of it! Do you hear me, Braddon, my old comrade?"

And the servant wept as his master wrung his hand, and in weaker accents urged him to take possession of the two documents which were of such value to the family, and to preserve them even as he would his own life; and with tears in his eyes—tears that mingled with the wind-swept foam—Derrick promised to do so; and every minute Richard Trevelyan's once powerful and athletic frame grew weaker and weaker. Some of the arteries of his limbs had been torn as well as the ligaments, and he was evidently bleeding to death in his half-crushed situation.

Amid their own sufferings and danger, his dying words and prayers were unheeded by the pale and drenched wretches who clung close by to the windlass and forecastle ring-bolts; but terribly his sinking accents fell on the tympanum of Derrick's listening ear. His whole soul seemed as if filled by the idea of those he should never see again.

His last utterances were all about Sybil, Denzil, and their mother; he imagined himself to see them, to be speaking to them, to hear their voices, and to feel their kisses on his sodden face, over which the sea washed ever and anon; and thus, happy it might be in his delirium, he passed away, and when more of the wreck broke up, the body dropped quietly into the sea, and was swept away in the trough to leeward, just as the grey dawn began to steal in, and the wind and waves to go down together, as if their object had been accomplished in the destruction of the ill-fated ship.

A boat that was not stove in, but was still dragged alongside by the fall-tackle, was now properly lowered. Ten men who survived got on board of her and shoved off from the wreck. But Derrick, who, in grief and weakness, had dropped asleep in the forecastle bunks, was unseen or forgotten by them in the hurry and selfishness of the moment; thus when he awoke, the sun was nearly setting, and he was alone upon the sea, for the boat had been picked up by one of Her Majesty's steam vessels, the captain of which duly reported the circumstance, with the loss of the Admiral, to Lloyds and the owners in London.

Derrick's reflections on finding himself alone in the sinking ship were far from soothing. He had death before him, in its most terrible form, by slow starvation; and all the horrors he had read or heard of in shipwrecked men occurred to him with vivid minutiæ most painful to endure. But he prayed quite as much that he might be spared to fulfil the wishes of his master as for the prolongation of his own humble life, and the honest fellow's supplications were not uttered in vain, for ere the twilight came, a vessel bound for Tasmania took him off the wreck; and now, after long, perilous, and penniless wanderings, he found himself once more safe in old England.

Sharkley, who had listened to all this narrative with deep interest—not that he cared a jot about the escapes, the sufferings, or the perseverance of the narrator, but because it formed a necessary sequence to the other portions of his story, which related to Montreal—now said,—

"After all you have undergone, you will, I hope, be careful to whom you show, and with whom you trust, papers, upon the production of which, in a proper and legal manner, so much depends."

"Make yourself perfectly easy on that head," replied Braddon, winking knowingly, as he refilled his pipe.

"Lord Lamorna would give a good round sum, I doubt not—a good round sum, my dear sir, to possess them."

"I am neither a dear sir, nor a cheap one," growled Derrick; "if you mean by Lord Lamorna Master Denzil, the papers are his already by right; if you mean Downie Trevelyan, they sha'n't be his, even if he piled up money as high as Bron Welli. Ah—he had ever an eye to the main chance."

"And haven't we all?"

"In some ways, perhaps, more or less; but harkee, comrade, no more hints like that you gave just now. I had a kind, good master, and was his faithful servant. I am an old soldier, and know what honour is, though my coat be a tattered one."

"Yet, if I have heard aright, you were not always a soldier," sneered Sharkley, who despised monetary scruples that were beyond his comprehension.

"No," replied Braddon, his wrinkled cheek flushing with anger as he spoke; "I was in my youth a smuggler, and here in Cornwall ain't ashamed to say so. I know well the Isles of Scilly, and every creek and cranny in those whose inhabitants are only gulls and rabbits; for in them, as in the Piper's Hole at Tresco, and in many a place hereby known only to myself now, have I at the risk of my life by steel and lead, and storm, run the kegs of Cognac and the negrohead, that never paid duty to the Crown. But what of that; I am not a smuggler now, though I had to bolt for being one! I suppose few will dispute that you have been a lawyer in heart since you first saw the light, or learned to steal your school-mates' apples and nuts, till able to aim at bigger prizes—eh?"

"Come, don't let us quarrel after so pleasant an evening, Mr. Braddon," urged Sharkley, deprecatingly.

"I ain't Mister Braddon," said the old soldier, doggedly; "I am only plain Derrick Braddon, once full private, and No. 2006 in Captain Trevelyan's company of the Old Cornish; and now, I think, I shall turn in."

Sharkley succeeded in talking the veteran into a better humour again, to throw him off his guard; but his eyes never wandered from that left breast pocket where the outline of the tin case was distinctly visible, impressed on the worn-out, faded cloth.

As the storm continued, he remained all night at the Trevanion Arms; and, after assuring himself that Derrick Braddon had no intention of leaving the neighbourhood in a hurry, an early hour next morning saw him spinning along the Cornwall and Devon Railway, in a corner of a third-class carriage, en route to Rhoscadzhel.

END OF VOL. II.

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

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Table of Contents

ONLY AN ENSIGN

CHAPTER I. BEYOND THE LAND OF THE SUN.

CHAPTER II. IN THE AFGHAN FORT.

CHAPTER III. THE WARNING.

CHAPTER IV. WHAT TOOK US THERE.

CHAPTER V. TIFFIN WITH THE TRECARRELS.

CHAPTER VI. THE APPOINTMENT.

CHAPTER VII. "THE BAND PLAYS AT TWO."

CHAPTER VIII. THE DRIVE.

CHAPTER IX. ADVENTURE IN CABUL.

CHAPTER X. THE MOSQUE OF BABER.

CHAPTER XI. "ONLY AN ENSIGN."

CHAPTER XII. ASSASSINATION.

CHAPTER XIII. HOME IN THE SPIRIT.

CHAPTER XIV. IN THE FORTIFIED CAMP.

CHAPTER XV. CHRISTMAS AT CABUL.

CHAPTER XVI. THE MORNING OF THE RETREAT.

CHAPTER XVII. THE HALT BY THE LOGHUR RIVER.

CHAPTER XVIII. SPIRITED AWAY!

CHAPTER XIX. THE SKIRMISH.

CHAPTER XX. IN THE KHYBER PASS.

CHAPTER XXI. WALLER'S ADVENTURES.

CHAPTER XXII. CHANCE BETTER THAN DESIGN.

CHAPTER XXIII. DENZIL A NAWAB.

CHAPTER XXIV. A MEETING.

CHAPTER XXV. MARRIED OR NOT?

CHAPTER XXVI. THE WANDERER.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE LOST STEAMER.

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