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

Author: James Grant

Release date: January 10, 2021 [eBook #64254]
                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 3 (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. III.



  "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.--PAR NOBILE FRATRUM!
  II.--DOWNIE'S REFLECTIONS
  III.--MR. W. S. SHARKLEY'S PLOT
  IV.--THE HOPE OF THE DEAD
  V.--RETRIBUTION
  VI.--AT JELLALABAD
  VII.--THE SCHEME OF ZOHRAB
  VIII.--MABEL DELUDED
  IX.--BY THE HILLS OF BEYMAROO
  X.--AGAIN IN CABUL
  XI.--THE ABODE OF THE KHOND
  XII.--THE SHADE WITHIN THE SHADOW
  XIII.--ROSE IN A NEW CHARACTER
  XIV.--WITH SALE'S BRIGADE
  XV.--THE BATTLE OF TIZEEN
  XVI.--TO TOORKISTAN!
  XVII.--MABEL'S PRESENTIMENT
  XVIII.--THE GOVERNOR OF BAMEEAN
  XIX.--THE ALARM
  XX.--TOO LATE!
  XXI.--THE PURSUIT
  XXII.--THE HOSTAGES
  XXIII.--THE DURBAR
  XXIV.--THE LAMP OF LOVE
  XXV.--CONCLUSION




ONLY AN ENSIGN.



CHAPTER I.

PAR NOBILE FRATRUM!

"So, fellow, I am expected by you to swallow this 'tale of a tub,'
which has been invented or revived solely for the purposes of
monetary extortion!" exclaimed Downie Trevelyan, with the most
intense and crushing hauteur, as he lay back in the same luxurious
easy chair in which his uncle died, and played with his rich gold
eye-glass and watered silk riband.

"It ain't a tale of a tub, my lord; but of the wreck of a
_steamer_--the steamer _Admiral_ of Montreal," replied Sharkley,
meekly and sententiously.

Downie surveyed him through his double eyeglass, thinking that
Sharkley was laughing covertly at him; but no such thought was
hovering in the mind of that personage, who was not much of a laugher
at any time, save when he had successfully outwitted or jockeyed any
one.  He seemed very ill at ease, and sat on the extreme edge of a
handsome brass-nailed morocco chair, with his tall shiny hat placed
upon his knees, and his long, bare, dirty-looking fingers played the
while somewhat nervously on the crown thereof, as he glanced
alternately and irresolutely from the speaker to the titular Lady
Lamorna, who was also eyeing him, as a species of natural curiosity,
through her glass, and whose absence he devoutly wished, but feared
to hint that she might withdraw.

She was reclining languidly on a sofa, with her fan, her lace
handkerchief, her agate scent-bottle, and her everlasting half-cut
novel--she was never known to read one quite through--lying beside
her; and she had only relinquished her chief employment of toying
with Bijou, her waspish Maltese spaniel (which nestled in a little
basket of mother-of-pearl, lined with white satin), when an
aiguletted valet had ushered in "Mr. W. S. Sharkley, Solicitor."

"Leave us, Gartha, please," said her husband; "I must speak with this
person alone."

Curiosity was never a prominent feature in the character of Downie's
wife, who was too languid, lazy, or aristocratically indifferent to
care about anything; so, with a proud sweep of her ample dress, she
at once withdrew, followed by the gaze of the relieved Sharkley, who
had a professional dislike for speaking before witnesses.

Mr. Sharkley's present surroundings were not calculated to add to his
personal ease.  The library at Rhoscadzhel--the same room in which
poor Constance and Sybil had undergone, in presence of the pitying
General Trecarrel, that humiliating interview, the bitterness of
which the wife had never forgotten even to her dying hour, and in
which Richard had, some time previously, found Downie by their dead
uncle's side, with that suspicious-looking document in his hand, the
history of which the former was too brotherly, too gentlemanly, and
delicate ever to inquire about--the library, we say, was stately,
spacious, and elegant enough, with its shelves of dark oak, filled by
rare works in gay bindings, glittering in the sunlight; with the
white marble busts of the great and learned of other days, looking
stolidly down from the florid cornice that crowned the cases; with
its massive and splendid furniture, gay with bright morocco and gilt
nails; with the stained coats of arms, the koithgath and the seahorse
of the Trevelyans, repeated again and again on the row of oriels that
opened on one side, showing the far extent of field and chace, green
upland and greener woodland, the present owner of which now sat
eyeing him coldly, hostilely, and with that undoubted air and bearing
which mark the high-bred and well-born gentleman--all combined to
make the mean visitor feel very ill at ease.

He mentally contrasted these surroundings with those of his own dingy
office, with its docquets of papers, dirty in aspect as in their
contents; its old battered charter-boxes filled with the misfortunes
of half the adjacent villages--a room, to many a hob-nailed client
and grimy miner, more terrible than the torture chamber of the
Spanish Inquisition--and the comparison roused envy and covetousness
keenly in his heart, together with an emotion of malicious
satisfaction, that he had it in his power perhaps to deprive of all
this wealth, luxury, and rank, the cold, calm, and pale-faced
personage who eyed him from time to time with his false and haughty
smile--an expression that, ere long, passed away, and then his visage
became rigid and stony as that of the Comandatore in Don Giovanni,
for whatever he might feel, it was not a difficult thing for a man
who possessed such habitual habits of self-command as Downie
Trevelyan, to appear at ease when he was far from being so.  Yet
Sharkley's mission tried him to the utmost, whatever real pride or
temper he possessed.

"My lord," resumed the solicitor, while the revengeful emotion was in
his heart--"if, indeed, you are entitled to be called 'my lord'----"

"Fellow, what _do_ you mean by this studied insolence?" demanded
Downie, putting his hand on a silver bell, which, however, he did not
ring, an indecision that caused a mocking smile to pass over the face
of Sharkley, while the iris of his eyes dilated and shrunk as usual.
"You are, I know, Sharkley the--aw, well I must say it--the low
practitioner who got up by forgery and otherwise--don't look round,
sir, we have no witnesses--the case of the adventuress Devereaux
against me and my family.  So what brings you here now?"

"To tell you what I was beginning to state--the story of the wreck,
by which your brother Richard, Lord Lamorna, perished at sea; and to
prove that the certificate of his marriage with Miss Constance
Devereaux, daughter of a merchant trader in the city of Montreal, has
been discovered and safely preserved, and is here in Cornwall now,
together with his lordship's will."

Sharkley spoke with malicious bitterness, and Downie paused for a
moment ere he said,--

"You have seen them?"

"Yes."

"Well, when I see those documents I shall believe in their
existence--till then, you must hold me excused; but even their
existence does not prove either their legality or authenticity.  This
is merely some new scheme to extort money," added Downie, almost
passionately; "but it shall not succeed!  That unhappy woman is
dead--she died of paralysis I have heard--the victim, I doubt not, of
her own evil passions.  Her son--"

"Your nephew, is with the army in India.  Her daughter--"

"Has disappeared," said Downie, almost exultingly, "too probably
taking a leaf out of her charming mamma's book; and the army in
Afghanistan has been destroyed--my son Audley's letters and the
public papers assure me of that."

"Yet your lordship would like to see the documents?"

"Or what may seem to be the documents--certainly; in whose hands are
they--yours?"

"No--in those of one who may be less your lordship's friend--Derrick
Braddon."

"Braddon!" said Downie, growing if possible paler than usual;
"Braddon, my brother's favourite servant, who was in all his secrets,
and was with him in the Cornish regiment?"

"The same, my lord."

"D--n--but this looks ill!" stammered Downie, thrown off his guard.

"For your lordship--very," said Sharkley with a covert smile.

Downie felt that he had forgot himself, so he said,

"Of course, this Braddon will show--perhaps deliver them to me."

"You are the last man on earth to whom he will now either show or
deliver them.  Be assured of that."

"For what reason, sir?"

"The account he received from his sister and old Mike Treherne of
your treatment of--well, I suppose we must call her yet--Mrs.
Devereaux."

Downie's steel-gray eyes stared coldly, glassily, and spitefully at
Sharkley.  He longed for the power to pulverise, to annihilate him by
a glance.  He loathed and hated, yet feared this low-bred legal
reptile, for he felt that he, and all his family, were somehow in his
power.  Yet he could not quite abandon his first position of
indignant denial and proud incredulity.

He spread a sheet of foolscap paper before him, and making a broad
margin on the left side thereof, an old office habit that still
adhered to him, like many more that were less harmless, he dipped a
pen in the inkstand, as if to make memoranda, and balancing his gold
glasses on the bridge of his sharp slender nose, said, while looking
keenly over them,

"Attend to _me_, sir--please.  When was this pretended discovery
made?"

"Some nine months ago."

"Where--I say, where?"

"At Montreal, in the chapel where this Latour, of whom we have heard
so much, was curate."

"A rascally scheme--a forgery in which you have a share."

"Take care, my lord--I'll file a bill against you."

"You forget, scoundrel, that we are without witnesses."

"Well--there are a pair of us," was the impudent rejoinder; "but what
good might such a scheme ever do an old pensioner like Derrick
Braddon?"

"I do not pretend to fathom--for who can?--the secret motives of
people of that class," said Downie, haughtily.

"Ay--or for that of it, any class," added Sharkley, as he shrugged
his high bony shoulders.

"Relate to me, succinctly and clearly, all that this man has told
you," said Downie Trevelyan, dipping his pen again in the silver
inkstand; and as Sharkley proceeded, he listened to the narrative of
his brother's sufferings and terrible death with impatience, and
without other interest than that it served to prove his non-existence
by a competent witness, who, were it necessary, might bring others of
the crew who were present on the wreck, and had escaped in a boat.

Ere the whole story was ended, Downie was ghastly pale, and tremulous
with the mingled emotions of rage and fear, doubt and mortification.
He felt certain that in all this there must lie something to be laid
further open, or be, if possible, crushed; and on being reassured by
Sharkley that Derrick Braddon would "surrender the documents only
with his life----"

"We must not think of violence, Mr. Sharkley," said he, coldly and
mildly.

"Well, it ain't much in my line, my lord--though I have more than
once got damages when a client struck me."

"We must have recourse to stratagem or bribery.  For myself, I
cannot, and shall not, come in personal contact with any man who is
so insolent as to mistrust me, nor is it beseeming I should do so.
To you I shall entrust the task of securing and placing before me
those alleged papers, for legal investigation, at your earliest
convenience.  For this, you shall receive the sum of two thousand
pounds; of this," he added, lowering his voice, "I shall give you, in
the first place, a cheque for five hundred."

The eyes of Sharkley flashed, dilated, shrunk, and dilated again,
when he heard the sum mentioned; and rubbing his gorilla-like hands
together, he said, with a chuckle peculiarly his own,--

"Never fear for me, my lord; I'll work a hole for him--this Derrick
Braddon.  He spoke insultingly of _the_ profession last night--but
I'll work a hole for him."

With an emotion of angry contempt, which he strove in vain to
conceal, Downie gave him a cheque for the first instalment of his
bribe, taking care that it was a _crossed_ one, payable only at his
own bankers, so that if there was any trickery in this matter, he
might be able to recall or trace it.

Sharkley carefully placed it in the recesses of a greasy-looking
black pocket-book, tied with red tape, and saying something, with a
cringing smile, to the effect that he had "in his time, paid many a
fee to counsel, but never before received one in return," bowed
himself out, with slavish and reiterated promises of fealty,
discretion, and fulfilment of the task in hand; but he quitted the
stately porte-cochère, and long shady avenue of Rhoscadzhel, with
very vague ideas, as yet, of how he was to win the additional fifteen
hundred pounds.

So parted those brothers learned in the law.




CHAPTER II.

DOWNIE'S REFLECTIONS.

His odious visitor and tempter gone, Downie sat long, sunk in
reverie.  He lay back in the softly-cushioned chair, with his eyes
vacantly and dreamily gazing through the lozenged panes, between the
moulded mullions of the oriel windows, to where the sunlight fell in
bright patches between the spreading oaks and elms, on the green
sward of the chace, to where the brown deer nestled cosily among the
tender ferns of spring, and to the distant isles of Scilly, afar in
the deep blue sea; but he saw nothing of all these.  His mind was
completely inverted, and his thoughts were turned inward.  "The
wildest novel," says Ouida, "was never half so wild as the real state
of many a human life, that to superficial eyes looks serene and
placid and uneventful enough; but life is just the same as in the
ages of Oedipus' agony and the Orestes' crime."

Doubtless, the reader thought it very barbarous in the fierce
Mohammedan Amen Oollah Khan to twist off his elder brother's head,
and so secure his inheritance; but had the civilised Christian,
Downie, been in the Khan's place, he would have acted precisely in
the same way.  The men's instincts were the same; the modes of
achievement only different.

But a month before this, and Downie, at his club in Pall Mall, had
read with exultation, that, of all General Elphinstone's army, his
own son, Audley, and Doctor Brydone, of the Shah's 6th Regiment, had
alone reached Jellalabad.  Little cared he who perished on that
disastrous retreat, so that his son was safe, for, selfish though he
was, he loved well and dearly that son, his successor--the holder of
a young life that was to stretch, perhaps, for half a century beyond
his own shorter span.  Now it had chanced that on the very morning of
this remarkable visit, he had seen, with disgust, in the _Times_,
that, among those alleged to be safe in the hands of an Afghan chief
"was Ensign Denzil Devereaux, of the Cornish Light Infantry, an
officer, who, according to a letter received from Taj Mohammed Khan
the Wuzeer, had succeeded in saving a colour of Her Majesty's 44th
Regiment."

The daughter, whose artful plans upon his son's affections he had, as
he conceived, so cleverly thwarted--the daughter Sybil gone no one
knew whither; the son, a captive in a barbarous land beyond the
Indian frontier, and their mother dead, the little family of Richard
Trevelyan seemed on the verge of being quietly blotted out
altogether; and now here was this ill-omened Derrick Braddon, this
Old Man of the Sea, come suddenly on the tapis, with his confounded
papers!

General Elphinstone had died in the hands of the Afghans; so might
Denzil; or he and the other survivors or hostages might yet be slain
or--unless rescued by the troops from Candahar or Jellalabad--be sold
by Ackbar Khan (as Downie had heard in his place in the House) to the
chiefs in Toorkistan, after which they would never be heard of more.
Oh, thought Downie, that I could but correspond with this Shireen
Khan of the Kuzzilbashes; doubtless such a worthy would "not be above
taking a retaining fee."

By the dreadful slaughter in the Khyber Pass, and the capture of all
the ladies and children, the sympathies, indignation, and passions of
the people were keenly roused at home; thus if Denzil returned at
this crisis, with the slightest military _éclat_, it would greatly
favour any claims he might advance.

If the documents were genuine and could be proved so in a court of
Law--or Justice (these being distinctly separate), were his title,
his own honour (as Downie thought it), the honour, wealth, and
position, privileges and prospects of his wife and children, to be at
the mercy of a mercenary wretch like Schotten Sharkley; or of a
broken-down, wandering, and obscure Chelsea pensioner, who possessed
the papers in question?

It was maddening even for one so cold in blood--so cautious and so
slimy in his proceedings, as Mr. Downie Trevelyan.  He had no great
talents, but only instinct and cunning; barrister though he was, the
cunning of the pettifogger.  A legal education had developed all that
were corrupt and vile in his nature.  A country squire, Downie would
have been a blackleg on the turf and a grinding landlord; a
tradesman, he would have been far from being an honest one; a
soldier, he might have been a poltroon and a malingerer; a legal man,
he was--exactly what we find him, a master in subtlety, with a heart
of stone.  In the same luxurious chair in which he was now seated in
fierce and bitter reverie, he had sat and regarded his brother's
widow, in her pale and picturesque beauty, and watched the torture of
her heart with something of the half amused expression of a cat when
playing with the poor little mouse of which it intends to make a
repast; and now he sat there shrinking from vague terrors of the
future, and in abhorrence of suspense; but there was a species of
dogged courage which he could summon to meet any legal emergency or
danger, if he would but know its full extent.  He was in the dark as
yet, and his heart writhed within him at the prospect of coming
peril, even as that of Constance had been wrung by the emotions of
sorrow and unmerited shame.

He knew himself to be degraded by acting the part of a conspirator in
all this; yet how much was at stake!  No family in ancient Cornwall
was older in history or tradition than his, and none was more
honoured: yet here by intrigue, fatality, and the debasing influence
of association was he, the twelfth Lord Lamorna, the coadjutor of a
man whose father had been a poor rat-catcher, and, if report said
true, a felon.  He felt as if on Damien's bed of steel, or as if the
velvet cushions of his chair had been stuffed with long iron nails,
and he repeated bitterly aloud,--

"What! am I to be but a _locum tenens_ after all--and to whom?
Denzil Devereaux--this _filius nullius_, this son of an adventuress,
or of nobody perhaps!"

The grave, grim, and somewhat grotesque portraits of Launcelot, Lord
Lamorna, in Cavalier dress--he who hid from Fairfax's troopers in the
Trewoofe; of Lord Henry, with beard, ruff, and ribbed armour, who was
Governor of Rougemont in Devon, and whose scruples did not find him
favour with the "Virgin" Queen; and even of his late uncle, with his
George IV. wig, false teeth, and brass-buttoned blue swallow-tail,
seemed to look coldly and contemptuously down on him.

"Pshaw!" muttered Downie, "am I a fool or a child to be swayed by
such fancies?--I should think not; the days of superstition are gone!"

Yet he felt an influence, or something, he knew not what, and averted
his stealthy eyes from the painted faces of the honester dead.

The irony of the malevolent and the vulgar; the gossip and surmises
of the anonymous press; the "Honourable" cut from Audley's name in
the Army List, the Peerage, and elsewhere, and from that of his
daughter Gartha, who was just about to be brought out, and had begun
to anticipate, with all a young beauty's pleasure, the glories of her
first presentation at Court, were all before him now.

To have felt, enjoyed, and to lose all the sweets of rank, of wealth,
of power, and patronage; the worship of the empty world, the slavish
snobbery of trade, to have been congratulated by all the begowned and
bewigged members of the Inns of Court, and by all his tenantry, for
nothing--all this proved too much for Downie's brain, and certainly
too much for his heart.  It was intolerable.

He thought of his cold, unimpressionable, pale-faced, and
aristocratic wife deprived of her place (not of rank, for she was a
peer's daughter), through that "Canadian connection" of Richard's, as
they were wont to term poor Constance--an issue to be tried at the
bar, every legal celebrity of the day perhaps retained in the cause;
money wasted, bets made, and speculation rife; himself eventually
shut out from a sphere in which he had begun to figure, and to figure
well!  Would, he thought, that the sea had swallowed up Braddon, even
as it had done his master!  Would that some Afghan bullet might lay
low this upstart lad, this Denzil Devereaux, and then his claims and
papers might be laughed to scorn!  Downie had never been without a
secret dread of hearing more of Constance and her marriage, and that
one day or other it might admit of legal proof, and now the dread was
close and palpable.

He cherished a dire vengeance against his dead brother, for what he
deemed his duplicity in contracting such a marriage, unknown to all;
and in his unjust ire forgot their late uncle's insane family pride,
which was the real cause of all that had occurred.

Novelists, dramatists, and humourists, are usually severe upon the
legal profession; yet in our narrative, Downie and his agent Sharkley
are given but as types of a bad class of men.  Far be it from us to
think evil generally of that vast body from whose ranks have sprung
so many brilliant orators, statesmen, and writers, especially in
England; though Lord Brougham, in his Autobiography, designates the
law as "the cursedest of all cursed professions," and even Sir Walter
Scott, a member of the Scottish College of Justice, where the
practice is loose, often barbarous and antiquated, wrote in his
personal memoirs, that he liked it little at first, and it pleased
God to make that little less upon further acquaintance; for the
spirit and chicanery of the profession are liable to develop to the
full that which the Irish, not inaptly, term "the black drop" which
is in so many human hearts.

Downie Trevelyan sat long buried in thoughts that galled and wrung
his spirit of self-love, till the house-bell rang, sleek Mr. Jasper
Funnel with his amplitude of paunch and white waistcoat came to
announce that "luncheon was served," and Mr. Boxer, powdered and
braided elaborately, came to ascertain at what time "her ladyship
wished the carriage;" and even these trivial incidents, by their
suggestiveness, were not without adding fuel to his evil instincts
and passions.

Three entire days passed away--days of keen suspense and intense
irritation to Downie, though far from being impulsive by nature, yet
he heard nothing of his tool or agent, whom he began to doubt,
fearing that he had pocketed the five hundred pounds, or obtained the
documents thereby, and gone over with them to the enemy.  But just as
the third evening was closing in, and when, seated in the library
alone, he was considering how he should find some means of
communicating with Sharkley--write he would not, being much too
eautious and legal to commit himself in that way, forgetting also
that the other would be equally so--the door was thrown noiselessly
open, and a servant as before announced "Mr. W. S. Sharkley,
Solicitor," and the cadaverous and unwholesome-looking attorney, in
his rusty black suit, sidled with a cringing air into the room, his
pale visage and cat-like eyes wearing an unfathomable expression, in
which one could neither read success nor defeat.

"Be seated, Mr. Sharkley," said his host, adding in a low voice, and
with a piercing glance, when the door was completely closed, and
striving to conceal his agitation, "You have the papers, I presume?"

"Your lordship shall hear," replied the other, who, prior to saying
more, opened the door suddenly and sharply, to see that no "Jeames"
had his curious ear at the keyhole, and then resumed his seat.

But before relating all that took place at this interview, we must go
back a little in our story, to detail that which Mr. Sharkley would
have termed his _modus operandi_ in the matter.




CHAPTER III.

MR. W. S. SHARKLEY'S PLOT.

As Sharkley travelled back towards the little mining hamlet, where
the Trevanion Arms stood conspicuously where two roads branched off,
one towards Lanteglos, and the other towards the sea, he revolved in
his cunning mind several projects for obtaining possession of the
papers; but knowing that the old soldier mistrusted him, that he was
quite aware of their value, and that he was as obstinate in his
resolution to preserve them, as he was faithful and true to the son
of Richard Trevelyan, there was an extreme difficulty in deciding on
any one line or plan for proper or honest action, so knavery alone
had scope.

Could he, out of the five hundred pounds received to account, but
bribe Derrick Braddon to lend the papers ostensibly for a time,
receiving in return a receipt in a feigned handwriting, with a forged
or fancy signature, so totally unlike that used by the solicitor,
that he might afterwards safely repudiate the document, and deny he
had ever written it!

To attempt to possess them by main force never came within the scope
of Sharkley's imagination, for the old soldier was strong and wiry as
a young bull, and had been famous as a wrestler in his youth; and
then force was illegal, whatever craft might be.

Ultimately he resolved to ignore the subject of the papers, and seem
to forget all about them; to talk on other matters, military if
possible (though such were not much in Sharkley's way), and thus
endeavour to throw Braddon off his guard, and hence get them into his
possession by a very simple process--one neither romantic nor
melo-dramatic, but resorted to frequently enough by the lawless, in
London and elsewhere--in fact by drugging his victim; and for this
purpose, by affecting illness and deceiving a medical man, he
provided himself with ample means by the way.

Quitting the railway he hastened on foot next day towards the
picturesque little tavern, his only fear being that Derrick might
have suddenly changed his mind, and being somewhat erratic now, have
gone elsewhere.

As he walked onward, immersed in his own selfish thoughts, scheming
out the investment of the two thousand pounds, perhaps of more, for
why should he not wring or screw more out of his employer's
purse?--it was ample enough!--the beauty of the spring evening and of
the surrounding scenery had no soothing effect on the heart of this
human reptile.  The picturesque banks of the winding Camel, then
rolling brown in full flood from recent rains; Boscastle on its steep
hill, overlooking deep and furzy hollows, and its inlet or creek
where the blue sea lay sparkling in light under the storm-beaten
headlands and desolate cliffs; away in the distance on another hand,
the craggy ridges of Bron Welli, and the Row Tor all reddened by the
setting sun, were unnoticed by Sharkley, who ere long found himself
under the pretty porch and swinging sign-board of the little inn (all
smothered in its bright greenery, budding flowers, and birds' nests),
where the scene of his nefarious operations lay.

A frocked wagoner, ruddy and jolly, whipping up his sleek horses with
one hand while wiping the froth of the last tankard from his mouth
with the other, departed from the door with his team as Sharkley
entered and heard a voice that was familiar, singing vociferously
upstairs.

"Who is the musical party?" asked he of the round-headed,
short-necked and barrel-shaped landlord, whose comely paunch was
covered by a white apron.

"Your friend the old pensioner, Mr. Sharkley," replied the other,
"and main noisy he be."

"Friend?" said Sharkley nervously; "he ain't a friend of mine--only a
kind of client in a humble way."

"I wouldn't have given such, house-room; but trade is bad--the
coaches are all off the road now, and business be all taken by the
rail to Launceston, Bodmin, and elsewhere."

"Has he been drinking?"

"Yes."

"Pretty freely?" asked Sharpley hopefully.

"Well--yes; we're licensed to get drunk on the premises."

"Come," thought the emissary, "this is encouraging!  His intellect,"
he added aloud, "is weak; after a time he grows furious and is apt to
accuse people of robbing him, especially of certain papers of which
he imagines himself the custodian; it is quite a monomania."

"A what, sur?"

"A monomania."

"I hopes as he don't bite; but any way," said the landlord, who had
vague ideas of hydrophobia, "I had better turn him out at once, as I
want no bobberies here."

"No--no; that would be precipitate.  I shall try to soothe him over;
besides, I have express business with him to-night."

"But if he won't be soothed?" asked Boniface, anxiously.

"Then you have the police station at hand."

Meanwhile they could hear Derrick above them, drumming on the bare
table with a pint-pot, and singing some barrack-room ditty of which
the elegant refrain was always,--

  "Stick to the colour, boys, while there's a rag on it,
  And tickle them behind with a touch of the bagonet:
    So, love, farewell, for _all_ for a-marching!"


As Sharkley entered, it was evident that the old soldier, whose voice
rose at times into a shrill, discordant, and hideous falsetto, had
been imbibing pretty freely; his weather-beaten face was flushed, his
eyes watery, and his voice somewhat husky, but he was in excellent
humour with himself and all the world.  The visitor's sharp eyes took
in the whole details of the little room occupied by his victim; a
small window, which he knew to be twelve feet from a flower-bed
outside; a bed in a corner; two Windsor chairs, a table and
wash-stand, all of the most humble construction; these, with
Derrick's tiny carpet-bag and walking staff, comprised its furniture.

"Come along, Master Sharkley--glad to see you--glad to see any
one--it's dreary work drinking alone.  This is my billet, and there
is a shot in the locker yet--help yourself," he added, pushing a
large three-handled tankard of ale across the table.

"Thank you, Braddon," replied the other, careful to omit the prefix
of "Mr.," which Derrick always resented, "and you must share mine
with me.  Have you heard the news?"

"From where--India?"

"Yes."

"And what are they that I have not heard--tell me that, Mr.
Sharkley--what are they that I have not heard?" said Braddon with the
angry emphasis assumed at times unnecessarily by the inebriated.

"Is it that your young master is shut up among the Afghans, and
likely, I fear, to remain so?"

"Her Majesty the Queen don't think so--no, sir--d--n me, whatever
you, and such as you, may think," responded Derrick, becoming
suddenly sulky and gloomy.

"Who do you mean, Braddon?" asked the other, drinking, and eying him
keenly over his pewter-pot.

"Did you see to-day's Gazette?"

"The Bankruptcy list?"

"Bankrupts be--" roared Braddon, contemptuously, striking his
clenched hand on the deal table; "no--the _War Office Gazette_."

Mr. W. S. Sharkley faintly and timidly indicated that as it was a
part of the newspapers which possessed but small interest for him, he
certainly had not seen it.

"Well, that is strange now," said Derrick; "it is almost the only bit
of a paper I ever read."

"It ain't very lively, I should think."

"Ain't it--well, had you looked there to-day, you would have seen
that young master Denzil--that is my Lord Lamorna as should be--has
been gazetted to a Lieutenancy in the old Cornish--yes, in
the-old-Cornish-Light-Infantry!" added Derrick, running five words
into one.

"Indeed! but he may die in the hands of the enemy for all
that--though I hope not."

"Give me your hand, Mr. Sharkley, for that wish," said Derrick, with
tipsy solemnity; "moreover, he is to have the third class of the
Dooranee Empire, whatever the dickens that may be.  I've drawed my
pension to-day, Mr. Sharkley, and I mean to spend every penny of it
in wetting the young master's new commission, and the Dooranee Empire
to boot.  Try the beer again--it's home-brewed, and a first-rate
quencher--here's-his-jolly good-health!"

"So say I--his jolly good health."

"With three times three!"

"Yes," added Sharkley, as he wrung the pensioner's proffered hand,
"and three to that."

Derrick, who, though winding up the day on beer, had commenced it
with brandy, was fast becoming more noisy and confused, to his wary
visitor's intense satisfaction.

"Yes--yes--master Denzil will escape all and come home safe, please
God," said Derrick, becoming sad and sentimental for a minute; "yet
in my time I heard many a fellow--yes, many a fellow--before we went
into action, or were just looking to our locks, and getting the
cartridges loose, say to another, 'write for me,' to my father, or
mother, or it might be 'poor Bess, or Nora,' meaning his wife, 'in
case I get knocked on the head;' and I have seen them shot in their
belts within ten minutes after.  I often think--yes, by jingo I
do--that a man sometimes knows when death is a-nigh him, for I have
heard some say they were sure they'd be shot, and shot they were sure
enough; while others--I for one--were always sure they'd escape.
It's what we soldiers call a presentiment; but of course, you, as a
lawyer, can know nothing about it.  With sixty rounds of ammunition
at his back, a poor fellow will have a better chance of seeing Heaven
than if he died with a blue bagfull of writs and rubbish."

Then Derrick indulged in a tipsy fit of laughter, mingled with tears,
as he said,

"You'd have died o' laughing, Mr. Sharkley, if you'd seen the captain
my master one day--but perhaps you don't care about stories?"

"By all means, Braddon," replied Sharkley, feeling in his vest pocket
with a fore-finger and thumb for a phial which lurked there; "I
dearly love to hear an old soldier's yarn."

"Well, it was when we were fighting against the rebels in Canada--the
rebels under Papineau.  We were only a handful, as the saying is--a
handful of British troops, and they were thousands in
number--discontented French, Irish Rapparees, and Yankee
sympathisers, armed with everything they could lay hands on; but we
licked them at St. Denis and St. Charles, on the Chamblay river--yes,
and lastly at Napierville, under General Sir John Colborne; and
pretty maddish we Cornish lads were at them, for they had just got
one of our officers, a poor young fellow named Lieutenant George
Weir, into their savage hands by treachery, after which they tied him
to a cart-tail, and cut him into joints with his own sword.
Well--where was I?--at Napierville.  We were lying in a field in
extended order to avoid the discharge of a field gun or two, that the
devils had got into position against us, when a ball from one
ploughed up the turf in a very open place, and Captain Trevelyan
seated himself right in the furrow it had made, and proceeded to
light a cigar, laughing as he did so.

" Are you wise to sit there, right in the line of fire?' asked the
colonel, looking down from his horse.

"'Yes,' says my master.

"'How so?'

"Master took the cigar between his fingers, and while watching the
smoke curling upwards, said,

"'You see, colonel, that another cannon ball is extremely unlikely to
pass in the same place; two never go after each other thus.'

"But he had barely spoken, ere the shako was torn off his head by a
second shot from the field piece; so everybody laughed, while he
scrambled out of the furrow, looking rather white and confused,
though pretending to think it as good a joke as any one else--that
was funny, wasn't it!"

So, while Derrick lay back and laughed heartily at his own
reminiscence, Sharkley, quick as lightning, poured into his tankard a
little phial-full of morphine, a colourless but powerful narcotic
extracted from opium.  He then took an opportunity of casting the
phial into the fire unseen, and by the aid of the poker effectually
concealed it.

"What a fine thing it would have been for Mr. Downie Trevelyan if
that rebel shot had been a little lower down--eh, Derrick?" said he,
chuckling.

"Not while the proud old lord lived, for he ever loved my master
best."

"But he is in possession now--and that, you know, is nine points of
the law."

"Yes--and he has a heart as hard as Cornish granite," said Braddon,
grinding his set teeth; "aye, hard as the Logan Stone of Treryn
Dinas!  Here is confusion to him and all such!" he added,
energetically, as he drained the drugged tankard to the dregs; "if
such a fellow were in the army, he'd be better known to the Provost
Marshal than to the Colonel or Adjutant, and would soon find himself
at shot-drill, with B.C. branded on his side.  But here's Mr.
Denzil's jolly good-health-and-hooray-for-the-Dooranee-Empire!" he
continued, and applied the empty tankard mechanically to his lips,
while his eyes began to roll, as the four corners of the room seemed
to be in pursuit of each other round him.  "I dreamt I was on the
wreck last night--ugh! and saw the black fins of the sea-lawyers,
sticking up all about us."

"Sea-lawyers--what may they be?"

"Sharks," replied Braddon, his eyes glaring with a curious
expression, that hovered between fun and ferocity, at his companion,
whose figure seemed suddenly to waver, and then to multiply.

"Ha, ha, very good; an old soldier must have his joke."

"So had my master, when he sat in the fur-ur-urrow made by the shell.
You see, we were engaged with Canada rebels at
Napierville--ville--yes exactly, at Naperville, when a twelve-pound
shot----"

He was proceeding, with twitching mouth and thickened utterance, to
relate the whole anecdote deliberately over again, when Sharkley, who
saw that he was becoming so fatuously tipsy that further concealment
was useless, rose impatiently, and abruptly left the room, to give
the landlord some fresh hints for his future guidance.

"Halt! come back here--here, you sir--I say!" exclaimed Braddon, in a
low, fierce, and husky voice, as this sudden and unexplained movement
seemed to rouse all his suspicions and quicken his perceptive
qualities; but in attempting to leave his chair he fell heavily on
the floor.

He grew ghastly pale as he staggered into a sitting posture.  Tipsy
and stupefied though he was, some strange conviction of treachery
came over him; he staggered, or dragged himself, partly on his hands
and knees, towards the bed, and drawing from his breast-pocket the
tin case, with the documents so treasured, by a last effort of
strength and of judgment, thrust it between the mattress and
palliasse, and flung himself above it.

Then, as the powerful narcotic he had imbibed overspread all his
faculties, he sank into a deep and dreamless but snorting slumber,
that in its heaviness almost boded death!

* * * * *

The noon of the next day was far advanced when poor old Derrick awoke
to consciousness, but could, with extreme difficulty, remember where
he was.  A throat parched, as if fire was scorching it; an
overpowering headache and throbbing of the temples; hot and tremulous
hands, with an intense thirst, served to warn him that he must have
been overnight, that which he had not been for many a year, very
tipsy and "totally unfit for duty."

He staggered up in search of a water-jug, and then found that he had
lain abed with his clothes on.  A pleasant breeze came through the
open window; the waves of the bright blue sea were rolling against
Tintagel cliffs and up Boscastle creek; hundreds of birds were
twittering in the warm spring sunshine about the clematis and briar
that covered all the tavern walls, and the hum of the bee came softly
and gratefully to his ear, as he strove to recall the events of the
past night.

Sharkley!--it had been spent with Sharkley the solicitor, and where
now was he?

The papers!  He mechanically put his trembling hand to his coat
pocket, and then, as a pang of fear shot through his heart, under the
mattress.

They were not there; vacantly he groped and gasped, as recollections
flashed upon him, and the chain of ideas became more distinct; madly
he tossed up all the bedding and scattered it about.  The case was
gone, and with it the precious papers, too, were gone--GONE!

Sobered in an instant by this overwhelming catastrophe--most terribly
sobered--a hoarse cry of mingled rage and despair escaped him.  The
landlord, who had been listening for an outbreak of some kind, now
came promptly up.

"Beast, drunkard, fool that I have been!" exclaimed Derrick, in
bitter accents of self-reprobation; "this is how I have kept my
promise to a dying master--duped by the first scoundrel who came
across me!  I have been juggled--drugged, perhaps--then juggled, and
robbed after!"

"Robbed of what?" asked the burly landlord, laughing.

"Papers--my master's papers," groaned Derrick.

"Bah--I thought as much; now look ye here, old fellow----"

"Robbed by a low lawyer," continued Derrick, hoarsely; "and no fiend
begotten in hell can be lower in the scale of humanity or more
dangerous to peaceful society.  Oh, how often has poor master said
so," he added, waxing magniloquent, and almost beside himself with
grief and rage; "how often have I heard him say, 'I have had so much
to do with lawyers, that I have lost all proper abhorrence for their
master, the devil.'"

"Now, I ain't going to stand any o' this nonsense--just you clear
out," said the landlord, peremptorily.

Then as his passionate Cornish temper got the better of his reason,
Derrick on hearing this suddenly seized Jack Trevanion's successor by
the throat, and dashing him on the floor, accused him of being art
and part, or an aider and abettor of the robbery, in which, to say
truth, he was not.  His cries speedily brought the county
constabulary, to whom, by Sharkley's advice, he had previously given
a hint, and before the sun was well in the west, honest Derrick
Braddon was raving almost with madness and despair under safe keeping
in the nearest station house.




CHAPTER IV.

THE HOPE OF THE DEAD.

The disappearance of the papers which had so terrible an effect upon
the nervous system, and usually iron frame of Derrick Braddon, is
accounted for by the circumstance that Sharkley on returning to see
how matters were progressing in the room, lingered for a moment by
the half-opened door, and saw his dupe pale, gasping, muttering, and
though half-senseless, yet conscious enough to feel a necessity for
providing against any trickery or future contingency, in the act of
concealing the tin case among his bedding, from whence it was
speedily drawn, after he had flung himself in sleepy torpor above it;
and then stealing softly down stairs with the prize, Sharkley paid
his bill and departed without loss of time and in high spirits,
delighted with his own success.

Too wary to start westward in the direction of Rhoscadzhel, he made
an ostentatious display of departing by a hired dog-cart for his own
residence, at the village or small market town (which was afflicted
by his presence) in quite an opposite direction.  From thence, by a
circuitous route, he now revisited his employer, and hence the delay
which occasioned the latter so much torture and anxiety.

"Two thousand--a beggarly sum!" thought Sharkley, scornfully and
covetously, as he walked up the stately and over-arching avenue, and
found himself under the groined arches of the _porte-cochère_, the
pavement of which was of black and white tesselated marble; "why
should I not demand double the sum, or more--yes, or more--he is in
my power, in my power, is he not?" he continued, with vicious joy,
through his set teeth, while his eyes filled with green light, and
the glow of avarice grew in his flinty heart, though even the first
sum mentioned was a princely one to him.

Clutching the tin case with a vulture-like grasp, he broadly and
coarsely hinted his wish to Downie, who sat in his library chair,
pale, nervous, and striving to conceal his emotion, while hearing a
narration of the late proceedings at the Trevanion Arms; and hastily
drawing a cheque book towards him, be filled up another bank order,
saying,--

"There, sir, this is a cheque for two thousand pounds; surely two
thousand five hundred are quite enough for all you have done in
procuring for my inspection, documents which may prove but as so much
waste paper after all."

"Their examination will prove that such is not the case," said
Sharkley, as he gave one of his ugly smiles, scrutinised the
document, and slowly and carefully consigned it to where its
predecessor lay, in the greasy old pocket-book, wherein many a time
and oft the hard-won earnings of the poor, the unfortunate and
confiding, had been swallowed up.  When Downie had heard briefly and
rapidly a narration of the means by which the papers had been
abstracted, he rather shrunk with disgust from a contemplation of
them; they seemed so disreputable, so felonious and vile!

He had vaguely hoped that by the more constitutional and legal plans
of bribery and corruption Mr. W. S. Sharkley might have received them
from the custodier; but now they were in his hands and he was all
impatience, tremulous with eagerness, and spectacles on nose, to
peruse them, and test their value by that legal knowledge which he
undoubtedly possessed.

His fingers, white and delicate, and on one of which sparkled the
magnificent diamond ring which his late uncle had received when on
his Russian embassy, literally trembled and shook, as if with ague,
when he opened the old battered and well-worn tin case.  The first
document drawn forth had a somewhat unpromising appearance; it was
sorely soiled, frayed, and seemed to have been frequently handled.

"What the deuce is this, Mr. Sharkley?" asked Downie, with some
contempt of tone.

"Can't say, my lord--never saw such a thing before; it ain't a writ
or a summons, surely!"

It was simply a soldier's "Parchment Certificate," and ran thus:--


  _Cornish Regiment of Light Infantry._

"These are to certify that Derrick Braddon, Private, was born in the
Parish of Gulval, Duchy of Cornwall; was enlisted there for the said
corps, &c., was five years in the West Indies, ten in North America,
and six at Gibraltar; was twice wounded in action with the Canadian
rebels, and has been granted a pension of one shilling per diem.  A
well conducted soldier, of unexceptionably good character."  Then
followed the signature of his colonel and some other formula.


"Pshaw!" said Downie, tossing it aside; but the more wary Sharkley,
to obliterate all links or proofs of conspiracy, deposited it
carefully in the fire, when it shrivelled up and vanished; so the
little record of his twenty-one years' faithful service, of his two
wounds, and his good character, attested by his colonel, whom he had
ever looked up to as a demigod, and which Derrick had borne about
with him as Gil Blas did his patent of nobility, was lost to him for
ever.

But more than ever did Downie's hands tremble when he drew forth the
other documents; when he saw their tenor, and by the mode in which
they were framed, worded, stamped, and signed, he was compelled to
recognise their undoubted authority!  A sigh of mingled rage and
relief escaped him; but, as yet, no thought of compunction.  He
glanced at the fire, at the papers, and at Sharkley, more than once
in succession, and hesitated either to move or speak.  He began to
feel now that the lingering of his emissary in his presence, when no
longer wanted, was intolerable; but he was too politic to destroy the
papers before him, though no other witness was present.

Full of secret motives themselves, each of these men, by habit and
profession, was ever liable to suspect secret motives in every one
else; and each was now desirous to be out of the other's presence;
Downie, of course, most of all.  The lower in rank and more
contemptible in character, perhaps was less so, having somewhat of
the vulgar toady's desire to linger in the presence and atmosphere of
one he deemed a greater, certainly more wealthy, and a titled man;
till the latter said with a stiff bow full of significance,--

"I thank you, sir, and have paid you; these are the documents I
wished to possess."

"I am glad your lordship is pleased with my humble services," replied
Sharkley, but still tarrying irresolutely.

"Is there anything more you have to communicate to me?"

"No, my lord."

"Then I have the--I must wish you good evening."

Sharkley brushed his shiny hat with his dusty handkerchief, and the
wish for a further gratuity was hovering on his lips.

"You have been well paid for your services, surely?"

"Quite, my lord--that is--but--"

"No one has seen those papers, I presume?" asked Downie.

"As I have Heaven to answer to, no eye has looked on them while in my
hands--my own excepted."

"Good--I am busy--you may go," said Downie, haughtily, and as he had
apparently quite recovered his composure, he rang the bell, and a
servant appeared.

"Shew this--person out, please," said Downie.

And in a moment more Sharkley was gone.  The door closed, and they
little suspected they were never to meet again.

"Thank God, he is gone!  Useful though the scoundrel has been, and
but for his discovery of those papers we know not what may have
happened, his presence was suffocating me!" thought Downie.

The perceptions of the latter were sufficiently keen to have his
_amour propre_ wounded by a peculiar sneering tone and more confident
bearing in Sharkley; there had been a companionship in the task in
hand, which lowered him to the level of the other, and the blunt
rejoinder he had used so recently--"there are a pair of us," still
rankled in his memory.  Thus he had felt that he could not get rid of
him too soon, or too politely to all appearance; and with a grimace
of mingled satisfaction and contempt, he saw the solicitor's thin,
ungainly figure lessening as he shambled down the long and beautiful
avenue of elms and oaks, which ended at the grey stone pillars, that
were surmounted each by a grotesque koithgath, _sejant_, with its
four paws resting on a shield, charged with a Cavallo Marino, rising
from the sea.

"And _now_ for another and final perusal of these most accursed
papers!" said Downie Trevelyan, huskily.

The first was the certificate of marriage, between Richard Pencarrow
Trevelyan, Captain in the Cornish Light Infantry, and Constance
Devereaux of Montreal, duly by banns, at the chapel of Père Latour.
Then followed the date, and attestation, to the effect, "that the
above named parties were this day married by me, as hereby certified,
at Ste. Marie de Montreal.

  "C. LATOUR, _Catholic Curé_,
  "BAPTISTE OLIVIER, _Acolyte_.
  "DERRICK BRADDON, _Private
    Cornish Light Infantry_.

"JEHAN DURASSIER, _Sacristan_."


About this document there could not be a shadow of a doubt--even the
water-mark was anterior to the date, and the brow of Downie grew very
dark as he read it; darker still grew that expression of malevolent
wrath, and more swollen were the veins of his temples as he turned to
the next document, which purported to be the "Last Will and Testament
of Richard Pencarrow, Lord Lamorna," and which after the usual dry
formula concerning his just debts, testamentary and funeral expenses,
continued, "_I give, devise, and bequeath_ unto Constance Devereaux,
Lady Lamorna, my wife," the entire property, (then followed a careful
enumeration thereof,) into which he had come by the death of his
uncle Audley, Lord Lamorna, for the term of her natural life; and
after her death to their children Denzil and Sybil absolutely, in the
several portions to follow.  The reader Downie (to whom a handsome
bequest was made), General Trecarrel, and the Rector of Porthellick
were named as Executors, and then followed the duly witnessed
signature of the Testator, written in a bold hand LAMORNA, and dated
at Montreal, about nine months before.

"Hah!" exclaimed Downie, through his clenched teeth; "here is that in
my hand, which, were Audley a wicked or undutiful son, might effect
wonders at Rhoscadzhel, and furnish all England with food for gossip
and surmise; but that shall never, never be; nor shall son nor
daughter of that Canadian adventuress ever place their heads under
this roof tree of ours!"

And as he spoke, he fiercely crumpled up the will and the certificate
together.

Then he paused, spread them out upon his writing table, and smoothing
them over, read them carefully over again.  As he did so, the
handsome face, the honest smile and manly figure of his brother
Richard came upbraidingly to memory; there were thoughts of other and
long-remembered days of happy boyhood, of their fishing, their
bird-nesting expeditions, and of an old garret in which they were
wont to play when the days were wet, or the snow lay deep on the
hills.  How was it, that, till now forgotten, the old garret roof,
with its rafters big and brown, and which seemed then such a fine old
place for sport, with the very sound of its echoes, and of the rain
without as it came pouring down to gorge the stone gutters of the old
house, came back to memory now, with Richard's face and voice, out of
the mists of nearly half a century?  "It was one of those flashes of
the soul that for a moment unshroud to us the dark depths of the
past."  Thus he really wavered in purpose, and actually thought of
concealing the documents in his strong box, to the end that there
they might be found after his death, and after he had enjoyed the
title for what remained to him of life.

Would not such duplicity be unfair to his own sons, and to his
daughter?  was the next reflection.

And if fate permitted Denzil to escape the perils of the Afghan war,
was the son of that mysterious little woman, or was her daughter--the
daughter of one whom he doubted not, and wished not to doubt--had
entrapped his silly brother into a secret marriage, in a remote and
sequestered chapel, and whose memory he actually loathed--ever to
rule and reside in Rhoscadzhel?

No--a thousand times no!  Then muttering the lines from Shakespeare,--

  "Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls.
  Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
  Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:"

he drew near the resplendent grate of burnished steel, and resolutely
casting in both documents, thrust them with the aid of the poker deep
among the fuel, and they speedily perished.  The deed was done, and
could no more be recalled than the last year's melted snow!

He watched the last sparks die out in the tinder ashes of those
papers, on the preservation and production of which so much depended,
so much was won and lost; and a sigh of relief was blended with his
angry laugh.

He felt that then, indeed, the richly carpeted floor beneath his
feet; the gilded roof above his head, the sweet, soft landscape--one
unusually so for bold and rugged Cornwall--that stretched away in the
soft, hazy, and yellow twilight, and all that he had been on the
verge of losing, were again more surely his, and the heritage of his
children, and of theirs in the time to come, and that none "of
Banquo's line"--none of that strange woman's blood, could ever eject
them now!

Even Derrick's old tin-case--lest, if found, it should lead to a
trace or suspicion of where the papers had gone--he carefully, and
with a legal caution worthy of his satellite the solicitor, beat out
of all shape with his heel and threw into the fire, heaping the coals
upon it.

This was perhaps needless in Downie Trevelyan, that smooth, smug,
closely shaven, and white-shirted lawyer-lord, that man of legal
facts and stern truths, so abstemious, temperate, and regular in his
habits and attendance at church, and to all the outward tokens of
worldly rectitude.  Do what he might, none could, would, or dare
believe evil of him!

Yet, after the excitement he had undergone, there were moments when
he felt but partially satisfied with himself, till force of habit
resumed its sway--moments when he remained sunk in thought, with his
eyes fixed on that portion of the sea and sky where the sun had set,
while the sombre twilight deepened around, and strange shadows were
cast by the oriels across the library floor.

"For what have I done this thing?" thought he; "for my children of
course, rather than for myself.  I would that I had not been tempted,
for nothing on earth remains for ever--nothing!"  And as he muttered
thus, his eyes rested on the distant Isles of Scilly that loomed like
dark purple spots in the golden sea, which yet weltered in the ruddy
glory of the sun that had set, and he reflected, he knew not why, for
it was not Downie's wont, on the mutability of all human things and
wishes, of the change that inexorable Time for ever brought about,
and of the futility of all that man might attempt to do in the hope
of perpetuity; for did not even the mighty sea and firm land change
places in the fulness of years!

"Where now was all the land tradition named as Lyonesse of old--the
vast tract which stretched from the eastern shore of Mount's Bay,
even to what are now the Isles of Scilly, on which his dreamy eyes
were fixed--the land where once, in story and in verse we are told,

  "That all day long the noise of battle rolled
  Among the mountains by the winter sea;
  Until king Arthur's Table, man by man,
  Had fall'n in Lyonesse about their lord."


There, where now he saw the sea rolling between the rocky isles and
the Land's End, were once green waving woods and verdant meadows,
lands that were arable, mills whose busy wheels revolved in streams
now passed away, and one hundred-and-forty parish churches, whose
bells summoned the people to prayer, but which are all now--if we are
to believe William of Worcester--submerged by the encroaching sea;
yet whether gradually, or by one mighty throe of nature, on that day
when the first of the line of Trevelyan swain his wonderful horse
from the north-western isle, back to the rent and riven land, we know
not, but so the story runs.

From, these day-dreams, such as he was seldom used to indulge in,
Downie's mind rapidly reverted to practical considerations.

"Two thousand five hundred pounds in two cheques!" he muttered; "will
not my bankers, and more than all, Gorbelly and Culverhole, my
solicitors, wonder what singular service a creature such as this
William Schotten Sharkley can possibly have rendered me, to receive
so large a sum?  If that drunken old soldier, Braddon, tells this
story of his last meeting with Sharkley, and the subsequent loss of
the papers, and permits himself to make a noise about them, may there
not be many who, while remembering the former affair, by putting this
and that together, will patch up a scandalous story after all?
Bah--let them; there lie the proofs!" he added, glancing with a
fierce and vindictive smile at the fragments of black tinder which
yet fluttered in the grate.

So perished, at his remorseless hands, all the past hopes of the
tender and affectionate dead, and all the present hopes of the
living--of Richard and his wife who were buried so far apart--of
Denzil and his sister, who were separated by fate, by peril, and so
many thousand miles of land and sea!

But our story may have a sequel for all that.




CHAPTER V.

RETRIBUTION.

Greatly to the surprise of the granter, the two cheques for 500_l._
and 2000_l._ respectively, were never presented at his bankers, and
Mr. Sharkley returned no more to his office; that dingy chamber of
torture, with its dusty dockets, ink-spotted table, and tin
charter-boxes arranged in formal rows upon an iron frame, and its
damp discoloured walls, ornamented by time-tables, bills of sale, and
fly-blown prospectuses, knew him never again; and days, weeks, and
months rolled on, but he was never seen by human eye after the time
he issued from the lodge-gate of Rhoscadzhel, and the keeper, with a
contemptuous bang, clanked it behind him.

When Derrick heard of his disappearance, he felt convinced more than
ever that he had abstracted his papers; but believed he had started
with them to India, perhaps to make capital out of Denzil.  Some who
knew what the solicitor's legal course had been, thought of a dark
and speedy end having befallen him; others surmised that the fear of
certain trickeries, or "errors in practice," had caused him suddenly
to depart for America; but all were wide of the truth.

Lord Lamorna knew not what to think, but maintained a dead and rigid
silence as to his ever having had any meeting or transaction with the
missing man in any way; and as many hated, and none regretted Mr. W.
S. Sharkley, his existence was speedily forgotten in that district,
and it was not until long after that a light was thrown on the
mystery that enveloped his disappearance.

Much money, chiefly that of others, had passed through Sharkley's
hands in his time, and much of it, as a matter of course, was never
accounted for by him; but he had never before possessed so large a
sum at once, and certainly seldom one so easily won, as that
presented to him by the titular Lord Lamorna.  All the exultation
that avarice, covetousness, and successful roguery can inspire glowed
in his arid heart, and he walked slowly onward, immersed in thoughts
peculiarly his own, as to the mode in which he would invest it, and
foresaw how it must and should double, treble, and quadruple itself
ere long; how lands, and houses, messuages and tenements, mills and
meadows, should all become his; and so he wove his golden visions,
even as Alnaschar in the Arabian fable wove his over the basket of
frail and brittle glass; and as he proceeded, ever and anon he felt,
with a grimace of satisfaction, for the pocket-book containing his
beloved cheques.

Some miles of country lay between Rhoscadzhel and Penzance, where he
meant to take the railway for his own place.  As his penurious spirit
had prevented him from hiring a vehicle, he pursued the way on foot;
but he sometimes lost it, darkness having set in, and yet he saw
nothing of the lights of the town.  He had, in his mental
abstraction, walked, or wandered on, he scarcely knew whither, and he
only paused from time to time to uplift his clenched hands, to mutter
and sigh in angry bitterness of spirit that he had not extracted more
from Downie Trevelyan, when he had it in his power to put on the
screw with vigour, and anon he would ponder as to whether he had not
been too precipitate, and whether he had done a wise thing in selling
to him the interests of young Denzil, as these might have proved
pecuniarily more valuable; but then poor Denzil was so far away, and
from all Sharkley could hear and read in the newspapers, he might
never see England more.  For the first time in his life, Mr. Sharkley
found himself taking an interest in our Indian military affairs.

Some of the deep lanes bordered by those high stone walls peculiar to
Cornwall, were left behind, and also many a pretty cottage, in the
gardens of which, the fragrant myrtle, the gay fuchsia with its
drooping petals, and the hydrangea, flourish all the year round; and
now he was roused by the sound of the sea breaking at a distance
round the promontory from which Penzance takes its name--the holy
headland of the ancient Cornish men.  From a slight eminence which he
was traversing, he could see, but at a distance also, the lights of
the town twinkling amid the moorland haze, and that at the harbour
head, sending long rays of tremulous radiance far across Mount's Bay;
then as the pathway dipped down into a furzy hollow, he lost sight of
them.  He was still within half a mile of the shore, but was
traversing a bleak and uneven moorland, and on his right lay a scene
of peculiar desolation, encumbered by masses of vast granite rock,
here and there tipped by the cold green light of a pale crescent
moon, that rose from the wild waste of the vast Atlantic.

Suddenly something like a black hole yawned before him; a gasping,
half-stifled cry escaped him; he stumbled and fell--_where_?

Mechanically and involuntarily, acting more like a machine than a
human being, he had in falling grasped something, he knew not what,
and clutching at it madly, tenaciously, yea desperately, he clung
thereto, swinging he knew not where or how, over space; but soon the
conviction that forced itself upon him, was sufficient to make the
hairs of his scalp bristle up, and a perspiration, cold as snow, to
start from the pores of his skin.

Old mines may seem somehow to have a certain connection with the
story or destiny of Sybil Devereaux, if not of her brother Denzil,
and the betrayer of both their interests, who now found himself
swinging by the branch of a frail gorsebush, over the mouth of the
ancient shaft of an abandoned one--a shaft, the depth of which he
knew not, and dared not to contemplate!  He only knew that in
Cornwall they were usually the deepest in the known world.

If few persons who are uninitiated, descend the shaft of an ordinary
coal-pit, amid all the careful appliances of engineering, without a
keen sense of vague danger, what must have been the emotions of the
wretch who, with arms perpendicularly above his head, and legs
outspread, wildly and vainly seeking to catch some footing, swung
pendent over the black profundity that vanished away into the bowels
of the earth below, perhaps, for all he knew, nearly a mile in depth!

It was beneath him he knew; the quiet stars were above; no aid was
near; there was no sound in the air, and none near him, save the
dreadful beating of his heart, and a roaring, hissing sound in his
ears.

In this awful situation, after his first exclamation of deadly and
palsied fear, not a word, not a whisper--only sighs--escaped him.  He
had never prayed in his life, and knew not how to do so now.  The
blessed name of God had been often on his cruel lips, in many a
matter-of-fact affidavit, and in many an affirmation, made falsely,
but never in his heart; so now, he never thought of God or devil, of
heaven nor hell, his only fear was death--extinction!

And there he swung, every respiration a gasping, sobbing sigh, every
pulsation a sharp pang; he had not the power to groan; as yet his
long, lean, bony hands were not weary; but the branch might rend, the
gorse bush uproot, and _then_----

Nevertheless he made wild and desperate efforts to escape the
dreadful peril, by writhing his body upward, as his head was only
some four feet below the edge of the upper rim or course of crumbling
brickwork, which lined the circular shaft, and often he felt his toes
scratch the wall, and heard the fragments detached thereby pass
whizzing downwards; but he never heard the ascending sound of the
fall below--because below was far, far down indeed!

The silence was dreary--awful: he dared not look beneath, for nothing
was to be seen there but the blackness of utter profundity; he could
only gaze upward to where the placid stars that sparkled in the blue
dome of heaven, seemed to be winking at him.  He dared not cry, lest
he should waste his breath and failing strength; and had he attempted
to do so the sound would have died on his parched and quivering lips.

In every pulsation he lived his lifetime over again, and all the
secret crimes of that lifetime were, perhaps, being atoned for now.

The widows who, without avail or winning pity, had wept, (in that
inquisitorial camera de los tormentos, his "office,"), for the loss
of the hard-won savings of dead husbands, their children's bread;
wretches from under whose emaciated forms he had dragged the bare
pallet, leaving them to die on a bed of cinders, and all in form and
process of law; the strong and brave spirited men, who had lifted up
their hard hands and hoarsely cursed him, ere they betook them to the
parish union or worse; the starvelings who had perhaps gained their
suits, but only in their last coats; the crimes that some had
committed through the poverty and despair he had brought upon them;
the unsuspecting, into whose private and monetary matters he had
wormed himself by specious offers of gratuitous assistance and
advice--a special legal snare--by the open and too often secret
appropriation of valuable papers; and by the thousand wiles and
crooks of policy known only to that curse of society, the low legal
practitioner, seemed all to rise before him like a black cloud now;
and out of that cloud, the faces of his pale victims seemed to mock,
jibe, and jabber at him.

And there, too, were the handwritings he had imitated, the signatures
he had forged, the sham accounts he had fabricated against the
wealthy or the needy, the ignorant and the wary alike; but Sharkley
felt no real penitence, for he knew not that he had committed any
sin.  Had he not always kept the shady side of the law? and, if
rescued, would he not return to his sharp practice thereof as usual?
Yet he felt, as the moments sped on, a strange agony creeping into
his soul:

  "So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven,
  Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven,
  Darkness above, despair beneath,
  Around it flame, within it death!"


The bush bending under his weight, hung more perpendicularly now, and
thus Sharkley's knees, for the first time, grazed till they were
skinned and bloody against the rough brickwork.  Was the root
yielding?  Oh no, no; forbid it fate!  He must live--live--_live_; he
was not fit to die--and thus, too!  The cold, salt perspiration,
wrung by agony, flowed from the roots of his hair, till it well nigh
blinded him, and tears, for even a creature such as he can weep,
began to mingle with them.  They were perfectly genuine, however, as
Master William S. Sharkley wept the probabilities of his own untimely
demise.

He had once been on a coroner's inquest.  It sat in the principal
room of a village inn, upon some human bones--nearly an entire
skeleton--found in an old, disused, and partially filled-up pit.  He
remembered their aspect, so like a few white, bleached winter
branches, as they lay on a sheet on the dining-table.  He could
recall the surmises of the jurors.  Did the person fall?  Had he, or
she--for even sex was doubtful then--been murdered? or had it been a
case of suicide?  None might say.

The poor bones of the dead alone could have told, and they were
voiceless.  All was mystery, and yet the story of some forgotten
life, of some unknown crime, or hidden sorrow, lay there; the story
that man could never, never know.

This episode had long since been forgotten by Sharkley; and now, in
an instant, it flashed vividly before him, adding poignancy to the
keen horrors of his situation.  Was such a fate to be his?

He could distinctly see the upper ledge of bricks, as he looked
upward from where, though he had not swung above three minutes, he
seemed to have been for an eternity now; and though he knew not how
to pray, he thought that he could spend the remainder of his life
happily there, if but permitted to rest his toes upon that narrow
ledge, as a place for footing, as now his arms seemed about to be
rent from his shoulders.  His eyes were closed for a time, and he
scarcely dared to breathe--still less to think.

Sharkley was not a dreamer; he had too little imagination, and had
only intense cunning and the instincts that accompany it; so he had
never known what a nightmare is; yet the few minutes of his present
existence seemed to be only such.  He had still sense enough to
perceive, that the wild and frenzied efforts he made at intervals to
writhe his body up, were loosening the root of the gorse-bush, and he
strove in the dusky light, but strove in vain, to see _how much_ he
had yet to depend upon; and then he hung quite still and pendant,
with a glare in his starting eyeballs, and a sensation as if of palsy
in his heart.

His arms were stiffening fast, his fingers were relaxing, and his
spine felt as if a sharply pointed knife was traversing it; he knew
that the end was nigh--most fearfully nigh--and his tongue clove to
the roof of his mouth, though it was dry as a parched pea.

Oh for one grasp of a human hand; the sound of any voice; the sight
of a human face ere he passed away for ever!

There was a sudden sound of tearing as the gorse-root parted from the
soil; he felt himself slipping through space, the cold air rushed
whistling upward, and he vanished, prayerless, breathless, and
despairing, from the light of the blessed stars, and then the black
mouth of the shaft seemed vacant.




CHAPTER VI.

AT JELLALABAD.

Downie Trevelyan's applications to the War Office, the Horse Guards,
to the Military Secretary for the Home Department of the East India
Company, and even questions asked in his place in the House of Lords,
were unremitting for a time, on the affairs of Afghanistan, as he
wished to elicit some information concerning the safety of his son,
and the probable _non_-safety of Lieutenant Devereaux, more
particularly; but he totally failed in extracting more than vague
generalities, or that one was believed to be safe with Sir Robert
Sale's garrison in Jellalabad; and that the other was supposed to be
a prisoner of war with many others.  How long he might remain so, if
surviving, or how long he had remained so, if dead, no one could
tell; but dark rumours had reached Peshawur, that the male hostages
had been beheaded in the Char Chowk of Cabul, while the females had
been sold to the Tartars.

On the assassination of the Shah Sujah, whose ally we had so
foolishly become by the mistaken policy of the Earl of Auckland, the
prince, his son, had gained possession of the Bala Hissar, the guns
and garrison of which gave him for a time full sway over the city of
Cabul, when he made the cunning, plotting, and ambitious Ackbar Khan
his Vizier.

The latter, however, always on the watch, and by nature suspicious,
intercepted a letter written by his young master to General Nott, who
commanded our troops in Candahar.  This contained some amicable
proposals, quite at variance with the inborn hate and rancour which
Ackbar bore the English; and hence a quarrel ensued at the new court.

The prince demanded that the hostages, male and female--the fair
Saxon beauty of some of the latter was supposed to have some
influence in the request--left by the deceased General Elphinstone,
should be delivered up to him, without question or delay.

Ackbar sternly refused to comply, and it was on this that the young
Shah wrote to General Nott, urging him to march at once on Cabul to
release the captives; and, moreover, to free the city from the
interference and overweening tyranny of Sirdir, who thereupon
resolved to take strong measures, and, with the aid of Amen Oollah
Khan, Zohrab Zubberdust, and some others, made his new Sovereign
captive.  The latter escaped by making a hole in the roof of his
prison; a purse of mohurs, a sharp sword, and a fleet horse, enabled
him to reach in safety the cantonments of the British General, to
whom he gave a sad detail of the miseries to which the prisoners,
especially the delicate ladies, were subjected.

This movement was nearly the means of causing the destruction of all
who were left at Ackbar's mercy.  All communication between them and
the troops in Jellalabad was cut off more strictly and hopelessly
than ever; and Ackbar Khan swore by the Black Stone of Mecca, and by
many a solemn and fearful oath, that "the moment he should hear of
the approach of British troops again towards Cabul, the hostages
should, each and all, man, woman, and child alike, be sold as slaves
to the Usbec Tartars!  And remember," he added, with clenched teeth
and flashing eyes, to Zohrab the Overbearing, and others who heard
him; "that my word is precious to me, even as the _Mohur
Solimani_--the seal of Solomon Jared was to him!"

This was the signet of the fifth monarch of the world after Adam; and
the holder thereof had, for the time, the entire command of the
elements, of all demons, and all created things.

"Now," he exclaimed, with fierce vehemence, "I cannot violate my
oath, for as the sixteenth chapter of the Koran says, '_I have made
God a witness over me!_'"

Hence, perhaps, the rumour that came to Peshawur, and thus any
attempt to save or succour them, would, it seemed, but accelerate
their ruin, for if once removed to Khoordistan, they should never,
never be heard of more, nor could they be traced among the nomadic
tribes who dwell in that vast region of Western Asia, known as the
"country of the Khoords."

The last that, as yet, was known of them, was that they were all in
charge of an old Khan, named Saleh Mohammed, and shut up in a
fortress three miles from Cabul.  There they were kept in horrible
suspense as to their future fate; and to them now were added nine of
our officers who had fallen into Ackbar's hands, when, in the month
of August, he recaptured the city of Ghuznee.

How many Christian companions in misfortune were with the Ladies Sale
and Macnaghten, the garrisons in Jellalabad and Candahar knew not;
neither did they know who, out of the original number taken in the
passes, were surviving now those sufferings of mind and body which
they all had to undergo.  Among them was one poor lady, the widow of
an officer, who had the care of eight young children, to add to her
mental misery.

The steady and unexpected refusal of Sir Robert Sale to evacuate
Jellalabad, completely baulked all the plans of Ackbar Khan, who
supplemented his threatening messages by investing the city in person
at the head of two thousand five hundred horse and six thousand five
hundred juzailchees; but fortunately Sir Robert had collected
provisions for three months, and made a vigorous defence, though the
lives or liberties of the hostages, among whom were his own wife and
daughter, were held in the balance, and he trusted only to his
artillery, the bayonets and the stout hearts of his little garrison,
who, in addition to the assaults and missiles of the Afghans, had to
contend with earthquakes; for in one month more than a hundred of
those throes of nature shook the city, crumbling beneath their feet
the old walls they were defending.

In daily expectation of being relieved, Sale's stout English heart
never failed him, for he had learned through our faithful friend, Taj
Mohammed, the ex-vizier, that Colonel Wild, with a force, was
marching to his aid from one quarter, while General Pollock was
crossing the Punjaub from another.  Yet a long time, he knew, must
elapse before the latter could traverse six hundred miles; and ere
long came the tidings that Wild had totally failed, either by force
of arms or dint of bribery, to achieve a march through the now doubly
terrible Khyber Pass.

General Nott, however, held out in Candahar, and, on receiving some
supplies and reinforcements; he was ready to co-operate with Sale and
Pollock in a joint advance upon Cabul, to rescue the hostages at all
hazards, or, if too late for that, to avenge their fate and the fate
of our slaughtered army by a terrible retribution.

A severe defeat sustained by Ackbar Khan, when Sale, on the 7th of
August, made a resolute sortie and cut his army to pieces, taking two
standards, four of our guns lost at Cabul, all his stores and tents,
relieved Jellalabad of his presence; and in this state were matters
while Waller and Audley Trevelyan were serving there, doing any duty
on which they might be ordered, foraging, trenching, and skirmishing,
for they were unattached to any regiment; and the former was still
ignorant as to the fate of his _fiancée_, the bright-faced and
auburn-haired Mabel Trecarrel, and equally so as to that of her
sister and his friend Denzil.  He had long since reckoned the two
latter as with the dead, and mourned for them as such; for he knew
nothing of their being retained as special "loot" by Shereen Khan,
who now kept himself aloof from Ackbar, of whom he had conceived a
truly Oriental jealousy and mistrust.

Though so near them, Waller knew no more concerning the number,
treatment, or the safety of the hostages held for the evacuation of
the city he had assisted to defend, than those to whom Downie
Trevelyan was applying in London--perhaps less.

To the original number of captives were now added thirty more, from
the following circumstance, which in some of its details is curiously
illustrative of the cunning and avaricious nature of the Afghan
mountaineers.  A pretended friendly _cossid_, or messenger, arrived
at Jellalabad, bearer of a letter from Captain Souter, of Her
Majesty's 44th Regiment, dated from a village near the hill of
Gundamuck, detailing the last stand made there by the few unhappy
survivors of Elphinstone's army, and adding that he and Major
Griffiths, of the 37th Regiment, were the prisoners of a chief who,
on a sufficient ransom being paid--a thousand rupees for each--would
send them to Jellalabad with their heads on their shoulders.  The
brave fellows of the 13th Light Infantry instantly subscribed a
thousand rupees at the drum-head; a thousand more were collected with
difficulty by their now-impoverished officers; and then came a
proposal to ransom twenty-eight privates of the 13th and 44th
Regiments, who were in the hands of the same chief, for a _lac_ of
rupees.  By incredible efforts, and by encroachment on the military
chest, this sum was sent with certain messengers, who, by a
previously concerted scheme, were waylaid and robbed of it by men
sent by Ackbar Khan, who, seizing the thirty Europeans, added them to
the other hostages whose lives or liberties were to pay for the
surrender of Jellalabad!

The poor soldiers had given all they possessed in the world, save
their kits and ammunition, to save their comrades from perilous
bondage, and had given it in vain.  They had but the consolation of
having done for the best.

Amid even the exciting bustle of military duty, the reflections of
Waller were sometimes intolerable.  He could never for a moment
forget.  Though he was not, as a matter-of-fact young English
officer, prone to flights of romantic fancy, imagination would force
upon him with poignant horror all that Mabel might be forced to
endure at the hands of those on whose mercy she and her companions
were cast by a fate that none could have foreseen, especially during
the pleasant days of the year that was passed at Cabul, when the
race-course, the band-stand, picnics, hunting-parties, morning
drives, and rides to see Sinclair's boat upon the lake, tiffin
parties at noon, others for whist or music in the evening, made up
the round of European social life there, ere Mohammed Ackbar Khan
came to the surface again with his deep-laid plots for aggrandisement
and revenge.

Mabel Trecarrel, his affianced wife, so gently soft and
lady-like--her image was ever before him, her voice ever in his ear,
and the varying expressions of her clear grey eyes, with all her
winning ways, came keenly and vividly to memory, more especially in
the lonely watches of the night, when muffled in his poshteen, with
only a Chinsurrah cheroot to soothe his nerves and keep him warm, he
trod from post to post visiting his sentinels, or listened for the
sounds that might precede an Afghan assault, or perhaps an
earthquake; for the troops had both to encounter, though often
nothing came but the melancholy howl of the jackal on the night wind,
as it sighed over the vast plain around the city of Jellalabad--the
Zarang of the historians of Alexander.

He had frequent thoughts of returning to Cabul in disguise as an
Afghan.  He had already been pretty successful in his Protean
attempts to conceal his identity; but Sir Robert Sale would by no
means accord him permission to risk his life again in a manner so
perilous; so, as partial inactivity was maddening to him, after
Ackbar Khan's defeat had left all the avenues from the city open, he
volunteered, if furnished with a suitable escort, to ride to
Candahar, and urge on General Nott the policy of instantly advancing.
Sir Robert Sale agreed to this, and furnished him with a despatch and
a guard of twenty Native Cavalry; so Bob Waller departed, actually in
high spirits, thankful that even in this small way he was doing
something that might ultimately lead to the recapture of Cabul, and,
more than all, the rescue of her he loved.

At a quick pace he crossed the arid desert that surrounds the city,
and ascended into the well-wooded and magnificent mountain ranges
that rise all around it, but more especially to the westward, whither
his route lay, and his spirits rose as his party spurred onward.
"What pleasure there is in a gallop!" says Paul Ferroll; "the object
is before one, at which to arrive quickly; the still air becomes a
wind marking the swiftness of one's pace--the fleet horse is his own
master, yet one's slave; the bodily employment leaves care, thought,
and time behind.  One feels the pleasure of danger, because there
might be danger, and yet there may be none."

So thought Waller, as he careered at the head of his party, with a
cigar between his teeth, the which to keep alight while riding at
full speed, he had previously dipped in saltpetre, a camp-fashion
peculiar to India.

Candahar is distant from Jellalabad two hundred and seventy British
miles, and, considering the state of the whole country, the
undertaking, at the head of twenty horse, was a brave and arduous
one; but Waller confidently set out on his expedition, after having
carefully inspected his escort of picked men, and personally examined
their arms, ammunition, and saddlery, as he knew not whom they might
meet, or have to encounter.

By a curious coincidence, on the very day he bade adieu to his
brother-officer, Audley Trevelyan, and other friends, to urge and
effect a junction of the forces, a fresh and loud burst of
indignation against the now-desponding Indian Executive was excited
in the minds of Sale's troops by the arrival of a messenger with a
startling proposal from the Governor-General, Auckland, to the effect
that Jellalabad was _not_ a place to retain any longer; that a
retreat was to be made from there to Peshawur; that, in effect, the
whole of Afghanistan was to be--as Ackbar Khan wished it--abandoned
by our forces, and that the helpless women and children, wounded and
sick, at Cabul, were to be left at the mercy of irresponsible
barbarians until rescued by quiet negotiations or a judicious
distribution of money; and thus to have peace at any price, leaving
our disgraces without remedy, our revenge unaccomplished, and our
prestige destroyed--in that quarter of the world at least!

Even the English women who were captives in Afghanistan knew better
than this; for, amid the earnest prayers which they put up for their
liberation, they ever seemed to know that it was "not to be obtained
by negotiation and ransom, _but by hard fighting_," and they had more
trust in the bayonets of Sale's Brigade than in all the diplomatists
in London or Calcutta.

Fortunately, ere all these disastrous arrangements could be made, a
new Governor-General in the person of Lord Ellenborough arrived, and
to him Sir Robert Sale despatched Audley Trevelyan with a letter
descriptive of his plans, and giving details of his force; and on
this mission, with a few attendants, our young staff officer and his
companion departed by the way of Peshawur, the gate of Western India,
on a long and arduous journey of nearly five hundred miles, by Rawul
Pindee and Umritsur, to Simla, on the slopes of the Himalayas--a
journey to be performed by horse and elephant, as the occasion might
suit; for the railway to Lahore had not as yet sent up its whistle in
the realms of Runjeet Sing.

Meanwhile Waller was proceeding in precisely an opposite direction.
Compelled to avoid Ghuznee, which was now in the hands of the Afghans
under Ameen Oollah Khan, he and his escort, the half-Rissallah of
Native Horse, travelled among the mountains, unnoticed and uncared
for by the nomadic dwellers in black tents, whose temporary
settlements dotted the green slopes.  His sowars all wore turbans in
lieu of light-cavalry helmets; and as he too had one, with it, his
poshteen, and now weather-beaten visage, he passed as a native chief
of some kind; and the route they traversed was sometimes as beautiful
as picturesque villages, long shady lanes overarched by
mulberry-trees, orchards of plums, apples, pomegranates, and those
great cherries which were introduced by the Emperor Baber, could make
it.  And so on they rode, by Kurraba and Killaut, till they reached
Candahar in safety; and thankful indeed was honest Bob Waller when
from the hills, amid the plain, he beheld the city, with its fortress
crowning a precipitous rock, its long low walls of sun-dried brick,
and the gilded cupola that shrines the tomb of Ahmed Shah, once "the
Pearl of his age," the object of many a Dooranee's prayer, and around
which so many recluses spend the remainder of their lives in
repeating the Koran over and over again without end.

There Waller was welcomed by the gallant General Nott, whom he found
full of stern resolution and high in hope for the future, for he was
on the very eve of marching with seven thousand well-tried and
well-trained troops to the aid of his friend Sale; and on the 15th of
August the movement was made, _en route_ recapturing Ghuznee.  It was
stormed, and the Afghans again driven out at the point of the
bayonet.  The whole place was dismantled; and, among others, Waller
had the pleasure of standing where no "unbeliever" ever stood before,
in the tomb of the Sultan Mahmud, which is entirely of white marble
and sculptured over with Arabic verses from the Koran.  Around it,
beneath the mighty cupola stand thrones of mother-of-pearl; and upon
the slab that covers his grave lies the mace he used in battle, with
a head of iron, so heavy that few men now-a-days can use it.  The
gates of this tomb were miracles of carving and beauty; they were of
that hard yellow timber known as sandal-wood, which grows on the
coast of Malabar and in the Indian Archipelago, and is highly
esteemed for its fragrant perfume and as a material for cabinet work.
Those gates had been brought as trophies from the famous Hindoo
temple of Somnath in Goojerat, when sacked by Mahmud in his last
expedition during the tenth century; and after hanging on his tomb
for eight hundred years, they were now torn down by order of General
Nott, and carried off by our victorious troops, for restoration on
their original site.

Prior to all this, General Pollock with his army had reached
Jellalabad, which he entered under a joyful salute of sixteen pieces
of cannon, and then "forward!" was the word heard on all sides,
"forward to Cabul!"

Then it was seen how the weather-beaten and hollow faces of our jaded
soldiers brightened with joy and ardour, with a flush for vengeance
too; for certain tidings came that, prior to this long-delayed*
junction having been effected, the relentless Ackbar, true to his
oath, had hurried off all his captives, male and female, in charge of
Saleh Mohammed towards the confines of savage Toorkistan--tidings
heard by many a husband, father, and lover with despair and rage!.....


* It was with something of waggery, perhaps, that the band of the
13th Light Infantry, on this occasion, welcomed Pollock, by playing
the old Scottish melody,

  "Oh, but you've been lang o' comin',
    Lang, lang, lang o' comin'."





CHAPTER VII.

THE SCHEME OF ZOHRAB.

Time, to the young, seems but a slow and cold comforter (alas! how
different it must appear to the old); so Denzil knew that, though
sluggish, time must eventually bring about some change in the
captivity he was enduring in the hands of Shireen Khan--a mode of
life that, but for the sweet companionship of Rose, would have been
simply so intolerable that he should certainly have attempted to
escape even at the risk of death.

In perfect ignorance of all that was passing in the outer world of
far-away Europe, of India, and even Afghanistan, they and the other
hostages, from whom they were, happily for themselves, kept apart,
knew nothing of all that was passing elsewhere, or of the plans that
were forming and the hopes that grew for their rescue or release.

We say, happily they were sequestered from those who were in the
hands of Ackbar Khan: thus they were not harassed by dreadful and
incessant doubts of their future fate, especially the vague and
terrible one of transmission to Toorkistan; for the old Kuzzilbash
lord treated them kindly, and, to the best of his resources,
hospitably, confidently believing that it was his personal interest
to do so, as the gaily embroidered regimental colour of the 44th, or
East Essex, in which Denzil purposely aired his figure occasionally
in the garden of the fort, still impressed him with the idea that he
had secured a great Feringhee Nawab whom the Queen or Company might
ransom, or who might prove a powerful friend to him if reverses came
upon Cabul, and not a poor Ensign, or Lieutenant, as Denzil was now;
though he knew not that, consequent to slaughter, death by disease,
and so forth, he had now been promoted in the corps.

Chess-playing was the great bond between old Shireen and the bright
laughing Rose, whom he treated with infinitely more care and
tenderness than either of his own daughters; but to Denzil he would
frequently say in his hoarse, guttural, and most unmusical language,
between the whiffs of his silk-bound and silver-cupped hubble-bubble--

"I am thy friend; yet remember that friendship with unbelievers is
forbidden by the Koran, especially with Jews or Christians; for saith
the fifth chapter, 'Are they not friends one with another?' and they
will corrupt us, their alms being like the icy winds which blow on
the fields of the perverse, and blast their corn in the ear."

Denzil could not repress an impatient grimace under a smile, for it
was the Koran--always and ever the Koran--among these Afghans; every
casual remark or idea suggested a quotation from or a reference to
it, so that the Khanum could not dye her nails, adjust her veil, put
pepper in the kabobs, or chillis among the pillau of rice, without a
reference to something that was said or done on a similar occasion by
the Holy Camel-driver of Mecca,--their whole conversation being
interlarded with pious sayings, like that of the Scottish Covenanters
or English Puritans of old.

Isolated as they were in that lonely Afghan fort, surrounded by
towering green hills, the interest that Denzil and Rose had in each
other grew daily and hourly deeper; so that at last she learned to
love him--yes, actually to love him--as fondly as he had ever loved
her, and to feel little emotions of pique and jealousy when he strove
to address the daughters of the house and teach them a very strange
kind of broken English.

Propinquity and a just appreciation of his sterling character
achieved this for him, and he felt supremely happy in the conviction
of this returned love, though the end of it yet was difficult to
foresee.

But it was such a divine happiness to dream softly on for the
present, shut in there as they were alone for themselves apparently,
and, as it seemed, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot."
Denzil's doubts of her were gone now; yet Rose had the power to
conceal for a long time the gradual change in her own sentiments and
secret thoughts from him who had inspired them; for the coquette was
loth to admit that she had succumbed at last.

Denzil had contrived, after innumerable essays, in the most
remarkable species of polyglot language, to make old Shireen
comprehend that they had not, as yet, been married before a Cadi (or
Moollah, as the Christians are), and had to wait the permission of
others.  On this he stroked his vast beard in token of assent, and
thrice muttered "Shabash!" with great solemnity, meaning,
"Well-done--agreed."

Rose had lost much of her heedlessness of manner now; her latest
flirtation, which had been with Audley Trevelyan, was utterly
forgotten, as many others had been; and the quaint Afghan dress she
was compelled by the exigencies of her scanty wardrobe to wear--to
wit, a yellow chemise of silk embroidered with black, trousers of
fine white muslin, which revealed through its thin texture the
roundness of each tapered ankle, with her veil floating loose, in
token of her being unmarried, did not afford her much room for
coquetry, although it afforded scope for her old waggery, and her
long unbound auburn tresses, that spread over her shoulders in
brilliant ripples, she was wont to ridicule as a _coiffure à la
sauvage_, though one with which Denzil's fingers--when unobserved by
the Afghan household, he and she could ramble among the parterres,
rosaries, and shrubberies of the Khan's garden--were never weary of
toying.

"You will tire of this life, as I do, and more soon of waiting too,"
said she one day.

"I shall wait and be faithful to you, Rose, even as I was taught at
school Jacob was to Rachel," he replied, fondly caressing her hands
in his.

"Oh! that is much more solemn than Paul and Virginia," said she
laughing; "but, for Heaven's sake, don't imitate our dingy friends
here in pious quotations."

When Rose Trecarrel calmly learned to know herself, she found upon
consideration, and came to the conclusion, that it was not mere
admiration for Denzil's handsome person and earnest winning manner;
it was not gratitude for his steady faith to herself, it was not the
charm of propinquity, nor the emotion of self-flattery at his
passion,--that it was not any of these singly, but all put together,
that made her love him so dearly now, and wonder at her heedless
blindness in the time that was past.

Save Zohrab Zubberdust, that handsome, reckless, and wandering
Mohammedan soldier of fortune, no visitor at this time came to the
fort; and he was openly permitted to see Rose with the other ladies
of the family, and occasionally to converse and smoke a cherry-stick
pipe with Denzil, who deemed it rash on the part of Shireen to permit
them--Rose and himself--to be seen so freely by one who was a paid
follower of Ackbar Khan; but the leader of five thousand mounted
Kuzzilbash spearmen doubtless felt himself pretty independent in
action now.  Moreover, since Ackbar's signal defeat before the walls
of Jellalabad, his influence had been lessening in Cabul and all the
surrounding country; and Zohrab, like many other "khans," who had
only their swords and pistols, and, like many other Afghan snobs,
that title to maintain, was beginning to wax cool in his service,
even as the funds ebbed in his treasury; for Ackbar now had but one
hope of replenishing these--the ransom or sale of the captives left
in his hands, and each head of these he reckoned at so many mohurs of
gold.

It was from some casual remarks of Zohrab that Rose and Denzil first
learned, with mingled emotions of satisfaction and fear, compassion
and hope, that so many more hostages, male and female, were in the
hands of Ackbar, and that their own hopes of rescue or ransom were
thereby increased.

Rose, through the medium of the Khan and of Denzil, overwhelmed
Zubberdust with questions as to who these prisoners were.  Was her
father among them?  No description he gave her answered to that of
the burly, bronzed, and grizzle-haired "Sirdir Trecarrel;" but there
was _one_ "mem sahib," whose appearance tallied so closely in
stature, face, eyes, and colour of hair with her own, that knowing as
she did all the ladies who had been in the cantonments, Rose could
not doubt but that she was Mabel--Mabel, her dear and only sister,
who must have been within a few miles of her all those weary, anxious
months, and yet neither could know of the other's existence; for
Mabel, like all who were with Elphinstone's ill-fated host, had now
learned to number all who had loved her with the dead.

Now it happened that Zohrab Zubberdust had frequently seen Mabel
Trecarrel among the hostages, and been struck by her beauty.  Indeed,
Ackbar Khan, who cared not for such personal attributes as she
possessed, and was long since past all soft emotions now, or, indeed,
any save those of ferocity, ambition, and avarice, had frequently
indicated her to Ameen Oollah Khan and others as the one upon whom he
put most value, and for whom he expected the largest sum from a
certain Toorkoman chief whom he named, and who was in the habit of
purchasing or exchanging horses for such pleasant commodities; for at
that precise time, or in that year of Queen Victoria's reign,
Mohammed Ackbar could scarcely realise as a probability the fact that
the year 1871 would see a descendant of the Great Mogul--he who was
lord of Persia, Transoxana, and Hindostan--one of the royal race of
Delhi, sentenced in a Feringhee court of law, by a cadi in a tow wig,
to four years' imprisonment with hard labour "for burying a
slave-girl" in the city of Benares!  So,

  "Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes,
  Tenets with books, and principles with times!"


Thus Zohrab, perceiving that the power and influence of Ackbar had
been daily growing less in Cabul, especially since the flight of the
young Shah to the British General, had begun to dream of possessing
himself of this rare European beauty, and departing with her, his
horse and lance, in search of "fresh fields and pastures new," and,
if possible, of another paymaster; perchance to the court of the Emir
of Bokhara, the Shah of Persia, or some one else, alike beyond the
ken of Ackbar and the influence of the Feringhees and their queen.
In this intention, Zohrab felt the less compunction, that Ackbar had
of late permitted his pay to be in arrears several _tillas_ of gold.

But how to get her quietly out of his power, still more how to get
her out of the immediate care and wardship of such a wary old soldier
and chief as Saleh Mohammed, to whom the especial keeping of the
hostages had been confided by the Sirdir, were the two principal
difficulties of Zohrab.

He hoped to achieve much through the real or supposed relationship to
Rose, with whom he conversed freely, at times, on this and other
subjects (Denzil acting as their interpreter), and from him she
gradually learned much of which Shireen and his household had,
perhaps, kept her in ignorance--the state of affairs before
Jellalabad and in the Passes.

"Are not the poor dead creatures buried there?" Rose once asked,
while many a face and voice came back to memory.

"Buried? a few--but not deep," replied Zohrab, evasively.

"How--what mean you?"

"Because, as I rode through the Pass but yesterday, my horse's hoofs
turned up great pieces of human flesh, while the jackals and hyaenas
have been busy with the rest; they are dry bones now."

Rose tremulously clasped her white hands and shuddered.

"And those bones," was the sententious remark of Shireen, who was
listening, "not even the voice of Ezekiel could, as we are told it
once did, call back to life, as it called the dead Israelites of old."

"A fortunate thing for us, Khan," said the irreverent Zohrab,
laughingly.

"Why?"

"I mean, if the result was to be the same; for all arose and lived
for years after; and is it not written that they moved among living
men with a stench and colour of corpses, and had to wear garments
blackened with pitch?"

"That weary Koran again!" murmured Rose; while the Khan frowned, and,
to change the subject, said,

"Tell us, Zohrab, more about the Feringhee damsel whom this lady
deems must be her sister, and your plans regarding her."

"I fear she could not be prevailed upon to trust herself to me under
any pretext, or to leave the companionship of her friends in
misfortune without some assurance that she who is with you, Khan
Shireen, is indeed her sister in blood."

"Most true," said Shireen, running his brown fingers through his
dense beard with an air of perplexity.

"Oh, that may be easily arranged," said Denzil, full of hope at the
prospect of seeing Mabel, of the joy it would afford Rose, and the
wish to learn from her own lips all that had happened to so many dear
friends since that terrible day when so many thousands perished, and
so many were separated never to meet more.  Thus, he suggested that
Rose should entrust Zohrab with a note to be delivered, on the first
convenient opportunity, to Mabel, or the lady who was supposed to be
she.  Zohrab did not care about her identity the value of a
cowrie-shell, provided his own plans succeeded.

"And you shall bring her here without delay?" said Shireen, while he
knit his bushy and impending eyebrows.

"Where else would she be safe, Khan?"

"Not with you, at all events," was the dubious response.

Zohrab coloured perceptibly, and a covert gleam flashed in his glossy
black eyes, as he said,

"My head may answer for this project, Khan, if I am taken."

"Taken--how?  Do you mean to fly?" asked Shireen, with another keen
glance.

"Nay--nay; not if I can help it," stammered Zohrab, who saw that the
Khan's sunken eyes were full of strange light.

"If it becomes known that she is here, the fact will embroil me with
Ackbar; but, bah! what matter is it?" said Shireen, proudly.  "The
city is divided against him, and he knows I can bring five thousand
red caps into the field; and she will be one more prisoner for
Shireen of the Kuzzilbashes!" he muttered under his beard.  "Go then,
Zohrab; go and prosper."

"May I not accompany him?" asked Denzil, eagerly, as for months he
had never been beyond the wall and ditch of the fort, and he longed
to make a reconnaissance with a future eye to escape.

"Nay," said Zohrab, "you know not what you propose, Sahib.  Your
presence would but encumber me, and add to the lady's peril: it is
not to be thought of."

Rose added her entreaties that he would not think of it either; for
she might lose her lover, and not regain her sister, so suddenly, so
recently, heard of; and then an emphatic and brief command from the
Khan ended the matter, so far as poor Denzil was concerned, and he
felt himself compelled to succumb.

Writing materials, such as the Afghans use, the strong fibrous paper,
a reed split for a pen, with deep black and perfumed Indian ink, were
soon brought; and Rose, with a prayerful emotion in her fluttering
heart, and a hand that more than once almost failed in its office, so
great was her excitement, wrote a single line assuring Mabel that
she, herself, was safe, and to "confide in the bearer of this, who
would bring her to where she was residing;" and with this tiny
missive--which he placed to his lips and then to his forehead in
token of faith, while his black eyes flashed with an expression which
Rose saw, but failed to analyse--safely deposited in the folds of his
turban, Zohrab took his departure; and with a heartfelt invocation
for his success on her lips, Rose heard the sound of the hoofs of his
swift Tartar horse die away on the road that led towards the dark
rocky hills of Siah Sung.

"Shabash! such children of burnt fathers those Feringhees are!" said
Zohrab, laughing as he galloped along.  "Well, well, let me enjoy the
world ere I become the prey of the world!"

Zohrab had promised to return with the lady, or, if without her, to
bring some sure tidings, not later than the evening of the second
day; but the evening sun of the third had reddened and died out on
the mountain peaks, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and a whole
week passed away, yet there came no word or sign from Zohrab, and
never more did he cross the threshold of Shireen's dwelling!

Had he been discovered and slain by Saleh Mohammed, or what had
happened?

Rose wept, for the tender hope, so suddenly lighted in her impulsive
heart, only to be as suddenly extinguished; but as yet no suspicion
of treachery on the part of Zohrab Zubberdust had entered the minds
of her or Denzil, whatever Shireen Khan, as an Afghan naturally prone
to suspicion, may have thought.




CHAPTER VIII.

MABEL DELUDED.

On receiving the note from Rose Trecarrel, the cunning Zohrab, full
of his own nefarious plans, had ridden straight from the white-walled
fort of Shireen Khan to that commanded by Saleh Mohammed, which is
situated exactly three miles from Cabul, amid a well-cultivated
country; and there, knowing well the time when, after hearing morning
prayers read according to the service of the Church of England by one
lady who had preserved her "Book of Common Prayer," the poor
captives, with the children who were among them, were wont to take an
airing in the garden, he chose the occasion; for, as he was aware,
Saleh Mohammed, kneeling upon a piece of black xummul, under the
shadow of a great cypress, would be also at _his_ orisons, and
telling over his string of ninety-nine sandal-wood beads, with his
face bowed towards the _west_, as is the custom in India and Persia.
The precept of the Koran is, that when men pray they shall turn
towards the Kaaba, or holy house of Mecca; and, consequently,
throughout the whole Moslem world, indicators are put up to enable
the faithful to fulfil this stringent injunction.  So selecting, we
say, a time when the grim old commandant of the fort was deep in his
orisons, with his head bowed, and his silver beard floating over the
weapons with which his Cashmere girdle bristled--for the modern
Afghan (like the Scottish Highlander of old) is never found unarmed,
even by his own fireside--he made a sign to Mabel that he wished to
speak with her; but he had to repeat this salaam more than once ere
she understood him, as she was intently toying with and caressing a
little boy, whose parents had perished in the late disasters, and who
clung specially to her alone.

Mabel, pale and colourless now more than was her wont, though she
never had possessed a complexion so brilliant as her sister Rose,
bowed to Zohrab, whom she little more than knew by sight, and by the
force of local custom was lowering her veil (for she, too, like all
the rest, now wore the Afghan female dress) and turning away, when
Zohrab placed a hand on his lips, and, making a motion indicative of
entreaty, silence, and haste, held up the tiny note of Rose.

On this Mabel's pale cheek flushed; she hesitated, and many ideas
shot swiftly through her mind, while she glanced hastily about her,
to see who observed them.  Was this note some plot for her release
and the release of her friends--some political or military stratagem?
Had it tidings of her father's burial--for she knew that he had
fallen in the Pass--of the army, of those who were in Jellalabad?
Was it a love-letter?  Zohrab Zubberdust was certainly very handsome;
her woman's eye admitted that.  This idea occurred last of all; yet
the note might be from Waller--dear Bob Waller, with his fair honest
face and ample whiskers.  All these thoughts passed like lightning
through her mind as she took the missive, which was written on a
small piece of paper, folded triangularly and without an address.

Then, as she opened it, a half-stifled cry of mingled astonishment
and rapture escaped her.

"Rose, it is from Rose; she yet lives!  Oh, my God, I thank Thee!  I
thank Thee!--she yet lives, but where?" she exclaimed, in a voice
rendered low by excess of emotion, as she burst into tears, and read
again and again the few words her sister had written.

Zohrab was attentively observing her.  He saw how pure and beautiful
she was; how unlike aught that he had ever looked upon before--even
the fairest, softest, and most languishing maids of Iraun; for Mabel
was an English girl, above the middle height, and fully rounded in
all her proportions.  All that he had heard of houris, of those
black-eyed girls of paradise, the special care of the Angel Zamiyad,
seemed to be embodied in her who was before him.  Her quiet eyes
seemed wondrously soft, clear, and pleading in expression, to one
accustomed ever to the black, beady orbs of the Orientals; and as he
gazed, he felt bewildered, bewitched by the idea that in a little
time, if he was wary, all this fair beauty might be his--his as
completely as his horse and sabre!

"My sister! my dear, dear sister!" exclaimed Mabel, impulsively,
kissing the note and pressing it to her breast.  "Oh, I must tell of
this.  Lady Sale, Lady Sale!" she exclaimed, looking around her; but
Zohrab laid a hand on her arm, and a finger on his lip significantly.

"Lady Sahib," said he, in a low guttural voice, "you will go with me?"

"Yes, yes--oh yes; but how? to where?--and I must confer with my
friends and the Khan, Saleh Mohammed."

"Nay; to do so would ruin all."

"With my friends, surely?"

"Nay; that too would be unwise: to none."

"None?"

"I repeat, none," said Zohrab, whose habit of mind, like that of all
Orientals, was inclined to suspicion, secresy, and mistrust.

"Why?" asked Mabel.

"Does not your letter tell you?"

"No--but can I--ought I to--to----" she paused and glanced
irresolutely towards the group of her companions in misfortune, who
were generally clustered round the chief matrons of their party, Lady
Sale and the widowed Lady Macnaghten; and the idea flashed upon her
mind that she might be unwise to leave the shelter of their presence
and society, and trust herself to this Afghan warrior.  But, then,
had not Rose bade her confide in him?

"Where is my sister, and with whom?" she asked.

"I can only tell you that she is in perfect safety," replied
Zubberdust, unwilling in that locality to compromise himself by
mentioning the name of Shireen Khan.

"I shall be silent, and go with you," said Mabel, making an effort to
master her deep and varied emotions.

"When?"

"Now--this instant, if you choose."

"That is impossible.  At dusk, when the sun is set, I shall be here
again on this spot, and take you to her.  Till then, be silent, and
confide in none: to talk may ruin all!" said Zubberdust, whose active
mind had already conceived a plan for outwitting Saleh Mohammed and
his guard of Dooranees, who watched the walls of the fort from the
four round towers which terminated each angle, and on each of which
was mounted a nine-pounder gun taken from our old cantonments.

Too wary to remain needlessly in her company, with all her
allurements, now that his pretended mission was partly performed, and
thereby draw the eyes of the observant or suspicious upon them, and
more particularly upon himself, he at once withdrew, leaving poor
Mabel, who naturally was intensely anxious to question him further,
overwhelmed by emotions which she longed eagerly to share by
confidence with her friends; for news of any European, especially of
one who belonged to the little circle of English society at Cabul,
must prove dear and of deepest interest to them all.  Yet had not
this mysterious messenger impressed upon her, that if she was to see
her sister, to rejoin her, and hear the story of her wonderful
disappearance at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, if she would soothe,
console, it might be protect her, she must be silent?

Slowly passed the day in the fort of Saleh Mohammed.  The tall and
leafy poplars, the slender white minars, the four towers of the fort,
which was a perfect parallelogram, and the wooded and rocky hills
that overlooked them all, cast their shadows across the plain
(through which the Cabul winds towards the Indus) gradually in a
circle, and then, when stretching far due westward, they gradually
faded away; the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu-Kush, the mighty
Indian Caucasus, rose cold and pale against the clear blue sky, where
the stars were twinkling out in succession; and with a nervous
anxiety, which she found it almost impossible to control, Mabel
Trecarrel stole away, with mingled emotions, from the apartments
assigned to the lady hostages--emotions of sorrow, half of shame for
her silence concerning the project she had in hand, and her enforced
reticence to those who loved her, and had ever been so kind to her
amid their own heavy afflictions--compunction for the honest alarm
her absence would certainty occasion them on the morrow; but hope and
joy in the anticipated reunion with her sister soon swept all such
minor thoughts away, and she longed and thirsted for the embrace and
companionship of Rose, to whom, though the difference in their years
was but small, she had ever been a species of mother and
monitress--never so much as when in their happy English home in
Cornwall, far away!

Since their strange separation on that fatal morning, when their poor
father, in his despair and sorrow, galloped rearward to perish in the
skirmish, how much must the pretty, the once-playful, and coquettish
Rose have to tell; and how much had she, herself, to impart in return!

Her heart beat almost painfully, when, on approaching the appointed
spot for the last time, she saw the figure of Zohrab Zubberdust
standing quite motionless under the shadow of the great cypress,
where in the morning Saleh Mohammed had knelt at prayer.  He wore his
steel cap (with its neck-flap of mail), on which the starlight
glinted; he had a small round gilded shield slung on his back by a
leather belt; his poshteen was buttoned up close to his throat, and
he was, as usual, fully armed; but in one hand he carried a large,
loose chogah, or man's cloak, of dull-coloured red cloth; and now
Mabel felt that the decisive moment had, indeed, all but arrived:
beyond that, her ideas were vague in the extreme, and her breathing
became but a series of hurried and thick respirations.

"Is all safe? is all ready--prepared?" she asked, in a broken voice.

"Inshallah--all," replied the taciturn Mahommedan, who, like all of
his race and religion, had few words to spare.

The idea of escaping by ladders of rope or wood had never seemed to
him as possible.  The walls of the fort were twenty-five feet high,
and surrounded by a deep wet ditch, the water of which came by a
canal, through a rice-field, from the Cabul river.  Its only gate was
guarded by a party of Saleh Mohammed's men, under a Naick (or
subaltern), with whom Zohrab was very intimate; and beyond or outside
these barriers he had left his horse haltered (in sight of the
sentinels), and so that it could not stir from the place, as the only
portion of the gate which the Naick was permitted to open was the
_kikree_, or wicket, through which but one at a time could pass.

Zohrab Zubberdust, scarcely daring to trust himself to look on
Mabel's fair, anxious, and imploring face, lest it might bewilder him
from his fixed purpose, took from his steel cap the white turban
cloth he wore twisted round it, and, speedily forming it into a
single turban with a falling end, placed it on her head.  He
enveloped her in the ample chogah, hiding half her face, gave her his
sabre to place under her arm, and the simple disguise was complete;
for, in the dusk now, none could perceive that she wore slippers in
lieu of the brown leather jorabs or ankle-boots of the Afghans; and
looking every inch a taller and perhaps a manlier Osmanlie than
himself, Mabel walked leisurely by his side towards the gate, where,
as watch-words, parole, and countersign were alike unknown to the
guard, fortunately none were required of them; but her emotions
almost stifled her, when she saw the black, keen, and glossy eyes of
the Dooranees surveying her, as they leaned leisurely on their long
juzails, which were furnished with socket bayonets nearly a yard in
length.

She moved mechanically, like one in a dream, and the circumstance of
striking her head as she failed to stoop low enough in passing
through the wicket added to her confusion; nor was she quite aware
that they had been permitted to pass free and unquestioned, as two
men, by the Naick, to whom Zohrab made some jesting remark about the
"awkwardness of his friend," until she saw behind her the lofty white
walls of the fort gleaming in the pale starlight, their loopholes and
outline reflected downward, in the slimy wet ditch where water-lilies
were floating in profusion.

Unhaltering his horse and mounting, her new companion desired her,
with more impressiveness than tenderness of tone--for the former was
his habit, and the moment was a perilous and exciting one--to walk on
by his side a little way, as if they were conversing, and thereby to
lull any suspicion in the minds of such Dooranees as might be
observing them; for they were still within an unpleasant distance of
the long rifles of those who were posted on the towers of the fort;
and still more were they within range of those ginjauls which are
still used in India, and are precisely similar to the swivel
wall-pieces invented long ago by Marshal Vauban, and throw a pound
ball to a vast distance.

On descending the other side of an intervening eminence, that was
covered by wild sugar-canes and aromatic shrubs, the leaves of which
were tossing in the evening breeze, he curtly desired her to place
her right foot upon his left within the stirrup-iron, and then, with
the aid of his hand, he readily placed her on the holsters of his
saddle before him.  He now applied the spurs with vigour to his
strong, active, and long-bodied Tartar horse, and, with a speed which
its double burden certainly served to diminish, it began quickly to
leave behind the dreaded fort of Mohammed Saleh.

As the latter began to sink and lessen in the distance, Mabel
Trecarrel felt as if there was a strange and dreamy unreality about
all this episode.  Many an officer and Indian Sowar had ridden into
the Khoord Cabul Pass with his wife or his children before him, even
as she was now borne by Zohrab; she had heard and seen many wild and
terrible things since her father, with other officers of the
Company's service, had come, in an evil hour, "up country," to
command Shah Sujah's Native Contingent; she had read and heard of
many such adventures, escapes, flights, and abductions in romance and
reality; but what might be her fate now, if this should prove to be
the latter--an abduction of herself--some trick of which she had
permitted herself to become the too-ready victim?

She was in a land where the people were prone to wild and predatory
habits, and, moreover, were masters in trickery, cunning, and
cruelty.  Had she been deceived? she asked of herself, when she felt
the strong, sinewy, and bony arm of Zohrab tightening round her
waist, while his wiry little horse, with its fierce nose and muscular
neck outstretched, and its dancing mane streaming behind like a tiny
smoke-wreath, sped on and on, she knew not whither!

Had she been deceived, was the ever-recurring dread, when the
handwriting was that of Rose, beyond all doubt?  But written when? or
had Rose been deluded?  Was this horseman the person in whom she had
been desired "to confide," or had he stolen the note from
another?--perhaps, after killing him!  Those Afghans were such subtle
tricksters that she felt her mistrust equalled only by her loathing
of them all.

Mabel asked herself all these tormenting questions when, perhaps, too
late; and she knew that, whether armed or unarmed, Heaven had never
intended her to be a heroine, or to play the part of one: she felt a
conviction that she was merely "an every-day young lady," and that if
"much more of this kind of thing went, she must die of fright."

Just as she came to this conclusion an involuntary cry escaped her.
The boom of a cannon--one of Her Majesty's nine-pounders, of which
the Khan had possessed himself--pealed out on the calm still
atmosphere of the Indian evening, now deepening into night.  Another
and another followed, waking the echoes of the woods and hills; and,
though distant now, each red flash momentarily lit up the sky.  They
came from the fort of Saleh Mohammed to alarm the country; and still
further to effect this and announce the escape of a prisoner, a vast
quantity of those wonderful and beautiful crimson, blue, green, and
golden lights, in the manufacture of which all Oriental pyrotechnists
excel so particularly, were shot off in every direction from the
walls, showering upward and downward like falling stars, describing
brilliant arcs through the cloudless sky; and with an exclamation on
his bearded mouth, expressive of mockery and malison with fierce
exultation mingled, Zohrab Zubberdust looked back for a moment, while
his black eyes flashed fire in the reflected light.

"Hah!" he muttered, "dog of a Dooranee, may the grave of the slave
that bore thee be defiled!"

And while one hand tightened around his prize, with the other he
urged his horse to greater speed than ever.




CHAPTER IX.

BY THE HILLS OF BEYMARU.

As they proceeded, past groves of drooping willows, past rows of
leafy poplars, rice-fields where pools of water glittered in the
starlight, and past where clumps of the flowering oleaster filled the
air with delicious perfume, Mabel began to recognise the features of
the landscape, and knew by the familiar locality that she was once
more within a very short distance of Cabul.  Again, in the light of
the rising moon, as she sailed, white and silvery, above the black
jagged crests of the Siah Sung, Mabel Trecarrel could recognise the
burned and devastated cantonments, where in flame and ruin the
fragile bungalows, the compounds of once-trim hedgerows, and all, had
passed away,--the bare boundary walls and angular bastions alone
remaining.  She saw the site of her father's pretty villa, a place of
so many pleasant and happy memories--the daily lounge of all the
young officers of the garrison; and there, too, were the remains of
the Residency, where Sir William Macnaghten, as the Queen's
representative, dispensed hospitality to all.  Yonder were the hills
and village of Beymaru; and further off a few red lights that
twinkled high in air announced the Bala Hissar, the present residence
of Ackbar Khan; but to take her in that direction formed then no part
of the plans of Zohrab Zubberdust.

He rode straight towards a lonely place which lay between the Beymaru
Hills and the Lake of Istaliff; and as the locality grew more and
more sequestered he slackened the speed of his horse, now weary and
foam-flaked.  After a time he drew up, and, requesting her to alight,
lifted her to the ground, and politely and gently urged her to rest
herself for a little space.

"My sister?" said Mabel, tremulously.

"Is not here," replied he.

"But where, then?"

"Patience yet a while," said he with a smile, which she could not
perceive; while he, to be prepared for any emergency, proceeded at
once to shift his saddle, rub down his horse with a handful of dry
grass, give it a mouthful or two from a certain kind of cake which he
carried in his girdle; and then he looked to his bridle,
stirrup-leather, and the charges of his pistols.  Accustomed to arms
and strife of late, Mabel looked quietly on, taking all the
preparations for uncertain contingencies as mere matters of course.

Breathless and weary with her strange mode of progression, she had
seated herself on a stone close by; and while the careful rider was
grooming his steed and making him drink a little of the shining
waters of the long narrow lake, she looked anxiously around her,
surmising when or in what manner of habitation she should find her
sister.  Not a house or homestead, not even the black tent of a
mountain shepherd, was in sight.  On all sides the lonely green and
silent hills towered up in the quiet moonlight, and the still, calm
lake reflected their undulating outlines downward in its starry depth.

The holly-oak, the wild almond, and the khinjuck tree, which distils
myrrh, and in that warlike land of cuts and slashes is in great
repute for healing sabre wounds, the homely dog-rose, the
sweet-briar, the juniper bush, and the wild geranium, all grew among
the clefts of the rocks in luxuriant masses; while sheets of wild
tulips waved their gorgeous cups among the green sedges by the lake.

Not far from where she sat was a grove, which she remembered to have
been the scene of a once-happy picnic party, of which Bob Waller was
one.  She recognised the place now.  She knew it was a lonely
solitude, that in summer was ever full of the perfume of dewy
branches, fresh leaves, and opening flowers; but the immediate spot
where they had halted had been anciently used as a burying-ground.  A
portion of an old temple, covered by luxuriant creepers, lay there,
and two magnificent cypresses still towered skyward amid the
half-flattened mounds and sinking grave-stones of the long-forgotten
dead.  The remains of a little musjid, or place for prayer, long
since ruined by some savage and idolatrous Khonds, who came down from
the hills, lay there among the débris, which included a shattered
well, built by some pious Moslem of old.  The water from it gurgled
past her feet towards the lake, and she remembered how Waller had
placed the bottles of champagne and red Cabul wine in the runnel to
cool them.

And now, as if contrasting the joyous past with the bitter present, a
shudder came over Mabel.  She held out her pale hand, which looked
like ivory in the moonlight, and said to Zohrab, as he approached
her--

"It is a gloomy place, this.  Is my sister far from here?"

"About five coss," said he, confidently; and he spoke the truth, and
charmed by seeing her outstretched hand, an action which betokened
reliance or trust--he flattered himself, perhaps, regard--he took a
seat by her side, and then Mabel began to view him with positive
distrust and uneasiness.  She said--

"Five coss--ten miles yet!  Let us go at once, then!"

"Stay," said he, "let us rest a little.  You are--nay, must be
weary;" and arresting her attempt to rise with a hand upon her arm,
he drew nearer her; and sooth to say, though he was confident in
bearing, bravely embroidered in apparel, and had a handsome exterior,
Zohrab Zubberdust was but an indifferent love-maker, and knew not how
to go about it, with a "Feringhee mem sahib" least of all.  He was
puzzled, and made a pause, during which Mabel's large, clear, grey
eyes regarded him curiously, warily, and half sternly.

As the mistress of her father's late extensive household, with its
great retinue of native servants (each of whom had half a dozen
others to perform his or her work), and, as such, coming hourly in
contact with the dealers and others in the bazaars and elsewhere,
Mabel Trecarrel had, of necessity, picked up a knowledge of the
Hindostanee and the Afghan, far beyond her heedless sister Rose, who,
as these were neither the languages of flirtation or the flowers,
scarcely made any attempt to do so; hence Mabel could converse with
Zohrab with considerable fluency.

Her beauty was as soft and as bright as that of Rose, but it was less
girlish and of a much higher and more statuesque character; so
"Zohrab the Overbearing" now felt himself rather at a loss to account
for the emotion of awe--we have no other name for it--with which she
inspired him.  The point, the time, and the place when he should have
her all to himself had arrived, true to all his calculations and
beyond his hopes; and yet his tongue and spirit failed him, as if a
spell were upon him.

In his lawless roving life, now serving the Khan of Khiva, on the
eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, now the Emir of Bhokara, far away
beyond the waters of the Oxus, and lastly Ackbar Khan, he had, in
predatory war, carried off many a girl with all her wealth of
bracelets and bangles, the spoil of his spear and sabre, trussing her
up behind him like the fodder or oats for his Tartar nag; but never
had he felt before as he did now, for, unlike the maids of the
desert, the Feringhee failed to accept the situation.  He felt
perplexed--secretly enraged, and yet he murmured half to himself and
half to her, as his dark face and darker gleaming eyes drew nearer
hers--

"The whiteness of her bosom surpasses the egg of the ostrich or the
leaf of the lily, and her breath is sweet as the roses of Irem--yea,
as those of Zulistan!  Listen to me," he added abruptly, in a louder
and sharper tone, and in his figurative language; "fair daughter of
love, give ear.  You have won my heart, my love, my soul, subduing
me--even Zohrab!  Learn in turn to be subdued, submissive, and
obedient.  Happy is he who shall call you wife; and that happy
man--is Zohrab!"

The intense bewilderment of poor Mabel increased to extreme fear at
those words, so absurdly inflated, yet so blunt in import, and she
shrunk back, but could not turn from the dark, glittering eyes that
gleamed with a serpent-like fascination into hers.

So she _had_ been deluded after all, and her worst anticipations were
about to be realised at last!  Zohrab grasped her left hand with his
right, and planting his left cheek on the other hand, with an elbow
on his knee, began to take courage, and, surveying her steadily, to
speak more distinctly and with an admiring smile; for the silence of
the night was around them, and no sound came on the wind that moaned
past the grove or the great cypresses close by; so from the silence,
perhaps, he gathered confidence, if, indeed, he really required it.

"Allah has been good to us," said he, "exceedingly good, in creating
such beautiful beings as women to please us.  You are more beautiful
than any I have seen--too much so to be left to gladden a Kaffir's
heart; so you shall remain with me, and be the light of my eyes."

"Wretch!--fool that I have been!  Rose, Rose!" gasped Mabel, scarcely
knowing what she said.

"I love you," he resumed softly, while his hot clasp tightened on her
hand, and his lips approached her ear; "you hear--and understand me?"

"You love me!" exclaimed Mabel rashly, with proud scorn in her tone,
despite the deadly fear that gathered in her heart, and while her
eyes flashed with an expression to which the Oriental was quite
unaccustomed in a captive woman.

"Yes, I love you--I, Zohrab," was the somewhat egotistical response.

"You know not what love is; but, even if you did, you shall not dare
to talk of it to me.  That you may have a fancy, I can quite well
understand; but a fancy, or a passion, and love are very different
things.  What do you, or what can you, know of me?"

"That you are beautiful: what more is required?"

"Enough of this--I am weary.  Take me instantly to my sister, or back
to my friends who are with Saleh Mohammed; for if I were to denounce
you to Ackbar Khan, how much think you your head would be worth?"

"Much less than yours, certainly."

"And at what does he--this _other_ barbarian--value me?"

"At the price of six Toorkoman horses, perhaps," was the half-angry
response; "while to me you are priceless, beyond life itself.
Denounce me to Ackbar Khan--would you?"

"Yes."

His teeth glistened under his jet moustache as he replied--

"Those stones and trees alone hear us; so now let me tell you, Kaffir
girl, that you weary me; by the five blessed Keys of Knowledge, you
do!" and, as he spoke, he started to his feet, and by an angry twist
of his embroidered girdle threw his jewelled sabre behind him.

"Oh, this is becoming frightful!" moaned Mabel, clasping her hands
and looking wildly round her; "what will become of me now?  Papa,
Rose, are we never to meet again?"

Oh, if big, burly Bob Waller, with his six feet and odd inches of
stature, were only there!  Could he but know of her misery of
mind--her dire extremity!  but would he ever know?  God alone could
tell!

There is much that is touching in the helplessness of any woman, but
more than all a beautiful one, though we, whose lines are cast in
pleasant places, and in a land of well-organized police, may seldom
see it--a clinging, imploring expression of eye, when all is soul and
depth of heart, and strength avails not.  But Zohrab Zubberdust felt
nothing of this.  She on whom he looked might be pure as Diana,
"chaste as Eve on the morning of her innocence," yet, as a
Mohammedan, he had a secret contempt for her--perhaps a doubt of
her--as a Kaffir woman.  He was only inspired by the emotions of
triumph and passion, by the sure conviction that this fair Feringhee,
this daughter of a vanquished tribe, this outcast unbeliever, so
lovely in her whiteness of skin, her purity of complexion, and
wondrous colour of hair, in her roundness of limb, and in stature so
far surpassing all the maids of the twenty-one Afghan clans or races,
was his--_his_ property--to become the slave of his will or his
cruelty, as it pleased him!

Of the paradox that woman's weakness is her strength, with the
Christian man, Zohrab knew nothing, and felt less; yet he tried to
act the lover in a melodramatic fashion, by making high-flown
speeches, and assuring her, again and again, that he loved her "as
the only Prophet of God loved Ayesha, his favourite wife, the mother
of all the Faithful," and much more to the same purpose, till amid
the wind that sighed through the trees, and shook the wild tulips and
lilies by the lake, the quickened ear of Mabel caught a distant
sound; and then one of those shrill cries of despair, that women
alone can give, escaped her.

A fierce malediction from the lips of Zohrab mingled with it, for he
dreaded Saleh Mohammed; and in a few moments more the clink of hoofs
was heard; then Zohrab sternly drew a pistol from his girdle, and
unsheathed his sabre like a flash of fire in the moonlight.  The
blade glittered like his own eyes, as he glared alternately from
Mabel to where the sounds came; and by his keen, wild expression and
fierce quivering nostrils, she saw with terror, that a very slight
matter might turn his wrath and his weapons against herself.

"Here comes aid--Saleh Mohammed perhaps!  Help, help, in the name of
God!" she cried, recklessly.

Zohrab uttered a sound like a hiss, and placed the cold back of his
sabre across her throat, implying thereby, "Silence, or death;" and
at that instant, four Afghan horsemen came galloping up, and reined
in their nags.

"Bismillah," said the leader, a venerable, burly, and silver-bearded
man, in a huge turban.

"Bismillah," responded Zohrab, using also the expression of
salutation customary to the country (and which means no more than
"good evening" or "good e'en" may do with us), yet regarding the
stranger with a somewhat resentful and tiger-like expression of eye
for his unwelcome interruption.

"What, Zohrab Zubberdust, is this thou?" exclaimed the other.

"Shabash--it is I; and you--are Nouradeen Lal!" said the would-be
lover, as he recognised his acquaintance, the hill-farmer, whose
ploughman, perforce, Waller had been; "whence come you?"

"From Cabul, where I have been with many an arroba of corn for the
Sirdir, who expects to be besieged by the Kaffirs from Jellalabad.
Oh! and so you are at your old tricks again," continued the farmer,
with a somewhat unoriental burst of laughter; "you are not content to
wait for the spouses of musk and amber in their couches of pearl--the
black-eyed girls with their scarfs of green!"

"Allah Keerem, but he is fortunate," said another, looking admiringly
on Mabel; "most fortunate!  She is fair and white as the virgins of
paradise can be."

"But her cry sounded like the bay of a goorg to the rising moon; and
we thought you were an afreet--the Ghoul Babian, or some such horror;
for here are graves close by!"

"Nouradeen Lal is not complimentary," said the other speaker, who, by
his steel cap, spear, and shield of rhinoceros hide, seemed to be a
Hazir-bashi, or one of Ackbar's body-guard, "if he compare the
damsel's voice to the cry of a wolf."

"But why did she cry?  You were not ill-using her, I hope," said the
old farmer, peering down at Mabel's face from under his broad
circular turban.

"For the love of God--your God as well as mine--save me from this
man!" said Mabel, clinging to the stirrup-leather of the farmer,
whose venerable appearance encouraged her, and who placed his strong
brown hand on her head encouragingly and protectingly.

"I dare you to interfere!" exclaimed Zohrab, hoarse with passion, as
he drew from his girdle the long brass pistol he had just half cocked
and replaced there.

"And why so?" asked the Hazir-bashi, who seemed quite ready for a
brawl, and perhaps the appropriation of the girl.

"Because she is--my wife."

"Your wife!" exclaimed Nouradeen, withdrawing his hand abruptly, and
swerving round his horse, so that Mabel nearly fell to the ground.

"Yes; we were married before the Cadi: and now she would seek to
repudiate me, and return to her own accursed people," said the artful
Zohrab; for marriage among the Mohammedans is exclusively a civil
ceremony, performed before a Cadi, or magistrate, and not by an Imaum
or any other minister of religion, with which it has nothing to do.

"Oh, believe not a word of this; it is false--false!" implored Mabel,
with desperation in her tone.

"It is true; and thou, Kaffir, liest!  Silence, silence, or I will
kill thee!" hissed Zohrab in her ear; and she felt that he was but
too capable of putting his threat into execution.  "Interfere not
with us, I charge you; but leave us, and remember what the fourth
chapter of the Koran says, 'If a woman fear ill-usage or aversion
from her husband, it shall be no crime in them if they settle the
matter amicably between themselves; for a reconciliation is better
than a separation;' therefore leave us to agree amicably, as the
Prophet hath advised."

"And the same chapter, good Zohrab, tells us how we may chastise such
wives as are contumacious, and those captives, too, whom our right
hand may possess," said the farmer; "so farewell, and may the steps
of you both be fortunate," he added, as he and his three companions
galloped laughingly away, and with a wail, as if from her heart,
Mabel found herself alone once more in the moonlight solitude--alone
with her unscrupulous companion.




CHAPTER X.

AGAIN IN CABUL.

A change had now come over him; he had grown sullen and thoughtful;
but even this mood of mind she preferred to his obnoxious and
intrusive tenderness.  He stood silently and gloomily eyeing her for
a time.

Will it be believed that, too probably, he was actually pondering
whether or not policy and his own future safety required that he
should pistol or sabre this helpless creature, whom a minute before
he had been professing so ardently to love?  He could not help
speculating on what _might_ have been the sequel, regarding himself,
had her wild and despairing cry, instead of bringing up a stupid old
mountain farmer, like Nouradeen Lal, summoned to the spot the
ferocious Dooranee horsemen of Saleh Mohammed, who was bound to
account for the prisoners, dead or alive, body for body, to Ackbar
Khan.  He knew that by this time all the roads diverging from Cabul
would be beset in every direction by the horsemen of Saleh Mohammed
and the Sirdir; that, sooner or later, some of these would meet and
question the farmer returning to his home among the hills, and the
information he and the Hazir-bashi must give, would soon bring a
mounted Rissallah round by Beymaru in search and pursuit; so his own
bold measures were instantly taken.

In Cabul would he and his prize alone be safe, and, as he hoped,
unsought for a time at least; and there he resolved to convey her,
ere day broke, and to conceal her in the house of one who he knew
would be faithful to him--a man named Ferishta Lodi, who had been
sutler to the Shah's Goorka Regiment, and whose life he had spared,
and whose escape he had connived at, when the whole of that luckless
battalion was massacred in cold blood, by the Afghans at Charekar.

Sternly he commanded her again to mount before him, and, aware that
resistance and entreaty were alike futile, the unhappy girl, crushed
in spirit, weeping heavily, and feeling utterly lost and helpless,
obeyed; and once more their progress was resumed, but at a slower
pace, as Zohrab was evidently husbanding the strength of his wearied
horse.  Day was breaking as they passed, unquestioned, through the
Kohistan Gate of Cabul; but its light was yet grey and dim jis they
traversed the narrow, dark, and high-walled tortuous streets, to some
obscure quarter perfectly unknown to Mabel.

A few persons passed them, some going to market in the Char-chowk,
others afield to tend the trellised vines; but she dared neither
speak nor show her pallid face.  She might find mercy at the hands of
Zohrab, but none among the rabble of Cabul, where the miserable
remains of the Queen's Envoy yet hung unburied in the great bazaar.

Mabel knew but too well, by observation and experience, the nature of
the nation among whom she now found herself--alone.  Nearly forty
years had made no change on the people, since a Scottish traveller
described them; and his pithy account may be summed up in the
following quotation:--

"If a man could be transported to Afghanistan without passing through
the dominions of Turkey, Persia, or Tartary, he would be amazed by
the wide and unfrequented deserts and the mountains covered with
perennial snow.  Even in the cultivated part of the country he would
discover a wild assemblage of hills and wastes, unmarked by
enclosures, not embellished by trees, and destitute of navigable
canals, public roads, and all the great and elaborate productions of
human refinement and industry.  He would find the towns few and far
distant from each other; he would look in vain for inns and other
conveniences, which a traveller would meet with in the wildest parts
of Great Britain.  Yet he would sometimes be delighted with the
fertility and population of particular plains and valleys, where he
would see the productions of Europe mingled in profusion with those
of the torrid zone, and the land tilled with an industry and judgment
nowhere surpassed.  He would see the inhabitants accompanying their
flocks in tents or villages, to which the terraced roofs and mud
walls give an appearance entirely novel.  He would be struck with
their high and harsh features, their sun-burnt countenances, their
long beards, loose garments, and shaggy cloaks of skins.  When he
entered into society, he would notice the absence of all courts of
justice, and of everything like an organised police.  He would be
surprised at the fluctuation and utter instability of every civil
institution.  He would find it difficult to comprehend how a nation
could subsist in such disorder, and pity those who were compelled to
pass their days amid such scenes, and whose minds were trained by
their unhappy situation to fraud and violence, to rapine, deceit, and
cruel revenge.  Yet he could not fail to admire their lofty and
martial spirit, their hospitality, their bold and simple manners,
equally removed from the suppleness of the citizen and the rusticity
of the clown.  In short," he adds, a stormy independence of spirit,
which leads them to declare, "'We are content with fierce discord; we
are content with alarm; we are content with bloodshed; but we shall
_never be content_ with a master!'"

Mabel gave herself up more than ever for lost on finding herself
within the fatal walls of Cabul; a benumbed and despairing emotion
crept over her heart, and all her energies seemed away from her.  She
found herself lifted from horseback in a paved court that was dark,
damp, and gloomy, and in the centre of which a fountain was plashing
monotonously.  She felt herself borne indoors somewhere, she knew not
by whom, and then she fainted for a little time.

She had been carried into one of those apartments which open by a
large sliding panel off the dewan-khaneh, the principal hall or
receiving-room of a Cabul house.  She had been there deposited at
length on a soft mattrass, which was simply spread on the floor, as
in that country bedsteads and sofas are unlike unknown.  So people
there both sleep and sit on the floor, unless in the case of persons
of rank, who may seat themselves cross-legged on a divan.

Though prettily ornamented with carving, stucco, and painting, in
this room there was a total absence of those invariable sentences
from the Koran, woven among arabesques, which mark an Oriental
mansion; but in lieu thereof were some in a language of which Mabel's
weary eyes could make nothing.  These were lines from the Vedas of
the Hindoos; and in three little niches, most elaborately carved,
were the three monstrous statuettes of the god who is worshipped by
so many millions under the names of Vishnu, Siva, and Brama; for the
house to which she had been conveyed belonged partly to Ferishta
Lodi, the ex-Sutler, who now kept a shop in the great bazaar, and to
a Hindoo, one of those same schroffs, or bankers, through whom the
luckless General Elphinstone and his staff had negotiated the
enormous sum which was paid to procure our peaceful march through the
Passes--and paid for our slaughtered troops--in vain.

The Hindoo banker and the Khond were alike absent; but the wife of
the former, a soft-eyed and gentle little woman, with massive golden
bangles on her wrists and glittering anklets round her ankles,
assisted the somewhat awkward and decidedly bewildered Zohrab in the
task of recovering Mabel, by plentifully besprinkling her face, neck,
and hands with cool and delightfully perfumed water from a large
flask covered with elaborate silver filagree work.  The Hindoo woman,
who knew that the visitor was a helpless Feringhee captive, worked at
her humane duty in silence, and without venturing to ask any
questions.

A quivering of the long eyelashes, a spasmodic twitching of the
handsomely cut mouth, as she heaved a long and deep sigh, showed that
animation was returning.  Slowly, indeed, did Mabel--though a girl
with naturally a good physique and splendid constitution--struggle
back to life and consciousness.  Her beautiful face was pale as
marble now; all complexion, save that of alabaster, was gone; cold
and white she was, and her brilliant auburn hair in silky masses
rolled over her shoulders and bosom, which heaved painfully, for
every respiration was a sigh.

To the admiring and undoubtedly appreciative eyes of the enterprising
Zohrab she presented a powerful contrast to the dusky little Hindoo
woman, on whose ridgy shoulder her head was drooping, and whose
fingers, of bronze-like hue, seemed absolutely black when placed upon
the pure snowy arm of the English girl; for in aspect, race, and
costume (a shapeless and indescribable garment of red cotton) the
wife of the schroff was unchanged from what her ancestors had been in
the days of Menon the Lawgiver.

As Mabel gradually became conscious, she sat up and gently repelled
the services of the Hindoo woman.  Then she burst into tears.  This
relieved her; and then she began to look around her, and to remember
where she was--in fatal Cabul; and in whose hands--those of the
lying, treacherous, and unscrupulous Zohrab Zubberdust!

For what was she yet reserved?  This was her first thought.  The
slender chances of escape were the next; but escape from walled and
guarded Cabul! and to where or to whom could she go for succour?  To
the bones of the dead, who lay in the passes of the Khyber mountains!

Thirst--intense thirst, the result of over-wrought emotions, of deep
and bitter anxiety, and of all she had undergone mentally and bodily,
made her ask Zohrab imploringly for something to quench it; and in a
few moments the Hindoo woman brought her, on a scarlet Burmese
salver, a china cup filled with deliciously iced water and white
Cabul wine, which is not unlike full-bodied Madeira; with this
refreshing beverage was a cake of Cabul apricots, folded in rice
paper, the most luscious of all dried fruit, and which the Afghans
have no less than fourteen distinct modes of conserving.  To these
she added a small slice of sweet Bokhara melon--the true melon of
Toorkistan--we say a small slice, as they are of such enormous bulk,
that two are sometimes a sufficient load for a donkey.

Revived by these delicate viands, and feeling a necessity for action,
Mabel began in plaintive and piteous accents to urge upon Zohrab the
chances of pecuniary reward, if he would set her at liberty near
Jellalabad, or if he would even restore her to the perilous
guardianship of Saleh Mohammed; for to be once more among the English
hostages, his prisoners, was to be, at least, among dear friends.

But Zohrab listened in sullen and tantalising silence, gnawing the
curled ends of his long moustaches the while.  Now that he had her in
Cabul, he saw but slender chances of getting her out of it for a
time.  Gossips might speak of her presence there (was it not already
known to the Hindoo woman?), and so inculpate him with Ackbar Khan,
whose vengeance would be swift, sharp, and sure.  And now he was
beginning to revolve in his own mind, whether or not his best policy
would be to take his horse and quit the country for Khiva, Cashmere,
or Beloochistan--all were many miles away, the latter three hundred
and more--leaving Mabel in the hands of the banker and merchant, to
keep or deliver up, as they chose.  Yet when he thought of the
peculiar _creed_ of the Khond he shuddered; and she looked so
beautiful, so gentle, and was withal so helpless, that he wavered in
his selfish purpose, and the temptation of hoping to win her made him
pause in forming any decided resolution; so the noon of the first day
passed slowly and uneventfully on.

He knew that Mabel, as an European woman, dared make no attempt to
escape, or even to show her face at a window; so he had no necessity
either to watch or to warn her when he left her.

In tears and silence she lay on her pallet, her head propped upon
pillows; near her the Hindoo woman had kindly placed a vase of fresh
flowers, a feather fan, and a flask of essences; and then, left to
herself for hours, she could but wait, and weep, and pray at
intervals, dreading the coming night.

Some of the sounds without in Cabul were not unfamiliar to her; she
had often heard them before, when driving through the central street
in the carriage, or when riding with the other ladies of the
garrison.  Again, at stated times, she heard the shrill cries from
the minarets and summits of the mosques proclaim that the hour for
prayer had arrived; for the Moslems observe this frequently daily.
"Glorify God," says the Koran, "when the evening overtaketh you, and
when you rise in the morning; and unto Him be praise in heaven and on
earth: and at sunset, and when you rest at noon, for prayer is the
pillar of religion, and key of paradise."

Once she peeped forth between the parted shutters and blinds,
shrinking back timidly as she did so, lest her pale white face should
catch a casual passer's eye, and elicit a yell of recognition and of
thirst for Christian blood.  There the street below was dark and
narrow; the clumsy wooden pipes projected far over, to carry off the
rain from the roofs, which were flat and terraced; the walls were
high, black, and almost windowless.  Such was her view on one side.
The other opened to a paved court, overlooked by houses built of
sun-dried brick, rough stones, and red clay.  Four mulberry-trees
grew there, with a white marble fountain in the midst; and near it
were some grizzly-bearded Afghans of mature years, in long, flowing
garments, smoking and playing marbles, exactly as children do in
Europe.  Another party, also of full-grown men, were hopping against
each other, on their right legs, grasping their left feet with their
right hands.  They seemed all pleasant fellows, hilarious and in high
good humour; yet she dared neither to seek their aid, nor to trust to
their compassion.  In her eyes, they were but as so many tigers at
play!

The circumstance of her being deemed the prisoner, the slave, or
peculiar property of such a formidable soldier as Zohrab Zubberdust
secured her from all interruption on the part of his male friends,
the Khond and the Hindoo schroff, who jointly occupied the house in
which he had placed her, and which was situated at the bottom of a
narrow alley (opening off the main street that led to the Char Chowk,
or great bazaar), a regular cul-de-sac, where many Khonds lived
together, congregating precisely as the Irish do in the towns of
England and Scotland; but this was deemed no peculiarity in Cabul,
where the city was apportioned in quarters, to the different tribes
of the Afghan people, the most formidably fortified being that of the
Kuzzilbashes.

As evening drew on, Mabel became aware of a conversation that was
proceeding in the next room; and, as she could from time to time
detect the voice of Zohrab, she thought herself fully excusable in
listening, which she could do with ease, as the partitions of the
apartments which opened off the dewan-khaneh were all of them
boarding panelled.

In one place a knot had dropped out, and to the convenient orifice
made thereby, as she breathlessly applied her ear and eye
alternately, she heard and saw all that was passing, and in some
respects more than she cared to know, as much that she did hear only
added to her repugnance and terror of those on whose mercy she found
herself cast by an unhappy fate.




CHAPTER XI.

THE ABODE OF THE KHOND.

Seated on the floor were Zohrab Zubberdust and two other men.

One was the Hindoo banker.  He was slight in figure, with diminutive
hands and feet; like all his vast race, he was of a dark-brown
colour, with straight black hair, that seemed almost blue when the
light struck it, hanging straight and lankly behind his large
ears--an undoubted worshipper of Brama, of the monkey god, and of all
those unnumbered idols that for forty centuries have been the objects
of adoration to millions upon millions--even before the Temple of
Juggernaut was built.  He sat cross-legged on a _nummud_, or carpet
of red frieze, above which was spread a yellow calico covering.  A
cushion supported his back.  He had cast off his headdress, slippers,
and tunic--the day had been warm--and all save his loose dhottee, or
what passed for unmentionables.  He had the eye of Siva painted in
the centre of his forehead (the eye that, by winking once, involved
the world in darkness for a thousand years), thereby adding to the
diabolical grotesquerie of his visage; and he was occupied from time
to time by indulgence in the "eighth sensual delight" of the
Hindoos--chewing betel-nut, a hot and aromatic stimulant.

The other interesting native of India who sat beside him, smoking
hempseed and bhang in a handsome hubble-bubble, which had snake-like
coils covered with red and gold-coloured thread rising from a stem of
silver, shaped like a trumpet, was Ferishta Lodi, the Khond, whose
attire consisted of little more than the amount indulged in by his
Hindoo friend; but, unlike the puny latter, he was a man of powerful
and muscular frame, great in stature, and terribly hideous in face
and figure.  He was rather pale-complexioned, for a Khond; but his
visage bars description, for ugliness of contour and expression,--it
was that of a tiger, but a tiger pitted with small-pox, the few wiry
bristles of his moustache that stuck fiercely out from his long,
upper lip, the fiery carbuncular red of his eyes, with two long and
sharp side tusks, completing the illusion or resemblance.

Looking wonderfully handsome by contrast to those two men, Zohrab
lounged between them, propped against the wall by a soft cushion; his
bright steel cap, his beautiful Persian sabre, and gilded pistols lay
near him; he had a long cherry-pipe stick in his mouth, and close by
was a flask of Cabul wine, in which, natheless the wise precepts of
Him of Mecca, he was indulging, greatly to Mabel's apprehension,
somewhat freely.

"And so, Ferishta," said he, "the infernal Kuzzilbashes are in search
of me too, you say?"

"Yes--aga; three rissallahs, at least."

"From where?"

"Shireen's fort."

"And led by whom?"

"The Khan Shireen in person."

"But how know you that they are after me?"

"Because I heard Shireen say, when he met Mohammed Saleh near Baber's
tomb, that had he not been certain that the false plotter was
Overhearing Zohrab, he might imagine that an evil spirit, like
Sakkar, had assumed his shape and voice, to delude them both, and the
Feringhee woman too.  But that is all bosh; for who believes in such
things now?"

The dark eyes of Zohrab sparkled dangerously.  He might have pardoned
some such slighting speech in a devout Hindoo, even in a Christian;
but in a Jew, or one professing the horrible tenets of a Khond, he
could not let it pass without remark.

"Dare you say that the evil spirit, Sakkar, did not once assume the
shape of Solomon, on possessing himself of his magic signet, and
alter all the laws of the world for forty days and nights?"

"I dare say nothing about it," replied the other, sulkily: "I am a
Khond."

"And, as such, accursed of God!" muttered Zohrah, under his teeth;
for at that precise juncture of his affairs he could afford to
quarrel with none--his present hosts least of all.

The banker looked uneasy, and crammed into his mouth an extra
allowance of the eighth delight, ever the solace of the Hindoo race,
and held in such estimation that Ferishta, the Moslem historian,
writing in 1609, when describing the magnitude of the Indian city of
Canaye, says that it contained thirty thousand shops for the sale of
betel-nut alone.

Zohrab, though he sometimes broke the laws of the Koran, just as many
an excellent Christian, or one who perfectly believes himself to be
such, may transgress the laws of his Bible, loathed the unbelieving
Khond, as he should have loathed a Jew or a fire-worshipping Gueber;
but, circumstanced as he was, he felt himself compelled to listen to
a speech like the following; for the Khonds are a low race of
idolaters, and glory in announcing themselves as such, and in
decrying the gentler creeds of others.

"The faith of your prophet would never have suited us, Aga Zohrab,
though we cannot say, like the Bedouins, we have no water in the
desert, and therefore cannot perform ablutions, as we have wells, and
to spare, in our sacred groves; but like those Bedouins, our people,
who dwell in rocks and on the mountains, have no money, therefore we
cannot give alms; while the forty days' fast of Hamad an must prove
useless to poor people who fast all the year round; and if the
presence of God be everywhere, why go all the way to seek Him in a
black stone at Mecca?  Besides, your prophet, like that of the
Feringhees, teaches, I am told, repentance--a perilous institute, for
may not a man say, 'I may commit a thousand crimes, and, if I repent
me, I may be forgiven; and as it will thus be no worse for me, I may
as well continue to sin and enjoy myself even unto the end!'  Is it
not so, aga?"

Zohrab, more of a soldier than a logician, and readier with his sabre
than his tongue, was unable quite to follow the strange argument of
the Khond; he could only glare at him with bent brows and dilated
nostrils, while asserting angrily that which had nothing exactly to
do with the matter--that he believed devoutly in the power and
miracles of his Prophet--that the waters gushed at will from the
fingers of the latter--that he was conveyed by a mysterious animal,
called a Borak, from Mecca to Jerusalem--that in one night he
performed a journey of ten thousand years--that a holy pigeon, sent
from heaven, whispered revelations in his ear,--not to pick peas
thereat, as the accursed Kaffirs asserted,--that he proselytised the
Genii, and did many more incredible things: to all of which the
Hindoo, whose beliefs were altogether of a different kind, listened
with the stolid aspect of one of his own bronze idols; but the Khond
did so with covert mockery on his terrible face; while poor Mabel
dreaded a growing quarrel, as it was evident that the fiery and
impatient Zohrab abhorred the companionship and protection of
Ferishta Lodi; for he was a reckless soldier, valuing his own life
little, and the lives of others less.

It was evident that, in the heat of the present discussion, he had
forgotten all about her, till suddenly the Khond said--

"We talk too loud, aga, and may be overheard.  I told you who were on
your track----"

"Yes; and by the eight gates of paradise, and the seven gates of
hell, I am not likely to forget them!"

"Well, have you taken means to ensure flight?"

"Wherefor?" asked Zohrab fiercely.

"I mean, if traced."

"I have my sword and horse," was the curt reply.

"But the Feringhee woman?"

"Allah!  I had all but forgotten her!" said Zohrab, starting.

"Right: sacrifice your property for your life, and your life for your
religion; but make not yourself the captive of a woman.  Now, if
traced, what, I ask, of the Kaffir slave?"

"By the soul of the Prophet!" exclaimed Zohrab, in great and sudden
perplexity, "what can I do, but leave her here?"

"Sell her to the young Shah: she is worth a thousand mohurs,"
suggested the Hindoo banker.

"The coward has fled," said Zohrab.

"She is beautiful as the one he lost, and whom he mourned so much
that it required the whole seraglio to console him."

"Poor fellow!" sneered Zohrab.

"I will buy her of you for two hundred tomauns, paid down," said the
Khond.  "Money is useful to those who are fugitives."

"Buy her--for a wife?" asked Zubberdust, changing colour.  The Khond
laughed; and his laugh was as the growl of some strange animal, as he
replied--

"No: a Khond marries a Khond."

"For what, then?"

"The purposes of that religion we have been discussing just now,"
replied the other, deliberately and in a low voice.

Mabel heard this suggestion without exactly comprehending what it
meant at the time; but she could see that a crimson flush of shame
and passion came over the dark face of Zohrab; his eyes literally
sparkled and flashed with the fury of deep and sudden passion, as he
sprang to his feet, snatched up his sabre and half drew it, choking
with intensity of utterance, ere he could speak; for the Khonds are a
race of cruel and barbarous idolaters, who live in the more
inaccessible mountain ranges of India, and were quite unknown till
the beginning of her present Majesty's reign, when, by the military
operations undertaken in Goomsoor and on the Chilka Lake--a long and
narrow inlet from the sea--and when our troops from thence ascended
the range of Ghauts, we made the acquaintance of this most ancient
but hitherto unknown race of aborigines, whose religion, a distinct
Theism, with a subordinate demonology, requires (as Captain
Macpherson first discovered) a human sacrifice periodically to the
godhead, the fetish or spirit whom they style Boora Penna, or the
Source of Good, who created all things by casting five handfuls of
earth around him; but, like more enlightened folks, the Khonds have
their schismatics and sceptics, who dispute bitterly, and hate each
other as cordially as Christians can do,--but about the origin of
mountains, meteors, and whirlwinds, where the rivers come from, where
they go to, and so forth.

It is to Tari, the wife of this Boora Penna, that the propitiatory
human sacrifices are periodically offered (in groves which are dark,
gloomy, and deemed holy as those of our Druids were in Europe), amid
the most horrible rites, roasting over a slow fire, for one, about
the time when the ground is cropped, so that each family may procure
and bury a little of the victim's flesh in the soil, to ensure
prosperity, and avert the malignity of the goddess, who otherwise
might blast their rice, maize, or vines; and the immolation takes
place amid wild jollity, deep drunkenness, and debauchery.

Aware of the complete isolation and helplessness of Mabel, the Khond
saw how readily and easily he had a victim at hand; and what could
prove more acceptable to Tari than the young, beautiful, and pure
daughter of an alien race and creed?  And the Hindoo schroff,
accustomed to the incessant infanticide practised by his people, and
their death-festivals at Juggernaut, saw nothing remarkable in the
matter, and sat chewing his betel-nut with perfect equanimity.

Not so Zohrab Zubberdust!  His passion knew no bounds.  He had sprung
to his feet, and fully unsheathed his sabre.

"May thy mother's grave be defiled--if indeed such be possible, O dog
of an idolater!" he exclaimed, and was about to cut him down; and
doubtless might have sliced his head in two, like a pumpkin, but for
sudden sounds in the now partially darkened street without, that
arrested the unlifted sabre.

These were the loud murmur of a multitude, the barking of pariah
dogs, the trampling of horses, the voices of men in authority, and
other undoubted tokens of the house being surrounded.

The glittering blade of Zohrab drooped for a moment.  He passed his
left hand across his brow.  Then he smiled with proud disdain as he
placed his steel cap on his head, and twisted the turban-cloth around
it.  Next he drew a pistol from his belt, while the diminutive Hindoo
became pea-green with fear, and an expression of almost mad ferocity
seemed to pass over the face and to swell the great chest of the
Khond, Ferishta Lodi.  Danger and death were at hand, he knew; but
not on whom they might fall.

Zohrab rushed to a window on one side.  The narrow alley was filled
by a mass of armed men on foot and on horseback.  He saw the
mail-shirts of the Hazir-bashis, the flashing of weapons, and the red
smoky light of the matches in the locks of the juzails.  He hurried
to another window; it opened to the court where the mulberry-trees
grew.  It was full of red-capped Kuzzilbashes, mounted and accoutred,
some carrying red flashing torches; and high amid the excited and
bristling throng towered old Shireen Khan on his favourite camel.  He
was brandishing his long lance, and gesticulating violently to Saleh
Mohammed, who was mounted on a beautiful white Tartar horse.

The opening of the window caused them and many others to look up.
Then Zohrab was seen and recognised by several.

"Dog, whose father has been damned! at last, at last, we have thee!"
hissed Saleh Mohammed, through his dense beard, as he shook his sabre
upward; and a yell from his people followed, mingled with the thunder
of mallets on the entrance door.

"Dog of a Dooranee thief, take that!" cried the reckless Zohrab,
firing his long pistol full at Saleh Mohammed (beside whom a man fell
dead), and then taking his measures in an instant, he rushed from the
room, and ascending by a narrow stair to the roof of the house, which
he knew to be flat, by superhuman strength he tore up the ladder,
cutting off pursuit--for a mere wooden ladder it was--and tossed it
on the heads of the armed throng below.  A number of large clay
vases, filled with gigantic geraniums and other flowers, with four
cross-legged marble idols of Siva, Deva, Vishnu, and Brama, the
property of the banker, he hurled down in quick succession also, to
increase the danger and confusion; and each, as it fell crashing upon
the turbaned heads, the brown upturned faces, and fierce eyes that
gleamed in the torchlight below, elicited a storm of yells and the
useless explosion of several rifles which were levelled upward, and
the balls from which either starred upon the walls or whistled
harmlessly away into the darkness.

Zohrab, brave as a lion, now almost leisurely reloaded his long
pistol, and felt the edge and point of his sabre with the forefinger
of his left hand.  It was an old Ispahan sword--one of those famous
blades made and tempered by Zaman, the pupil of Asad.  Formed of
Akbarer steel, it rung like a bell, and Zohrab valued this sword as
second only to his own soul.  He had taken it in battle from an old
Beloochee, who was following Mehrib Khan to the siege of Khelat, and
it was valued at two thousand rupees.  Many times had that good
weapon saved his life; it had ever been at his side by day, or under
his pillow by night; and now he kissed it tenderly, with fervour in
his heart and a prayer on his lips, for a knowledge came over him
that, though he might escape, the end seemed close and nigh.  He
looked to the sky; it was enveloped in masses of flying clouds.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, hopefully, "the star of Zohrab may yet again
shine out in God's blessed firmament!"

Then he looked over the sea of flat-terraced roofs that spread around
him, and from amid which the round, dark domes of the mosques and the
greater mass of the Bala Hissar--rock, tower, and rampart, tier upon
tier--stood abruptly up; and over these roofs he knew that he must
make his way, if he would escape some dreadful death, such as
impalement by a hot ramrod prior to decapitation; for Ackbar Khan and
Saleh Mohammed would accord him small mercy indeed.

"Kill him!"

"Slay the ghorumsaug!"

"Drink his blood!"

"Death to the Sooni!" cried some.

"Death to the follower of Shi!" cried others, equally at random.
Such were some of the shouts that loaded the night air in the streets
below, where the blue gleaming of keen sabres, of tall lances, and
long juzail-bayonets was incessant; for not only was the house, but
even the alley itself was environed on all hands.

"A _chupao_* with a vengeance!" muttered Zohrab, as by one vigorous
bound he leaped from the roof on which he stood to that of the
opposite street, the distance between being little more than six or
seven feet.  The action was not unseen; a heavy volley of rifle-shot
whizzed upward--we say, _whizzed_, for the bullets were round, not
conical.  There was a furious spurring of horses, a rush of the
crowd, and many armed men now entered the houses, to make their way
upon the roofs, and to attack or capture him there; but Zohrah,
light, active, and lithe, only waited to draw breath, ere he sprang
across the deep, dark gulf of another narrow street, then another,
and another.


* Night attack.


Meanwhile, forgotten and left to herself, Mabel, with terror, heard
all these hostile sounds dying away in the distance.  Her just
indignation at Zubberdust for the cruel trick he had played, and the
new dangers amid which he had left her, had now passed away; and amid
the fears she had for her own future fate, she was too womanly, too
generous, and too tender of heart, not to feel intense compassion for
a single human being--a brave young man, too--hunted in this terrible
fashion from house-top to house-top, like a wild animal.  Yet she
could but tremble, cower on her knees, utter pious invocations in
whispers, and, pausing, listen fearfully to the dropping fire of
shots and the occasional yells in echoing streets without, till a
firm and bold grasp was laid upon her tender arm.  She looked up, and
found herself looked down upon by the hideous face of the Khond, then
lighted up by an indescribable expression.  She remembered all she
had overheard, and all she had read in "Macpherson's Religion of the
Khonds," and she became well-nigh palsied with fear.

"O my God!" she exclaimed, and closed her eyes.  Then, that she might
see no more of that horrible visage, being dressed like an Afghan
woman, she instantly lowered her veil, according to the custom which
has prevailed in the East ever since the days when "Rebekah took one,
when she perceived Isaac coming towards her, and covered herself;"
but with a fierce, mocking laugh, the Khond tore it off, and, after
surveying her fully and boldly, went out, securing the panel of the
room behind him by a strong wooden bolt.

Four, five, even seven streets were crossed in mid air, in a
succession of flying leaps, by Zohrab successfully, when, just as
breath was beginning to fail him, a shot from a juzail ripped up his
right thigh, rending the muscles fearfully, and the blood from a
lacerated artery issued in a torrent from the wound.

"May the snares of Satan and the thunder-smitten be on the head of
him who fired the shot!" moaned Zohrab, as he reeled and staggered,
unable to leap again, while on the flat-terraced roof of a house he
had left there came swarming up several dismounted Dooranees, armed
with rifles, swords, and pistols.

He faced furiously about: the roof was perfectly open, for there was
neither cornice nor parapet to crouch behind.  He fired both his
pistols, and with each shot a man dropped in quick succession.  At
the same moment several balls were fired at him; three struck him in
the body, and he sank half-powerless on his knees, but in
weakness--_not_ supplication.  He hurled his pistols at his
destroyers, and then, lest any of them should ever possess his
beloved Ispahan sword, he snapped the blade across his knee as if it
had been brittle glass, and cast the glittering fragments among the
crowd below.

In a piercing voice he exclaimed, as he threw up his arms.  "Ei
dereeghâ, ei dereeghâ, oo ei dereegh!  Would to Thee, O God, that I
had never been tempted--had never seen her!" and then inspired by
what emotion we know not, unless it were to seek succour for Mabel,
and to have her saved from the terrible Khond, he took off the cloth
of his turban, the last appeal a Mohammedan can make when imploring
mercy for himself or a friend, and was waving it above his head, when
a ball pierced his brain; he gave a convulsive bound upwards, and
fell dead and mangled into the street below.

In half an hour after this, the head of "Zohrab the Overbearing" was
placed in the public Charchowk, beside that of the unfortunate
baronet, Sir William Macnaghten.




CHAPTER XII.

THE SHADE WITHIN THE SHADOW.

So one more dreadful tragedy had been enacted in that land of
bloodshed!

Barbarous though she deemed the Mohammedan Afghans, she was to find
herself in the grasp of those who were more barbarous still--for
whose depth of cruelty there was no name--the Khonds, a race or tribe
whose sacrifices of human life, though not offered up in such numbers
as those of the Thugs, were done in a fashion quite as secret, and
known only to themselves, and whose existence, like that of those
subtle assassins, had become only known to the Indian Government of
late years.

Powerless in the hands of Ferishta Lodi, the girl felt as if hovering
on the verge of some death of which she knew not the form or fashion,
save that it must be lingering, protracted, and horrible!

Her past life, with all its peace, happiness, and ease, its gaiety,
luxury, brilliance, and good position, seemed to be, as it was
indeed, like a previous state of existence--as a dream; the horrible
present appeared alone the stern reality.  Was her identity the same?
she asked of herself many, many times, in half-audible whispers; or
had she undergone that species of metempsychosis, or transmigration
of soul from the body of one being to the body of another, which is a
doctrine of the Indian Brahmins--of those Hindoos whom she was now
beginning to loathe?  Was she no longer Mabel Trecarrel, a Christian
woman, a civilised European, who had a father, a sister, and so many
friends?  Was the existence of Waller, or was her own, a myth?  She
felt as if she was about to become insane, and, pressing her delicate
hands upon her throbbing temples, prayed God to preserve her senses,
whatever her ultimate fate might be.

Surely, unknown to herself, she must have committed some great sin,
to be tortured thus, and thus punished, enduring here that she might
not endure hereafter, was her next idea.

The six months or so which had elapsed since that stirring morning on
which the army, under its aged and dying general, with its mighty
encumbrance of camp-followers, began its homeward march for India
from the old familiar cantonments seemed as so many ages to Mabel
Trecarrel now!  So many well-known faces and happy existences had
been swept away; so complete a change had come over all the few who
survived, and their prospects seemed so strange and dark.  So much
misery, so many sent to untimely deaths--it could not be said to
their graves, as the Afghans never interred one of our dead.

What did it all mean?  Why did Heaven so persecute, or leave to their
fate, so many Christians in the hands of utter infidels?

Voices again roused her to action--at least to listen.

They were those of the Khond and the Hindoo conversing in Hindostanee.

"So, so," said the former, chuckling, "all is over with Zohrab; he
can 'overbear' no longer."

"Yes; the head he carried so proudly is gone to the gate of the
Char-chowk; but the Kuzzilbashes are still in the street, and I wish
they were gone to their own quarter."

"Why?"

"They may take a fancy to our heads, too."

"Why, I say?" asked the Khond, fiercely.

"Can you ask?--if the Feringhee woman is not forthcoming."

"She is mine, and I have saved my two hundred tomauns."

"How yours?"

"Zohrab is gone; none seem to know that she is here; and you will be
silent, if you are wise.  Ackbar Khan would like an excuse to plunder
a schroff so rich as you; hence you must, I know, be silent."

The last words sounded more like a threat than an advice or an
entreaty, as the voice of the fierce Khond accentuated them; the sly
Hindoo, however, made some evasive response, and then Mabel heard him
draw on his slippers and tunic and shuffle from the room.  Where he
went she knew not; but, after a time, with an exclamation of anger
and mistrust, the Khond tossed aside the mouth-piece of his
hubble-bubble, and followed him.

So the Kuzzilbashes were still in the adjacent streets!  Could she
but reach them!  They were gallant and soldierly fellows, though,
till of late, as bitter foes of the British troops as any tribe in
the country.  But now the politics of their Khan had begun to change,
and he had kept aloof from Ackbar and his interests.  She once more
applied herself to the windows.  Many dark figures were hovering
about in the street, and looking up at the house.  Who or what these
people were she knew not.  The courtyard was quite empty; but she
heard the clatter of hoofs and the clink of arms, as horsemen rode
hastily to and fro in the main thoroughfare that led to the bazaar.

She was in perfect darkness now.

She sought feebly to draw or push down the panel that separated her
from the dewan-khaneh; but the wooden bolt secured it beyond all the
efforts of her humble strength to force a way; and she feared to make
the least noise, lest, by being caught in the act of escaping, she
might only accelerate her own fate.

Breathlessly she listened!

Sounds passed at intervals through the large and scantily furnished
chambers of the slenderly built house.  The floors being all
uncarpeted, and the windows without draperies, in the fashion of the
country, the edifice was liable to produce strange echoes, and Mabel
strove to gather from these something of good or bad augury as they
fell on her overstrained ear.

Ah, were she but once more back in the hitherto abhorred fort of
Saleh Mohammed--back to the sad companionship of the hostages--to the
shelter and counsel of her own sex and people!  In the power of the
Khond she felt, truly and terribly, that if they had much to dread
and to anticipate when in the fort, she had much that was more
immediate to dread now; that within every shade there may be a deeper
shadow.  Rose could never know her fate, or how she had perished in
seeking to rejoin her; and she might have to die and never know the
story of the younger sister she loved so dearly.

Suddenly, amid her sad reverie, she heard the sound of heavy boots,
the brown-tanned jorabs of Afghan horsemen, and the cadence of
various guttural voices in the dewan-khaneh.  Then a red light
streamed through the jointings of the panelled wall.  The wooden bolt
outside was shot back; the great central panel slid down in its
grooves, and within the square outline it left, framed as if in a
picture, with the red smoky glare of an upheld torch falling strongly
upon him, stood the tall and grim but most picturesque figure of the
old Khan of the Dooranees, Saleh Mohammed, with one brown bony hand
thrust into his yellow Cashmere girdle, and the other resting on the
jewelled hilt of his sheathed sabre.

His bushy beard concealed alike the form of his mouth and chin; but
his slender hooked nose, with arching nostril, his shaggy brows, and
keen eagle-like eyes indicated firmness, decision, and rapidity of
thought and action.  He wore a loose and ample chogah of scarlet
cloth, lined with fine fur, and richly embroidered; a short
matchlock, beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl, was slung upon
his back, with a silk handkerchief bound over its lock for
protection; his girdle bristled with the usual number of elaborate
knives, daggers, and pistols; and he wore a green turban to indicate
his assumed or acknowledged descent from the Prophet.

With something of kindness mingled with sternness, he held out a hand
to the drooping Mabel, and raised her from her knees; for she was
half sitting and half reclining, hopelessly and weakly, against the
wooden partition; and he saw how pale and piteous she looked.  Now
old Saleh had several wives and daughters of his own in a secluded
fort among the Siah Sung Hills, and he was not without some
promptings of human sympathy in his heart.

"Come," said he; "with me you are safe, and shall go back to your
friends.  From Shireen Khan I have been told how Zohrab, that liar
who is now hanging over hell by the tongue, deceived you."

She thankfully placed her hand in that of the Dooranee chief, for,
after the tiger-like visage of the Khond, his bearded face and
venerable aspect were as those of a father to her, and most
gratefully she welcomed him.

The hint of the Khond, that Ackbar Khan, or some of the other Khans,
whose number was legion in Cabul, might confiscate his substance and
appropriate his hard-won mohurs, tomauns, rupees, and good English
guineas, had not been lost on the quiet and acquisitive Hindoo
banker, who had straightway betaken him to Mohammed Saleh in the
street, just as he was collecting his men to depart, and, to make his
peace with all, had surrendered Mabel, while, for some reason known
to himself alone, he had no future fear of Ferishta Lodi's anger.

As Mabel was too weak to ride on a side-saddle, and to walk was, of
course, impossible, a palanquin was soon procured, and in that she
was rapidly conveyed by four bearers in the fashion to which she was
quite accustomed, away from the city, under the shadow of the great
Bala Hissar, past the tomb of Baber, and round between the Siah Sung
Hills and the Cabul river, once more to the fort of Saleh Mohammed,
where, just as day was breaking, she was roused from a slumber that
was full of painful visions and nervous startings, to find herself
welcomed by pure English tongues and by the embraces of her
companions in misfortune, the lady hostages of Elphinstone's hapless
army.

A severe illness, consequent on all her delicate frame had undergone,
now fell upon Mabel--a nervous illness, which her friends were
without the means of alleviating, when on the, to them, most
memorable 25th of August, came the cruel order of Ackbar Khan for the
immediate transmission of all to Toorkistan, where he had condemned
them all to sale and slavery--an order consequent on his fury at the
retention of Jellalabad, and the combined advance of General Pollock
and Sir Robert Sale upon Cabul.

So on that day, by horse, on foot, on camels, or in dhooleys, the
hapless females and children, a few accompanied by husbands and
fathers, the sick, the wounded, and the ailing, all in misery, in
tears, and despair, under Saleh Mohammed and a strong guard of
Dooranees, set forth towards the frontier of the land where they were
to be scattered and lost to their friends and to freedom for
ever--the land of Toorkistan, a name so vaguely given to all that
vast, lawless, and uncivilized region that lies between the plateau
of Central Asia and the shores of the Caspian Sea!




CHAPTER XIII.

ROSE IN A NEW CHARACTER.

Lovers are more interesting to each other than they can ever possibly
prove to third or fourth parties; yet we cannot preserve the unity of
our story and lose sight of Denzil and Rose Trecarrel, whose case and
circumstances were altogether exceptional; for, certainly, few lovers
have been precisely situated as they were, in this age of the world
at least.

Yet the course of their love was not fated to "run smooth," though,
in the care of Shireen Khan, no such perils menaced them as those
which beset Mabel and her companion, or, still more, those who were
the immediate prisoners of Ackbar, unless we refer to the watch kept
on the Kuzzilbash fort, by some of the fanatical Ghazees, who, on
discovering that Feringhee prisoners were there, thought to add to
their own chances of salvation by cutting them off.

In this late affair with Zohrab, Shireen had permitted Denzil to go,
armed and mounted, with a party of twenty Kuzzilbashes in search of
him and Mabel, round by the hills of Beymaru, the borders of the Lake
of Istaliff, and other places over which he and Waller had hunted and
shot together, often in the more peaceful time that was past.  After
his months of seclusion and useless inactivity, Denzil, apart from
the natural excitement and anxiety resulting from the object in
view--the rescue of Mabel and reunion of the sisters--felt a joyous
emotion on finding himself once more an armed man, astride a
magnificent horse, and spurring like the wind along the steep
mountain slopes, through fertile valley and foaming river, at the
head of twenty soldierly fellows, in fur caps with red bags, flaming
scarlet chogahs, and glittering lances.

Shireen had perfect confidence in according to him this unusual
liberty, knowing, as he said drily to the Khanum, his wife, that
"while they retained the hen in the roost, the cock-bird would not go
far off."  He was surprised, however, that Denzil, when on this
expedition, could by no means be persuaded to wear his remarkable
yellow silk robe, with the embroidered letters and sphynxes, which
was supposed to be his war dress, or to indicate his rank as a great
Nawab or Bahadoor of the Queen of England.

In the ardour of the chase, Denzil took a wrong direction, and
over-exerted himself to repair the error; he rode with his party
beyond Loghur, and the reach of all probable places where the
abductor was likely to be found; and then, at a time when the
midsummer sun was intensely hot, and the atmosphere filled with
steamy and miasmatic exhalations from the rice-fields, he swam his
horse through three rivers, at points where the water rose nearly to
his neck.

A fever and ague--nearly regular jungle-fever--combined with some
other ailment, were the result of this rashness; and on the second
day after, Denzil found himself prostrate on a bed of sickness.

By the Khan, he and Rose had been duly informed of the narrow escapes
of her sister; of the wile by which she had been lured from the fort
of Saleh Mohammed, at whose rage and want of circumspection the more
wary Shireen laughed heartily; of the trickery and reckless valour of
Zohrab Zubberdust, and the horrible schemes of the Khond, happily
averted by the timidity and avarice of the Hindoo schroff; and Rose
felt grateful to Heaven--intensely so in her heart--that her "dear,
dear Mab" was safe once more, or comparatively so, in the
companionship of sorrow--for such she knew it must inevitably be,
with Lady Sale, her widowed daughter, the widow of the Envoy, and
other captives of Ackbar; though, by chances she had not foreseen,
their meeting was delayed--she could only hope and pray, for a time.

These episodes and the tenour of the life they all led in the
sequestered fort, with the daily looking forward to some startling
event or catastrophe, a battle, a revolution, even an earthquake, as
a means to set them free, seemed to tame down and sadden much of
Rose's constitutional heedlessness; besides, the illness of Denzil
was a genuine source for present sorrow and growing anxiety.

He was alternately in a burning fever and then in icy perspirations;
he had intense pains in the head and loins, a heavy sickness, a
weariness over all his limbs, a listlessness of spirit, a general
sinking and rapid wasting of the whole system, with a thirst that at
times could not be alleviated by the simple sangaree or sherbet,
i.e., lime-juice and sugar, prepared for him by the Khanum.  Denzil
inherited from his mother, Constance Devereaux, a more delicate
physique and nervous organisation than that possessed by his hardier
father; hence he was the more calculated to succumb to the subtle
ailment that had fastened on him now; but neither he nor those about
him thought of danger yet.

The old white-bearded and black-robed Hakeem, Aber Malee, who
attended the inhabitants of the fort, and came thither from the city
every other day, on his donkey, prescribed decoctions of honey, which
is recommended by the Koran as a sovereign "medicine for man."  He
did more: with intense solemnity, he copied many texts or
prescriptions from the pages of the same book, on strips of
parchment, then washed them off into a cup of water from the holy
well at Baher's tomb, and gave it to his patient to swallow; but
whenever he departed, Rose or Denzil tossed them over the window; so,
left thus, altogether without medical attendance, the disease took a
deeper and more permanent root.

Rose had now gladly relinquished the Afghan female dress.  Amid the
plentiful supply of plunder of every kind gleaned up by the
Kuzzilbashes in the track of the retreating army, were several
overlands bullock-trunks and portmanteaus filled with clothing.
Among these, some of which had doubtless belonged to her own lady
friends, Rose was fain to make selections; thus, one evening in June,
when the sun was setting behind the black mountains, throwing across
the broad green valley where the Cabul winds, their shadows to where
the old cantonments lay, and tipping with fire the conical hill that
overhangs the distant city, while Denzil, who had been dosing
uneasily on his hard native bed, was looking with a haggard eye about
him, he saw Rose seated near, at an open window, on a low divan,
dressed in a most becoming fashion, and consequently looking much
more like her former self.

And as his bed, in the usual Afghan fashion, lay simply on the floor,
which had no covering but a _satringee_, or piece of cotton carpet,
he could see the whole of her handsome figure, as she reclined a
cheek upon her dimpled hand, showing one lovely taper arm bare to the
white elbow, while alternately idling over the pages of a European
book and furtively watching him, as he had slept, lulled over by the
drowsy hum of myriad insects at the open casement, and among the
brilliantly flowered creepers that clambered round it, a sound like
the murmur of distant water, or of the wind in an ocean shell, but
very suggestive of heat, of lassitude, and repose; yet Denzil, though
he had slept, felt more weary than ever.

"Rose," said he, faintly.

"Dear Denzil--you are awake again, my poor pet; you sleep but by
snatches," said the girl, closing her book and sinking on her knees
beside his pillow, which, with ready and gentle hands, she
noiselessly rearranged.

"I have been thinking, Rose--that--that----" he paused.

"What?  Do not exert yourself."

"That my presence must be full of peril to you!"

"To me---how?"

"This illness may be an infectious one."

"I scarcely think so, Denzil; and if it were," she added, with a
smile of inexpressible tenderness, "if it were--what then?"

"It might seize on you, darling Rose.  Let one of those Kuzzilbash
fellows attend me; their lives are of no consequence, while yours----"

"Is of value only to myself."

"And to me, Rose--to me; how unkind!"

He raised himself feebly on his elbow, and gazed at her with eyes
expressive of love and admiration.

"Why, Rose, how well you are looking this evening--quite a belle too,
or a 'swell,' if one may speak slang," said he, with affected
cheerfulness.

"And you, too, Denzil," said she in the same manner, kindly assumed,
but with an arrested sob in her throat, for she saw that in reality
he was more and more wasted, hollow-cheeked, and large-eyed than
ever, and that the tendons of his hands stood sharply out in ridges,
distinct to the eye, quite like those of an old man.

His full, deep, dark blue eyes had in them an unnatural lustre; his
fair, curly hair had the same golden tint as usual, when the falling
sunlight touched it; but the Indian brown and the jolly English bloom
had left his once-rounded cheeks together, and they were now pale and
hollow indeed; and though he was very fair, and his mother had been
dark in eye and jetty in tress, something in his face and expression
recalled her now to Rose's memory, as she had seen her on that day,
when she and Mabel had visited the villa at Porthellick, and, in the
vanity of the hour, flattered themselves that they had condescended
mightily in so doing.  Could they then have foreseen the present time
and circumstances?

She gazed at him with great sadness, and great love, too, in her eyes
and in her heart; while he, in turn, looked up to her with love and
admiration too, and with somewhat of anxiety for her future.

She was attired so prettily and suitably; for the season was summer,
and the month was June.

No longer hanging dishevelled in the Afghan fashion, the splendid
ripples of her bright auburn hair were coiled up by her own clever
fingers in the European mode, and smoothly braided, as she was wont
to have them in happier times, showing all the contour of her fine
head, her slender neck, and delicate ears.  She wore a simple loose
dress of white muslin, spotted with the tiniest of red rose-buds; and
through the delicate texture of this fabric the curved outline of her
shoulders and her tapered arms could be traced, whiter than the gauzy
muslin itself--a piquant species of costume, which made old Shireen
stroke his beard and mutter, "_Barikillah!_" (excellent!), as
expressive of great satisfaction, not unmixed with more admiration
than the Khanum relished.

Rose was destitute of all ornaments, for everything she once
possessed of that kind had long since been lost or taken from her.
Her feet were cased in tight silk stockings and beautiful little kid
boots, laced up in front, and they peeped from amid a wilderness of
white-edged petticoats, that lay wreath upon wreath like the leaves
of a rose in full bloom; and, altogether, she was such a figure as
Denzil had not seen since the jovial days when he and Bob Waller had
smoked the calumet of peace together in the old cantonments, and were
wont to promenade at the band-stand which stood in the centre
thereof; certainly she was quite unlike what one might expect to see
in the residence of the Khan of the Kuzzilbashes, where the ideas of
the middle ages, and darker epochs still, have not passed away, and
things are pretty much as they were in the days of Timour the Tartar.

Rose seemed intuitively to read something of all this in the
expression of Denzil's face; for she smiled, and, with one of her old
coquettish glances, kissed the tips of her fingers to him.

Circumstanced as they were, Rose, no doubt, in time past had talked a
great deal of nonsense, and, seeing how necessary she was to Denzil's
happiness, Shireen Khan had relinquished much of her society at chess
in his favour; but who ever scrutinises very closely all that a
pretty girl talks about, or what male listener, or lover especially,
would care to analyse the logic thereof?  The parting of charming
lips is ever pleasant to look upon, and the music of a sweet English
female voice is ever pleasant to hear, and never so sweet or so
seductive as when far away from home.  And so thought Denzil, as he
lay upon his pillow, with heavy eye, with aching temples, and
throbbing pulses, listening to the prattle of Rose Trecarrel.

Some books, picked up in the burned cantonments, had also been
brought to Rose by the Khan, though he suggested that the Koran, with
its hundred and fourteen chapters, ought to suffice for all the
literary, legal, and medical necessities of mankind, and womankind
too.  Among those stray volumes was a copy of "Lalla Rookh," with
poor Harry Burgoyne's autograph on the fly-leaf, and with this she
had read Denzil asleep, reading steadily on afterwards, and kindly
fearing to stop, lest by doing so she might awake him; but now,
without her ceasing, he had restlessly stirred and roused himself.

He grudged, even by necessary sleep, to lose by day a moment of her
society; for they could converse silently, eye with eye, without
speaking; for to lovers there is a dear companionship, an eloquence
even, in silence; and now the girl gazed upon her care with her eyes
and her heart full of love and tenderness, all the more that he, by
perfect isolation, was so completely her own, and that she could
minister unto him, as only a woman, a loving and tender one, can tend
and minister to the suffering.

It was very strange, all this!

To Rose Trecarrel it had seemed as if, once upon a time, the world
was quite running over with lovers.  Now, her world was, oddly
enough, narrowed to the boundary wall and grassy fausse-braye of
Shireen Khan's fort.  That a girl, in her extreme youth, chances to
have been, like Rose, a flirt, is no proof that she is incapable of a
very deep and enduring affection; it is often quite the contrary, and
Rose was just a case in point.  Here, with her and Denzil, the pretty
biter was _bitten_.  "A flirt," says one, who wrote long ago, "is
merely a girl of more than common beauty and amiability, just
hovering on the verge which separates childhood from womanhood.  She
is just awakening to a sense of her power, and finds an innocent
pleasure in the exercise of it.  The blissful consciousness parts her
ripe lips with prouder breath, kindles her moist eyes with richer
lustre, and gives additional buoyancy and swan-like grace to all her
motions.  She looks for homage at the hands of every man who
approaches her, and richly does she repay him with rosy smiles and
sparkling glances.  There is no passion in all this."  It is the
first trembling, unconscious existence of that sentiment which will
become love in time.  And Rose's time had come!

So had it been with her, though her flirtations had bordered too
often on actual coquetry, thereby overacting the flirt, incurring the
sneers of the piqued, and accusations of heartlessness and vanity, as
one who loved the love-making, but _not_ the lover.  She had now
become a veritable Undine--the type of everything that is amiable and
beautiful, tender and true, in her sex.  Yet we are constrained to
admit that much of this sudden change might have been brought about
by the dire pressure of unforeseen events and calamities.  In her
late term of bitter experiences, she, and all about her, had learned
palpably, that those they loved most on earth were merely mortal, and
might be, or had been, torn from them by cruel and sudden deaths.

In her new phase of life, how completely her former had passed
away--been forgotten, with its balls, parties, picnics, dejeuners,
and promenades; its selection of dresses and colours, flowers and
perfumes; its promenades and drives; its fun and jollity; its
gossips, flirtations, and folly!  All existence seemed merged or
narrowed now in two circles or hopes--the health of Denzil, and their
mutual restoration to liberty and safety!

All her girlish foibles had passed away, and the genuine woman came
to the surface, when perhaps too late; for Denzil seemed too surely
to be sinking fast, and unwittingly, when his mind wandered in the
delirium of fever, he murmured things that he had heard amid the
banter of the mess-bungalow, and elsewhere, that stung her repentant
heart, and drew tears from her eyes.

"Rose--oh Rose," he would say, "it can't be true all that Jack
Polwhele said, and Harry Burgoyne, of the 37th, too--but they are
dead, poor fellows!--and Grahame, and Ravelstoke, and ever so many
more."

"What did they say, Denzil?"

"That you flirted with them all--oh, no, no, no!  And then there is
my cousin Audley--if indeed he is my cousin," he added, through his
chattering teeth, "he cannot love you as I love you!  He must have
made a fool of many a girl in his time, while I--I love but you--even
as I told you on that day by the lake, when you--you said--what did
she say?--ask her, Sybil," he would add, looking up vacantly, yet
earnestly; and then the conscience of the listener would be stirred
to find that her thoughtless follies were remembered at such a time.

"In his soul, he doubts me still," she thought.  "My poor Denzil, I
was only flirting, as most girls do.  It was only fun," she added,
aloud.

"Yes, I am poor, and junior in rank, I know," he replied, catching a
new idea from her words, "too poor for her to love me, Sybil; I heard
her tell that fellow, Audley, so; and he--ah! he is the heir of Lord
Lamorna!"

"Denzil, dearest Denzil!" then Rose exclaimed, in a low and earnest
whisper, putting an arm caressingly round his neck, and her tremulous
lips close to his ear, "you are certain to have been promoted by this
time, and doubtless the Queen will give you the Order of the Dooranee
Empire.  I feel sure of it," she added, little knowing that all this
had already taken place.

But, at the moment she spoke, an access of fever and weakness came
over poor Denzil; his bloodshot eyes moved, but he made no response;
and a fear began to come over her that he was passing away--slipping
from her love and her care--perhaps already far beyond caring now
either for promotion or "a ribbon at the breast."

How she repented the past pangs her heedlessness had cost this honest
heart, we need not say; but as her eyes fell on a verse of "Lalla
Rookh," underlined in some old flirtation of Burgoyne's, she applied
it to herself; for now

  "Far other feelings love hath brought;
  Her soul all flame, her brow all sadness;
  She now has but the one dear thought,
  And thinks that o'er almost to madness."

On one occasion he became almost insensible; but whether he slept or
had swooned, she knew not in her despair of heart; and none of
Shireen's household could aid her, by advice or otherwise.  At
dressing a sabre-cut with myrrh, or stanching a bullet-hole with a
bunch of nettle-leaves as a styptic, any of them would have been
ready and skilful enough; but with such an ailment as that of Denzil,
they were as useless as children, and apt to attribute it to magic,
or the spell of some unseen and offended genii; while, as fatalists,
they were disposed to commit the event to God alone.

So the sorrow and apprehension of the lonely girl grew daily greater.

"And this is the only man I ever loved; yet through me, or my
sister's cause--through _us_--has death, perhaps, come untimely upon
him!" Rose would say, wildly and passionately, and in a low,
concentrated voice, as she flung herself at the foot of Denzil's bed;
while all the horror of anticipated loneliness, if he should be taken
away, and she left, came upon her.  How bitterly now she felt
punished for all the little follies of the past!

His ailment was, certainly, one under which a patient may linger a
long time--nay, may seem to get well, and then again be worse than
ever, but which, in the end, too often slays.  Hence, it is no wonder
that the humble Hakeem, Abu Malec--who believed that a verse of the
Koran written, washed off, and swallowed with reverence, must form a
sovereign remedy, even for an obstinate and benighted infidel--should
stroke his beard in sore perplexity and great wonder, and mutter--

"Thus it is that Allah seals the hearts of those who are steeped in
ignorance!  Their doctrines are as a worthless tree, the roots of
which run on the surface of the ground, and hath no stability, and
the blast of heaven will overturn."

"A tiresome old pump!  For Heaven's sake, keep him away, Rose!" would
be the comment of the sick subaltern.

And the latter had at times a secret presentiment that he would never
leave the fort of Shireen Khan alive; yet the conviction was sweet
that Rose had loved him, ere he passed away.  She would never forget
him now: he felt sure of that.  She might love _another_ in time; but
would that matter to him?  To die, ere she was restored to the
society and protection of Europeans, was to leave her most lonely and
widowed in heart, and was his keenest affliction; yet he kept it to
himself, having no desire to distress her unnecessarily, though his
ravings sometimes indicated the prevailing thought, and the fear he
saw was in her.

"I don't think I shall die this bout, Rose darling.  I cannot have a
very deadly fever!  I rode only forty miles--twenty to Loghur, and
twenty back--on Shireen's old brute of a Tartar horse, and smoked
about ten cheroots; but they were execrable--picked up among the lost
baggage; and--and you know, dear mother, they are thorough
disinfectants any way.  Oh, no--I can't have a deadly fever.  I shall
soon be better, dear, dear mother!"

Thus, Rose would learn that his wandering thoughts had flashed far,
far from her, till the clouds that oppressed his brain would pass
away, and, all ignorant of past delirium, he would welcome her
presence with loving jet forced smiles, and seek to assure her, in a
voice that grew more husky and more weak daily, "that he was
better--oh, so very much better;" adding, "Ah, if we had but Sybil
here--or, rather, if we did but know what has become of her!"

"Sybil--ah, would that I could but know of her!  But she shall be my
sister, Denzil; for too surely, I fear, we shall never see Mabel
more!"

"Don't say so.  You and Mabel shall both be happy, I hope, long, long
after----" he paused.

"After what, darling?"

"After all these sorrows have passed away," said he; and though it
was not thus he had meant to close the sentence, Rose read his secret
meaning in his mournful eyes.

There were times when he lay quiet, breathing hard and shortly, but
quite apathetic to all around him; and other times when he moaned and
muttered of his broken and desolate home--a home now no more; of
Cornwall, its moors and cliffs; of wanderings in Italy--the peaks of
the Abruzzi and the banks of the Arno; of his parents and sister; of
Rose--ever and anon it was Rose, and the day by the Lake of Istaliff;
all oddly confused together, till the listener's heart was crushed,
and she prayed on her knees, with bowed head, that he might be spared
for her, or that, while her unfelt kisses were pressed upon his brow
and cheek, she too might catch the same fever, and that they might
die and be buried together under the green turf, outside the Afghan
fort, where the acacia-trees were tossing their light, feathery
foliage in the wind.

So thus would the sleepless hours of many a weary night of watching
pass away; the boom of brass cannon, mellowed by distance, would come
from the far-off Bala Hissar, indicating that dawn was breaking, and
pale Rose Trecarrel would know that the slow lingering hours of
another day of heartless sorrow were before her.

One noon, however, a little hope dawned in her breast!  The Hakeem,
Abu Malec, arrived with a stranger, whose fair European face belied
his Afghan camise and brown leather boots.

"A Feringhee doctor Sahib has come from Cabul," said Abu Malec, not
without a spice of professional jealousy in his tone, while, to the
infinite joy of Rose, he introduced Doctor C----, of the 54th
Infantry, one of those gallant and devoted medical officers, who
volunteered by lot cast on the drum-head, to remain behind in that
place of peril, and attend to the wants of our sick and wounded
soldiers; so now she devoutly hoped that Denzil would have some
better treatment than that which resulted from mere superstition and
a dogged belief in that fatalism which is eminently Mohammedan.

The doctor, an old friend, greeted Rose kindly, and with genuine
warmth--to exist was cause for congratulation then; next he turned to
Denzil, and, after a brief examination, shook his head despondingly,
to the intense satisfaction of the Hakeem, Abu Malec.



CHAPTER XIV.

WITH SALE'S BRIGADE.

Since that ill-omened hour and time of dread excitement, when on the
disastrous day in January the ladies and other hostages were handed
over to Ackbar Khan, their friends and relatives even in Afghanistan
knew nothing of their actual safety--who were living, who were dead,
or who were mutilated or disgraced by insults worse than death, on
the route towards Toorkistan; and now the beginning of September had
come.

It was only known that Ackbar's orders to Saleh Mohammed were, "to
hurry them on their journey, and to butcher all the sick, and those
for whom there might be no speedy conveyance."

Eight months--eight weary and harassing months of eager longing, of
fierce excitement, and impatience to avenge the fallen and rescue the
helpless--had passed ere the junction between General Pollock's
troops and those of Sir Robert Sale was fully effected, and the
advance upon Cabul, so long resolved upon, was once more begun, while
Nott was pushing victoriously from Candahar on the same point,
leaving Ghuznee in smoking ruins behind him.

To Waller's mind, Mabel, though an ever-prevailing thought, had
become a kind of myth by that time--existent, yet non-existent, for
separation was a species of living death; and he could but pray that
she was still living, though in the hands of Ackbar Khan.  So a sad
memory to many a husband was the face of his wife; so to many a
father were the voice and smile of his child; and all knew that on
their own swords, and the valour and resolution of their comrades,
depended the chance of their all being ever reunited again.

Waller looked older than he was wont to do--older than his years; for
he had become, like many others serving there, more grave and more
thoughtful now.  Fun and merriment were unknown in Pollock's army,
and laughter, like many another luxury, was as scarce.  With
haversacks, canteens, and purses empty, and hard fighting in front,
life looks far from rosy.  Waller had more than once detected a most
decided and long grey hair in his carefully cultivated whiskers.  A
grey hair!--when improvising the back of his hunting-watch as a
mirror: his own elaborate rosewood dressing-case, with silver-mounted
essence bottles--the parting gift of a rich aunt, from whom Bob had
"expectations," was now degraded to the duty of holding
cooking-spices and stuffs for pillaus and kabobs in the kitchen of a
Khan; but the grey hairs--once upon a time he should have twitched
them out.

"Bah! what do they matter now?" said he, and finished his toilet by
clasping on his waist-belt.

Waller felt more than ever, from personal causes, inspired by an
ardour in the performance of his duty, and speedily became
distinguished as one of the most active and gallant officers on the
staff of Sir Robert Sale, a veteran whose uninterrupted career of
service dated back to the battle of Malavelly, where Harris defeated
Tippoo Saib, and the storming of Seringapatam, in the closing year of
the preceding century.  Sale commanded one division in our Army of
Vengeance,--for such it deemed itself; General M'Caskill, a stern and
resolute Scotsman, led the other; and the whole under General
Pollock, on being reinforced by Her Majesty 31st, the 33rd Native
Light Infantry, the 1st Light Cavalry, all clad in silver grey, and a
train of mountain guns (the ghalondazees of which wore picturesque
oriental dresses), commenced the march towards the mighty range of
mountains that lie between Jellalabad and Cabul.

McCaskill was in such feeble health that the brave old fellow had to
proceed at the head of his division in a litter borne by four Hindoos.

Experience had taught our leaders the mistake of having the usual
mighty encumbrances of camp-followers, the tenting and feeding of
which formed the curse of our Indian armies; so, in this instance,
such appendages were greatly reduced.  For tents, the palls or little
marquees of the sepoys were substituted.  Save a single change of
linen, the soldiers carried nothing in their knapsacks; the baggage
of the officers was cut down to the smallest extent--Waller carried
his in a valise at his saddle--and three or four had to sleep under
one marquee.  All the sick and wounded were left under a guard in
Jellalabad; and thus the army was trimmed, pruned, and fined down to
the active, well-armed, and lightly accoutred fighting-men alone.

Hence the camp had no longer the aspect usually presented by those of
our Indian forces, as these usually exhibit a motley collection of
coverings, to ward off the baleful dews of night or the scorching sun
by day.  Here and there a superb suite of tents or marquees,
surrounded by squalid little erections of coloured calico, tattered
cloths and blankets stretched over sticks and poles, even palm leaves
being improvised when they could be had; and amid all these congeries
of variously coloured masses, the flags of chiefs and colonels, the
bells of arms, horses, oxen, camels, and elephants, pell mell!

A final act of individual cruelty, perpetrated by Ackbar Khan on a
poor Hindoo--the same schroff, or banker, whom Mabel had seen in
Cabul--greatly exasperated all ranks against him.

Hearing that our troops had begun their march, this man, whose
nationality and sympathies led him to favour their interests, when
making his way towards them, was overtaken, and brought before Ackbar
in the castle of Buddeeabad, and was there bitterly upbraided as a
traitor.

"Throw him down," he cried to his Haozir-bashes, and then drew his
sabre.

Believing he was about to be beheaded, the wretched Hindoo implored
mercy.

"Hold him fast," said Ackbar, baring his right arm to the elbow.
"What, dog of an idolater, you wish to see the Feringhees, do you?"

By two blows of his heavy sabre, which was inscribed by a verse from
the Koran, he hacked off the feet of the Hindoo above the ankles, and
said mockingly--

"_Now_ you may go where you will: throw him out of doors."

Cast forth, faint and bleeding, the poor wretch, tore his
turban-cloth into strips and staunched with them the hemorrhage,
enabling him actually to crawl on his hands and knees to our
outposts, where his appearance excited the bitterest feelings in the
breasts of all the troops, European as well as native.

Rumour stated that Ackbar Khan was filled with alarm and rage, either
of which might prompt him to execute some of his terrible threats on
the helpless hostages; and that he was prepared for any extremity,
and to lay the land waste, was evinced by the alarming noises that
were heard in the Passes, ere our march began, and by the sky above
the mountain-tops being nightly reddened by the blaze of burning
villages which he destroyed, so that neither food nor shelter might
be found by an advancing foe.

At the hill of Gundamuck, where there is a walled village surrounded
by groves of cypresses, Waller saw, with some emotions of interest,
the cave in which he lurked after the last fatal stand was made
there, and vividly came back to memory the despair of the final
struggle.

As our troops began to penetrate into the recesses of those
mountains, whose names and features were so calculated to inspire
mournful thoughts in all who looked on them (for there had a British
army marched in, never more to come forth, being literally swallowed
up), they found, as before, the ferocious Ghilzies again in position,
and in thousands ready to defend their native rocks with all their
native ardour, inflamed by past triumph, the hopes of future plunder,
by fanaticism and pleasant doses of bhang; and from steep to steep,
and from ridge to ridge, from tree to tree, and hill to hill, they
defended themselves, and fought or died with stubborn and resolute
bravery, harassing our troops in front, in rear, and on both flanks.
Yet on pushed our columns: the dying and the dead fell fast, and
remained a ghastly train to mark the rearward route; but every life
lost seemed but to add to the pluck and hardihood of the survivors.

The sputtering fire of the long juzails, concentrating to a roar at
times, filled all these savage defiles with countless and incessant
puffs of white smoke, that started from among the grey impending
rocks, where the great yellow gourds, the purple grapes, and the
scarlet creepers grew in wild luxuriance; from dark and cavernous
fissures and the green groves of the pine and the plane tree.  Every
beetling crag was fringed with curling smoke, and streaked with fire,
scaring the mountain eagles high into mid air, while with every shot
that helped to thin our ranks the shrill cry of _Allah Ackbar!_ (God
is mighty) was echoed from side to side, to die upward, yet, we
hoped, to find no echo in heaven.

A little way within the eastern entrance to the series of defiles, at
the village of Jugdulluck, where the mountains are between five and
six thousand feet above the sea's level, there was a peculiarly
fierce encounter; for there the Afghans, led by the Arab Hadji
Abdallah Osman, and inflamed to religious fury by his precepts and
mad example, had fortified the summit of the Pass by earthworks and
some of our own captured cannon; but, mounting the steep heights on
each side, the 9th and 13th Regiments turned the flank of their
position, and by the bayonet drove away the defenders amid terrible
slaughter, neither side asking or hoping for quarter.

From point to point at other places were fierce contests; and now, as
our soldiers opened up with the cold steel those Passes which had
been closed to all Europeans for the past eight months, their onward
march--a series of prolonged conflicts, in fact--exhibited to them an
awful and harrowing scene.




CHAPTER XV.

THE BATTLE OF TIZEEN.

From out of the Passes, dark and shadowing, the reverberating echoes
of the adverse musketry roused black clouds of vultures, with angry
croak and flapping wing.  It would seem almost as if all the obscene
birds of Asia had been wont to seek, for months past, this ghastly
place--to make it their undisturbed rendezvous; and such, no doubt,
it had been, for there,

  "Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown,"

all belted and accoutred in the rags of their uniform, just as the
death-shots had struck them down, and as they had fallen over each
other in piles, lay the remains of Elphinstone's slaughtered army.

Close in ranks, as when living, in some places lay the ghastly relics
of the dead.  In one spot, where the last stand had been made by Her
Majesty's 44th Regiment, more than two hundred skeletons lay in one
horrid hecatomb; and in the shreds of red cloth that flapped in the
wind, the buttons and badges, sad and agonizing were the efforts made
by officers and men to recognise the remains of some dear and jovial
friend, some true and gallant comrade in the times that were gone;
and it was all the sadder to reflect that most of the fallen had been
cut off in their prime, or even before it, as from eighteen to
twenty-six years is the average age of our soldiers on service.

In too many, if not nearly all, instances the remains were headless,
the skulls having been borne off as trophies by the various mountain
tribes; and in some places the white bones lay amid purple, crimson,
and golden beds of those sweetly scented violets which the Orientals
so often use to flavour their finest sherbets.

For miles upon miles it was but a sad repetition of whitening bones,
fragments of uniforms, and ammunition paper, bleached by the wind and
rain and the snows of the past winter, together with the shrunken
remains of camels, horses, and yaboos, from which the baggage and
other trappings had long since been carried off; and ever and always
in mid air the croaking and flapping of the ravening vultures, long
unused to be disturbed by the living, in that valley of solitude and
silence, death and desolation.

Like many others, with a swollen heart, set lips, and stern eyes,
Waller reined in his horse, and would look round him from time to
time, in places where the dead lay thicker than usual.  Our now
victorious army was marching in thousands over their fallen comrades,
yet with them Waller felt himself alone, and a man possessed by one
harassing thought.

_His_ comrades were lying among those bones, through which the rank
dog-grass was sprouting--the companions of many a pleasant hour, the
sharers of many a past danger.  The object of the loving, the gentle,
the tender, and the peaceful in England far away lay there, abandoned
skeletons, exposed to the elements, to whiten and decay like the
fallen branches of the forest.

Orderly and quiet at all times, a deeper silence fell upon our
advancing troops as they traversed this terrible scene, a silence
broken only by the dropping fire maintained by our advanced guard
with the enemy's rear, under Amen Oolah Khan, till the leading
brigade of the first division on the road from Khoord Cabul to Tizeen
began to ascend the shoulder of a vast green mountain, named the Huft
Kothul, where the narrow and tortuous pathway reaches its greatest
altitude, rising above even the white mists of the deep and dark
green valleys.

Even there, a portion of the path is overlooked by the Castle of
Buddeeabad, which has a frontage of nearly eighty feet, and walls so
lofty that the mountaineers attributed its erection, of course, to
the genii, under Jan Ben Jan, who ruled the world before Adam came.
It belonged to the father-in-law of Ackbar Khan, a Ghilzie chief; and
there had the unfortunate old General Elphinstone looked his last
upon the setting sun.

Under the immediate directions of Ackbar and of Amen Oolah, the
Afghans, particularly the Khyberees, in their yellow turbans, the
Ghilzies and others, were in vast force, and they poured down such a
storm of bullets from rock and bank, cleft and fissure, that the
whole air seemed alive with the hissing sound, as they passed over
and, too often fatally, through our ranks.

"Thirteenth Light Infantry to the right!--Second Queen's to the
left--extend!" were the instant orders of Sir Robert Sale to Waller
and his other aide-de-camp or secretary, Sir Richmond Shakespere, a
gallant and enterprising officer, of whom more anon; and away they
galloped to have them executed.  Waller rode, like most of the
cavalry men, with a bundle of green corn over his horse's flanks, to
serve alike as provender and to keep off the flies; but, as he
spurred on to the head of the 13th Regiment, a shot from a jingaul
tore it away, and scattered it to the wind.  By the bad gunnery of
the Afghans, their cannon-balls ricocheted in a way that would have
delighted Marshal Vauban, who originally invented that mode of
rendering a round shot doubly dangerous, a half-charge causing it to
roll, rebound, maim, kill, and cause more disorder than if fired
point blank; and hence the origin of the name, as _ricoche_ signifies
simply "duck and drake," the name given by boys to the bounding of a
flat stone cast horizontally on the water.

The two aides delivered their orders in safety to the advancing
battalions, and the commander of each gave his orders for "three
companies on the right (it was the left for the 13th) to extend from
the centre."  Cheerily rang out the Kentish bugles, and away went the
skirmishers, confident in their supports, with wonderful rapidity,
though the men were falling fast on every hand.  They spread over the
green sunny slopes to the right and left, firing as they proceeded
upward, and swept over the hills in beautiful order, till the central
gorge was passed; then closing in by companies, and then in line,
each regiment began to fix bayonets, and mutually to utter that
hearty "hurrah!" which is ever the inspiring prelude to a charge of
British troops.

Brightly flashed the ridge of bayonets in the sunshine, as on right
and left the red battalions came wheeling down the grassy slopes at a
resolute and steady double.  The Afghans, though armed with bayonets
too, never waited to cross them, but turned and fled, with howls of
rage and terror, abandoning two English pieces of artillery.

Then rang out the trumpets sharp and shrill, and giving the reins to
their horses, the 3rd Light Dragoons, all in blue uniform, with white
puggerees over their shakos, their long, straight sword-blades
flashing and uplifted, their heads stooped, their teeth set with
energy, and every bronzed face flushed with ardour, spurred on their
way; and as they rushed past at racing speed, Bob Waller, impelled by
an irresistible impulse, joined them.  It was, indeed, a race to be
the first in the task of vengeance; for here and there, unchecked and
unrestrained, the privates, if better mounted, would dart in front of
the officers, as the true English emulous spirit broke out, each
seeking madly to outride his comrades, and be passed by none--so on
swept our Light Dragoons like a living flood.

Right and left the trenchant sword-blades went flashing downward in
the sun, only to be uplifted for another cut or thrust, the
blood-drops flying from them in the air.

In the scattered conflict--for such it became, when the ranks of the
charging cavalry were broken open and loose, every file acting in the
slaughter independently for himself, and keeping but a slight eye on
the motions of his squadron leader--Waller's attention was attracted
by a horseman who seemed to be in high authority, and whose figure,
arms, and equipment were not unfamiliar to his eye.  The Afghan was
undoubtedly a brave fellow, and splendidly mounted on a spirited
horse, the saddle and trappings of which were elaborately embossed
and tasselled with gold, while at his martingale were four long
flying tassels of white hair taken from the tails of wild oxen.  He
had on his left arm a small round shield, adorned by four silver
knobs; a dagger was in his teeth, and in his right hand a long and
brightly headed lance, with which he had succeeded in unhorsing and
pinning more than one of the 3rd Light Dragoons to the earth.  He was
just in the act of cruelly repassing this weapon through one who had
fallen on his face, and who, in his dying agony was tearing up the
turf with his hands and feet, when both Waller and Shakespere rode at
him simultaneously, and sword in hand.

From the writhing and convulsed body he extricated his spear with
difficulty, and turned furiously to face them, glancing and pointing
it at each alternately.  He wore a steel cap, engraved with gold; a
sliding bar through the front peak, fixed there with a screw,
protected his face; and in the knob that held his plume--a heron's
tuft--there gleamed a precious stone of great value.

For an instant, quick as lightning, he relinquished his lance,
letting it drop in the sling behind, while he drew a pistol from his
scarlet silk girdle, and firing it at Shakespere, he hurled it
dexterously at Waller, who ducked as it whizzed over his head.
Recognising now, however, with whom he had to deal, he cried,
fearlessly and confidently--

"Shakespere, as a favour, leave this fellow to me, and, with God's
help, I shall polish him off as he deserves!"

"Shumsheer-hu-dust! (come on, sword in hand).  Dog! thy soul shall be
under the devil's jaw tonight!" cried the Afghan with fierce
defiance, as his horse curveted and pranced.

He was Amen Oolah Khan, and a splendid and picturesque figure he
presented in his brightly coloured and flaming dress, through the
openings of which his shirt and sleeves of the finest chain-mail,
bright as silver or frostwork on a winter branch, were visible, and,
as Waller knew, impervious to the swords used in our service; at the
same time he remembered that his pistols had both been discharged,
and were still unloaded.

Shakespere reined back his horse, ready, if necessary, to second
Waller, to whom he handed a pistol, on the Khan firing a second at
him.  Thus armed, Waller took a steady aim and fired straight at the
head of his antagonist.  The latter, to save himself, by a sharp use
of the spur and curb, made his horse rear up, so that the bullet
entered the throat and spine of the animal, which toppled forward
with its head between its knees, just as Amen Oolah was coming to the
charge with his lance, the point of which, by the downward sinking of
his horse, entered the turf so deeply, that, by the consequent
breaking of the shaft, he found himself tumbled ignominiously in a
heap from his saddle, and at the mercy of Waller, who, dashing at
him, rained blow after blow, without avail, upon his steel cap and
mailed shoulders.

The sabre of Amen Oolah had been broken in some previous conflict; he
had but one weapon left, the long and deadly Afghan knife, which, as
a last resort, he had clenched in his teeth, and with this, while
uttering a hoarse cry of rage and defiance, mingled with a rancorous
malediction, he rushed at Waller, and strove to drag him from his
saddle, spitting at him like a viper the while, and adding,
exultingly,

"Ha!--your women are away to Toorkistan, to be the slaves of the
Toorkomans--their slaves of the right hand!"

Waller, a finished horseman, was not to be easily dislodged, for he
had twice the bulk and strength of his adversary.  Twisting the reins
round his left arm, he grasped the wrist of the hand which held the
menacing knife, and by a single blow of his sword across the fingers,
compelled the Khan to drop it.  Heavy curses came from his lips, but
never once the word _amaun_ (quarter); he knew it would be useless,
and he disdained to ask it.  No thought of mercy had Waller in his
heart, for he knew that if defeated he should have met with none; and
on this man's hands there might he, for all he knew, the blood of
Mabel Trecarrel, perhaps, of others certainty, and such surmises, at
such a time, were maddening.

Barehanded now, the Afghan struggled like a tiger with his powerful
adversary, whom he strove to unhorse.  Waller endeavoured again and
again to run him through the body; but the Sheffield blade bent, and
failed to pierce the fine rings of the Oriental shirt of mail, so to
end the affair, he smote the Khan repeatedly on the face with the
hilt of his sword, but the helmet bar protected him; then, by making
his horse rear, he endeavoured to cast him off, or kick him under
foot.

Stunned and confused, the savage Afghan at last sank downward, and by
some mischance got his head into the stirrup-leather of Waller, whose
left foot was unavoidably pressed upon his throat; and as the horse,
terrified by this unusual appendage, plunged wildly, and swerved
round and round, the wretched Khan was speedily strangled, and sank
into a state of insensibility, from which he never recovered, as a
couple of the 13th passed their fixed bayonets through his body, and
one tore off his beautiful steel cap, from which Waller afterwards
obtained the jewel--a sapphire of great value.

The cap itself, which was studded with those turquoises that are
found in the mountains of Nishapour, in Khorassan, he tossed to the
two soldiers, who proceeded at once to poke them out with their
bayonets.

"If I ever meet my Mabel again, this sapphire shall be a gift for
her!" thought Waller, with a sigh of weariness, for his victory
brought neither triumph nor regret to his heart.

It was afterwards remembered, as a curious instance of retributive
justice, that Amen Oollah Khan should die in the battle of Tizeen,
almost by the same death as that to which he put his luckless elder
brother, that he might succeed to his inheritance--strangulation.

The whole affair occupied only a few minutes; but, long ere it was
over, the cavalry had swept far in pursuit, and Waller found himself
almost alone.  On one side was savage terror; on the other, civilized
men thirsty for justice and vengeance; and so on all sides the
turbaned hordes were stricken down by those who felt that to them was
left the task of atoning for the betrayal and death of friends,
comrades, and relatives; and there, on the heights of Tizeen, the
standard of Ackbar Khan was trod in the dust, never to rise again!

Once more the sun went down in blood upon the passes of the
Khyberees; but once again they were open, and the way to Cabul was
clear.

Resistance had ceased; scarcely a single juzail shot was fired next
day, when, after halting for the night, our infantry began their
march beyond Tizeen, traversing, as the despatch has it, "those
frightful ravines, now doubly frightful because of the heaps of dead
bodies with which the narrow way was choked."

Another junction was made with the victorious troops of General Nott,
advancing from Candahar and Ghuznee; and once more the green and
lovely valley of Cabul, bounded by the snow-clad peaks of Kohistan,
and threaded by its blue and winding river, came into view beyond the
black rocky gorges of the Siah Sung; and the morning sun shone red
and brightly on leaden dome and marble minar, on the walls of the
city, and the vast castellated masses of the Bala Hissar.  The
uncased colours of horse and foot, European and Native, rustling in
silk and embroidery, were given to the pleasant breeze; the fixed
bayonets in long lines came like a stream of glittering steel out of
the dark mountain passes; the bands struck up, and once again the
merry British drums woke the same echoes that, ages upon ages ago,
had replied to the clarions of the conquering Emperor Baber, of
Mohammed, of Ghuznee, and even of Alexander and his bare-kneed
Macedonians.

But still where were the captive hostages--the women and children?




CHAPTER XVI.

TO TOORKISTAN!

The pen of Scott would have failed to describe, and the pencil of
Gustave Doré to depict, the anguish of the poor hostages, when, at
the behest of Ackbar, and at the very time the long prayed-for
succour was coming, they were compelled to set out on their sorrowful
journey towards the Land of Desert.

"Oh, my poor children--my helpless lambs--my fatherless little ones!"
one would cry, folding in her loving arms her scared, pale, and
half-starved brood, gathering them to her while they were yet _her
own_, "even as a hen gathereth her chickens."

"My husband--my husband! shall we never meet again?"

"My poor 'Bob,' or 'Bill,' or, it might be, 'Tom,'" some soldier's
wife would exclaim, "I shall never see the likes of you more,
darling;" for though Tom perhaps drank all his pay, and gave Biddy
now and then "a taste of his buff belt," he "was an angel, compared
to a naygur, anyhow!"

But the majority of the hostages were ladies, and some of them were
like Lady Macnaghten and Sir Robert Sale's daughter, who were
widows--who had lost alike husband and children, and mourned as those
only mourn who have no hope.  And now many a quaint pet name, known
best in the nursery ami to the playfulness of the loving heart, was
mingled with the most solemn of prayers.

"Death--death were better than this!" would be the despairing cry of
some; and, ere their sad journey ended, death came to more than one
of that devoted band.

For in one or two instances, despite the piteous entreaties of the
ladies, some soldiers--those very men whom the 13th had subscribed
their rupees at the drum-head to ransom--whose weakness from wounds
or bodily illness rendered them incapable of riding or marching were
shot by the wayside, and left unburied, even as so many lamed horses
or diseased dogs which were useless might have been.  One or two, who
were weary of life, entreated to have it ended thus, and all whom the
Dooranees destroyed thus in obedience to Ackbar's orders and the grim
law, perhaps, of necessity, died peacefully and piously--sick of
their present existence, and hopeful of the future; but the women
screamed, lamented, and prayed, seeking to muffle their ears when the
death-shots rang in the mountain wilderness.

Mabel Trecarrel was weak and ailing too, but she was much too
valuable a species of commodity to be shot out of hand, like a poor
Feringhee soldier, even though quite as much a Kaffir and infidel as
he might be; so she was tenderly borne in a palanquin which had been
found in the cantonments, and which contained every comfort and
appliance for travelling--little drawers for holding clothes or food,
and even a mirror, though she never looked at it.

Like a few more, she was silent in her grief, and found a refuge in
tears.

The wedded wife might utter loudly and despairingly the name of her
husband, and the parent that of the dead or absent child, finding a
relief for the overcharged heart in sound; but, even in that terrible
time, the poor betrothed girl could only whisper, in the inmost
recesses of her breast, of the lover she never more might see, and
gaze backward with haggard eyes on the features of the landscape with
which they had both become familiar--the hills of Beymaru, the ridges
of the Black Rocks, and the smiling valley of Cabul, as they all
lessened and faded away in the distance, while slowly but surely,
under a watchful and most unscrupulous guard, the train of prisoners,
on active Tartar horses or plodding Afghan yaboos, in swinging
dhooleys and curtained litters of other kinds, wound among the
mountains on their way to Toorkistan, the frontiers of which were
only about a week's journey distant.

And what was the prospect before them?

Separation and distribution, to be bartered for horses, or sold into
slavery and degradation; the few men among them, irrespective of
rank, to be the bondsmen, syces, carpet-spreaders, and grooms, hewers
of wood and drawers of water: the women, if young, to be the veriest
slaves of ignorant and unlettered masters, as yet unseen and unknown;
if old, to become nurses and drudges to the women of the Usbec
Tartars: and all these were Christians, and civilised subjects of the
Queen; many of them accomplished, highly bred, nobly born, and
tenderly nurtured.

Terrible were the emotions of the English mother, who, circumstanced
thus, looked on her pure and innocent daughters and thought of what a
week might bring forth!

Yet such were the fates before them--the fates that even the quickest
marching of our troops might fail to avert; for were not the Afghans,
as they heard, again disputing every inch of the Passes with a
desperation which proved that Lord Auckland's policy, and that of the
"peace at any price party" at home, would never have availed with
those who deemed diplomacy but cowardly cunning, treaties as trash,
bribes as fair "loot," and all war as legal fraud?

The lamentations of the women at times, when mingled and united (for
grief is very infectious), roused even the usually phlegmatic Saleh
Mohammed, who rode in the centre of the caravan, perched between the
humps of a very high camel.

"In the land to which you are going, of course, you shall find
neither Jinnistan, the Country of Delight, nor its capital, the City
of Precious Stones; neither will fruits and sweet cakes drop into
your mouths, as if you sat under the blessed tree of Toaba, which is
watered by the rivers of paradise," said he, half scoffingly; "but
you will see the vast sandy waste of the Kirghisian desert, which to
the thirsty looks like a silvery sea in the distance; and some of you
may happily see the city of Souzak, which contains five hundred
houses of stone, and I doubt if the Queen of the Feringhees has so
many in her little island.  Barikillah! and you will see the black
tents and the fleecy flocks of the Usbec Tartars, for they are
numerous as leaves in the vale of Cashmere."

And thus he sought to console them when, on the evening of the first
day's journey, they halted at Killi-Hadji, on the Ghuznee road (only
seven miles westward from Cabul), and so called from the killi, or
fort of mud that guards its cluster of huts.  It was approached by
narrow and tortuous lanes overhung by shady mulberry-trees; and
there, beside the walls of the fort, they bivouacked for the night.

The deep crimson glory of sunset was over; but the flush of the
western sky lengthened far the purple shadows of tree, and rock, and
hut, even of the tall camels, ere they knelt to rest, across the
scene of the bivouac, which was not without its strong aspect of the
quaint and picturesque, albeit the sad eyes of those who looked
thereon were sick of such elements, as being associated with all
their most unmerited miseries.

Unbitted, with leather tobrahs, or nose-bags filled with barley,
hanging from their heads, the patient horses were eating, while the
hardier yaboos grazed the long grass that grew in the lanes and waste
places.

Fires were lighted, and around them all of the Dooranee guard, who
were not posted in the chain of sentinels, sat cross-legged, smoking
hempseed, cleaning their arms, fixing fresh flints or dry matches to
their musket-locks; others were industriously picking out of their
furred poshteens those active insects of the genus _pulex_, called by
the Arabians "the father of leapers," while the flesh of a camel,
which had been shot by the way, as useless--its feet being wounded
and sore--sputtered and broiled on the embers for supper, and the
light from the flames fell in strong gleams and patches on the
strange equipment, the swarthy turbaned faces, and gleaming eyes of
those wild fellows, whose shawl-girdles bristled with arms and
powder-flasks, and some four hundred of whom were furnished with
muskets and bayonets.

A spear stuck upright in the earth--its sharp point glittering like a
tiny red star--indicated the head-quarters, where, muffled in his
poshteen and ample chogah, with a piece of thick xummul folded under
him, Saleh Mohammed Khan, propped against the saddle of his camel,
prepared, with pipe in mouth, to dose away the hours of the short
August night.

Most, if not nearly all, the lady captives, wore now, of necessity,
the Afghan travelling-dress, a large sheet shrouding the entire form,
having a bourkha, or veil of white muslin, furnished with two holes
to peep through; and with those who, muffled thus, sat in kujawurs,
or camel-litters, the semblance of their orientalism was complete.

From time to time, dried branches or cass--a prickly furze grass
which grows in bunches--were cast upon the fire, causing the flames
to shoot up anew, on the pale faces of the prisoners and the dark
faces of their guards, till at last the embers died out and the white
ashes alone remained; and such was the scene which, like a species of
phantasmagoria, met the eyes of Mabel Trecarrel, when, in the still
watches of the night, she drew back the curtains of her palanquin and
looked forth occasionally.  But the stars began to pale in the sky;
its blue gave place to opal tints; the sun arose, and after the
Mohammedans had said their prayers with their faces towards Mecca,
and the Christians with their eyes bent towards the earth or to
heaven, once more the heartless march was resumed, in the same order
as on the preceding day, through a pass in the mountains, and from
thence across the beautiful valley of Maidan.

Saleh Mohammed, though a Khan, having once been a Soubadar in Captain
Hopkins's Afghan Levy (from which he had deserted to the party of
Ackbar Khan, at the beginning of the troubles), had some ideas of
military order and show: thus he had at the head of the caravan--for
it resembled nothing else--six Hindostanees, furnished with some of
our drums and bugles gleaned up in the Khyber Pass, and with these
they made the most horrible noises for several miles at the
commencement and close of each day's march; but even this medley of
discordant sounds failed to extract the faintest smile from the
hostages--even from Major Pottinger and the few soldiers--so sunk
were they in heart and spirit now.

In the Maidan valley they rode between fields of golden grain
bordered by towering poplars and pale willows.  Bare, bleak-looking
mountains undulated in the distance, and the poor ladies eyed them
wistfully.

Were these the borders of dreaded Toorkistan?

They proved, however, to be only a portion of the Indian Caucasus,
the extremity of which, the Koh-i-baba, a snow-clad peak, rises to
the height of sixteen thousand feet above the level of the Indian Sea.

That night Saleh Mohammed chose a pleasant halting-place for them,
influenced by some sudden emotion of pity.  There they were supplied
with plums, wild cherries, peaches, and the white apricot which has
the flavour of rose water.  But ere morning there was an alarm; a
confused discharge of musketry was fired in every direction at
random, all round the bivouac; one or two bullets whistled through
it.  A dhooley-wallah was shot dead, and several red arrows, barbed
and bearded, stuck quivering in the turf; yells were heard, and then
a furious galloping of horses passing swiftly away in the distance.

It was a chupao--a night attack planned by some of the Hazarees, a
wild and independent Tartar tribe, whose thatched huts lie sunk and
unseen on the hill slopes, and on whose confines they had halted.
They are all good archers, and, though armed with the matchlock,
usually prefer the bow.

They are bitter foes of the Afghans, and had hoped, by making a dash,
to cut off some of their prisoners; but Saleh Mohammed was too wary
for them, and on that evening had doubled his guards ere the sun went
down.

The 2nd of September found the train traversing the Kaloo Mountain,
one in height only inferior to the Koh-i-baba.  From thence, over a
vast chaos of wild and terrific hilly peaks that spread beneath them
like the pointed waves of a petrified sea, they could view, at last,
and afar off, the plains of Toorkistan--the land of their future
bondage; and anew the wail of grief and woe rose from them at the
sight.

The following day, that the absurd might not be wanting amid their
misery, to the surprise of all, Saleh Mohammed appeared mounted on
his camel, not in his usual amplitude of turban, with his flowing
chogah and Cashmere shawls, but with his lean, shrunken, and bony
figure buttoned up in a tight regimental blue surtout, with gold
shoulder-scales, and crimson sash, frog-belt, and sword, all of which
had whilom belonged to Jack Polwhele, of the Cornish Light Infantry,
a tiny forage cap (which Jack used to wear very much over his right
ear) being perched on the back of his bald head, while the chin-strap
came uncomfortably only below the tip of his high hooked nose; and
thus arrayed he prepared to meet and, as he hoped, duly to impress
Zoolficar Khan, the governor of the town of Bameean, where the first
halt was to be made for further and final orders from Ackbar, as to
whether the hostages should be sold or slain; for now their custodian
began to have some strange doubts upon the subject, and now his
victims were fairly out of Afghanistan and in the land of the
Tartars, nine days of monotonous and arduous journey distant from
Cabul.

We have lately seen the kind of mercy meted out to helpless hostages
by Communal savages in the boasted city of Paris--the self-styled
centre of civilization--and so may fairly tremble for the fate of
those who were in the hands of Asiatic fanatics on the western slopes
of the Hindoo-Kush.




CHAPTER XVII.

MABEL'S PRESENTIMENT.

Mabel Trecarrel seemed to see or to feel the image of Waller become
more vividly impressed upon her mind, now, as every day's journey, as
every hour, and every mile towards the deserts of Great Tartary,
increased the perils of her own situation, and seemed to add to the
difficulties, if not entirely to close all the chances, of their ever
meeting again on this earth; and as Bameean, a rock-hewn city, the
Thebes of the East, and geographically situated in Persia, began to
rise before the caravan, when it wound down from the Akrobat Pass, a
deeper chill fell on her heart, for she had a solemn presentiment
creeping over her that there all her sorrows, if not those of her
companions too, should be ended.

A laborious progress of several miles, during which her now weary
dhooley-wallahs staggered and reeled with fatigue, brought them from
the mountain slopes into a plain, damp, muddy, and marshy, where from
the plashy soil there rose a mist through which the city seemed to
shimmer and loom, shadowy and ghost-like.  A great portion of this
plain was waste, and hence believed to be the abode of ghouls,
afreets, and demons, who, in the dark and twilight, sought to lure
the children of Adam to unknown but terrible doom.

A gust of wind careering over the waste from the Pass, rolled away,
like a veil of gauze, the shroud which had half concealed the place
they were approaching; and with a mournful and sickly interest, not
unmixed with anticipated dread, Mabel and her friends surveyed the
city of Bameean.

Rising terrace over terrace on the green acclivities of an insulated
mountain, the bolder features and details shining in the ruddy
sunlight, the intermediate spaces sunk in sombre shadow, it exhibited
a series of the most wonderfully excavated mansions, temples, and
ornamental caverns (the abodes of its ancient and nameless
inhabitants), to the number of more than twelve thousand, covering a
slope of eight miles in extent.

Many of those rock-hewn edifices, carved out of the living stone
which supports the mountain, and are the chief portions of its
foundation and structure, have beautiful friezes and entablatures,
domes and cupolas, with elaborately arched doors and windows.  Others
are mere dens and caverns, with square air-holes; but towering over
all are many colossal figures, more particularly two--a woman one
hundred and twenty feet high, and another of a man, forty feet
higher--all hewn out of the face of a lofty cliff.

By what race, or when, those mighty and wondrous works of art were
formed, at such vast labour, no human record, not even a tradition,
remains to tell; their origin is shrouded by a veil of mystery, like
that of the ruined cities of Yucatan; so whether they are relics of
Bhuddism, or were hewn in the third century, during the dynasty of
the Sassanides, has nothing to do with our story.  But the poor
hostages, as they were conveyed past those silent, dark, and empty
temples, abandoned now to the jackal, the serpent, and the flying
fox, with the towering and gigantic apparitions of the stone colossi
lookingly grimly down in silence, felt strange emotions of chilly awe
come over them--the ladies especially.  To Mabel Trecarrel, in her
weak and nervous state, the scene proved too much; she became
hysterical, and wept and laughed at the same moment, to the great
perplexity of Saleh Mohammed, who was quite unused to such
exhibitions among the ladies of _his_ zenanali.

Though stormed by Jenghiz Khan and his hordes, in 1220, after a
vigorous resistance, this rock-hewn city, by its materials and
massiveness, could suffer little; yet it was subsequently deserted by
all its inhabitants, who named it "Maublig," or the _unfortunate_.
After that time, its history sank into utter obscurity; its
once-fertile plain reverted to a desert state once more; yet
unchanged as when Bameean was in its zenith, its river of the same
name flows past the caverned mountain, on its silent way to the snowy
wastes where its waters mingle with those of the Oxus.

In this remote place the captives were all, as usual, enclosed in a
walled fort which contained a few hovels of mud, where in darkness
and damp they strove to make themselves as comfortable as
circumstances permitted, with blankets, xummuls, and the saddles on
which they had ridden.

The Dooranees of Saleh Mohammed had to keep sure watch and ward
there, for the Usbec Tartars are the predominating people, and,
though divided into many tribes, they are all rigid Soonees, with but
small favour for the Afghans; and the prisoners soon learned that the
unusual costume of Saleh Mohammed, instead of inspiring Zoolficar
Khan, as he had expected, with wonder, only excited in that sturdy
Toorkoman an emotion of contempt, that a Mussulman should so far
degrade himself by adopting, even for a day, the dress of a
Feringhee--a Kaffir; and they had something approaching to hasty
words on the subject, when, on the first evening of their meeting,
those dignitaries sat together on the same carpet under a date tree
in the garden of the fort, while slaves supplied them with hot
coffee, wheat pillau, pipes, and tobacco.

There, too, had Mabel been borne on a pallet, by the express
permission of the Khan, that she might enjoy the sunshine; there was,
he knew, no chance of her attempting to escape; and to prevent any
covetous Toorkoman from playing tricks with the tender wares
entrusted to him, he had a double chain of sentinels with loaded
muskets planted round them, as Zoolficar Khan could perceive when
reconnoitring the place, which was outside the city of Bameean, but
immediately under the shadow of its temples and rock-hewn giants; for
Zoolficar, having learned that Saleh Mohammed was proceeding towards
the deserts with the captives to sell, to punish the men of their
tribe for interference in the affairs of Afghanistan, was not
indisposed to have the first selection from among them, and had
resolved to look over "the lot" with a purchaser's eye.

He had already, over their pipes and coffee, broached the subject to
Saleh Mohammed; but the latter, undecided in everything, save that he
had to halt where he was for fresh orders from the Sirdir, Ackbar
Khan, would not as yet listen to any proposals for selling or
bartering, and eventually dozed off asleep, with the amber mouthpiece
of the hubble-bubble in his mouth, leaving Zoolficar Khan to amuse
himself as best he might.

Mabel, weary and faint with her long journey of nine consecutive
days, though borne easily and carefully enough in a palanquin, lay
listlessly and drowsily pillowed on her pallet, under the cool and
pleasant shade of an acacia tree.  Near her stood a tiny pagoda of
white marble, carved as minutely and elaborately as a Chinese ivory
puzzle; and before it was a tank wherein were floating some of the
beautiful red lotus, the flowers of which far exceed in size and
beauty those of the ordinary water-lily.

The slender, drooping, and fibrous branches of the acacia tree, so
graceful in their forms and so tender in their texture, cast a
partial shadow over her, and, as they moved slowly to and fro in the
soft evening wind, by their rocking or oscillating motion predisposed
her to slumber; and so, ere long, she slept, but slept only to dream
of the past--the happy, happy past, for keenly did she and all who
were with her realise now that "it is the eternal looking back in
this world that forms the staple of all our misery."

Anon, she dreamed of the monotonous swinging of her palanquin, and
the doggrel songs by which the poor half-nude bearers sought to
beguile their toil and cheer the mountain way; now it was of Waller,
with his fair English face, his handsome winning eyes, and frank,
jovial manner, retorting some of the banter of Polwhele or Burgoyne.
She was at her piano; he was hanging over her as of old, and their
whispers mingled, though fears suggested that the horrible Quasimodo,
the Khond, with his cat-like moustaches and mouth that resembled a
red gash, was concealed somewhere close by; then she heard cries and
shots--they were attacked by Hazarees, Ghazees, Ghilzies, or some
other dark-coloured wretches; and with a little scream she started
and awoke, to find that her veil had been rudely withdrawn--uplifted,
in fact--in the hand of a man who stood under the acacia tree, and
had been leisurely surveying her in her sleep with eyes expressive of
inspection and satisfaction.

She shuddered, and a low cry of fear escaped her; for she knew by the
cast of his face, by his air and equipment, that the stranger was a
Toorkoman--the first who had come--by his unwelcome presence bringing
fresh perils, as she knew, to all the English ladies; yet he was a
handsome fellow, not much over five-and-twenty, and so like Zohrab
Zubberdust in aspect and bearing, that they might have passed for
brothers.

Mabel feebly struggled into a sitting posture, and, snatching her
veil from his hand, looked steadily, perhaps a little defiantly, at
Zoolficar Khan; for he it was who, when his older host dozed off, to
dream of plunder and paradise, had proceeded to make a reconnaissance
of whatever might be seen of the prisoners and their guards; for it
might yet suit his interests or his fancy to cut off the whole
caravan in a night or so.  Thus, a few paces from where Saleh
Mohammed was sleeping in the sunshine had brought him unexpectedly on
Mabel!

He was a dashing fellow, whose dress was not the least remarkable
thing about him.  His trowsers, of ample dimensions, were of bright
blue cloth, very baggy, and thrust into short yellow boots; he had on
three collarless jackets, all of different hues, and richly fringed
and laced; a large turban of silk of every colour, with a white
heron's plume, to indicate that he was a chief; a shawl girdle, with
sword, dagger, and long-barrelled awkward Turkish pistols stuck
therein, completed his attire.  His keen, sharp Tartar features,
though suggestive of good humour by their general expression, were
not, however, without much of cunning, rakish insolence, and the bold
effrontery incident to a lawless state of society, a knowledge of
power, and much of contempt or indifference for the feelings of
others.  He looked every inch one of those wild

  "Toorkomans, countless as their flocks, led forth
  From th' aromatic pastures of the north;
  Wild warriors of the Turquoise hills, and those
  Who dwell beyond the everlasting snows
  Of Hindoo Koosh, in stormy freedom bred,
  Their fort the rock, their camp the torrent's bed!"

He simply gave the scared Mabel a smile, full of confidence and saucy
meaning, and then turned away, leaving her a prey to emotions of
fear--a fear that might have been all the greater had she heard what
passed between him and Saleh Mohammed at the time when she, trembling
in heart and feeble in limb, crept back to the ladies' huts to tell
them, with lips blanched by terror, that "the first Toorkoman had
come!"

And stronger than ever grew her presentiment within her.

The craving to hear of the movements of the three British armies
which they knew to be still in Afghanistan was strong as ever in the
hearts of the captives--to hear the last, ere a barrier rose between
them and their past life; and that barrier seemed now to be the
mighty chain of Hindoo Koosh rising between them and the way to India
and to home.  Long had they hoped against hope.  Nott, and Pollock,
and Sale--where were they and their soldiers?  What were they doing?
For the Dooranees would tell nothing.  Had they and their forces been
destroyed in detail, even as Elphinstone's had been?  Those yells and
noisy discharges of musketry, in which the captors at times indulged
in honour of alleged victories over the three Kaffir Sirdirs, on
tidings brought by wandering hadjis, filthy faquirs, and dancing
dervishes, could they be justified?  Alas! fate seemed to have done
its worst!

Surmises were become threadbare; invention was worn out.  Each of the
poor captives had striven, by suggestions of probabilities and by
efforts of imagination, to flatter themselves and buoy up the hearts
of others; but all seemed at an end now.




CHAPTER XVIII.

THE GOVERNOR OF BAMEEAN.

Waking up Saleh Mohammed without much ceremony, the young Toorkoman
chief proceeded to business at once, but in a very cunning way,
commencing with another subject, like a wily lawyer seeking to lure
and throw a witness off his guard.

"After a nine days' journey, Khan, you must be short of provisions?"
said he.

"Oh, fear not for our presence here in Bameean," replied Saleh
Mohammed, leisurely sucking at his hubble-bubble, the light of which
had gone out; "every tobrah full of oats, every maund of ottah and
rice, we require shall be duly paid for."

"You mistake me; I did not mean that."

"What then?  Bismillah! we are rich: the spoil of the Kaffir dogs who
come to Cabul has made us happy."

Zoolficar's almond-shaped eyes glistened with covetousness on hearing
this.  He reflected: the Dooranees were not quite five hundred
strong, and he could bring a thousand Tartar horsemen into the field;
hence, why might not all this plunder so freely spoken of, and these
slaves, two of whom he had seen (and they were so white and
handsome!), be his?

"You propose to remain here for some days, aga?" he resumed, seating
himself cross-legged, and playing with the silken tassel of his sabre.

"Yes."

"Waiting for orders from Ackbar Khan?"

"Yes."

"His final firmaun, I think you said?"

"Yes."

"To advance or retire?"

"Yes."

"If he has proved signally victorious?" queried Zoolficar sharply, as
he grew impatient of these mere affirmatives, which were resorted to
by the other merely to give him time to think and sift the other's
purpose.

"Wallah billah--victorious."

"Yes--which, under Allah, we cannot doubt?"

"Well, aga."

"Then his orders will be to sell these hostages, I suppose?"

"Yes--perhaps."

"Where, Khan?--here in Bameean?"

"No; they will bring larger prices nearer Bokhara."

"But if he is not victorious?" suggested Zoolficar.

"Staferillah!  Then we must leave the event to fate; or my orders may
be----" and here even Saleh Mohammed paused ere he made the atrocious
admission that hovered on his tongue.

"What--what?"

"To behead them.  Ackbar has sworn that none should live to tell the
tale of those who came up the Khyber Pass; and I must own that his
sparing these surprised me."

There was a pause, after which the Governor of Baraeean said--

"And when may you expect those final orders?"

"Or tidings, let us call them."

"Well, well, aga, this is playing with words."

"Tidings that shall guide me may come without orders," replied Saleh
Mohammed, glancing at the green flag of Ackbar which was flying on
the fort, and then half closing his eyes to watch the other keenly,
and as if to read in his face the drift of all these questions.  "You
surely take a deep interest in these Kaffirs, Zoolficar Khan?" he
added.

"I take an interest, at least, in two whom I have seen--in one
particularly."

"The Hindoo ayah in the red garment?" suggested Saleh, pointing with
the amber mouthpiece of his pipe to an old nurse who was passing,
with two of the captive children.

"The devil--no!  One who is beautiful as the rose with the hundred
leaves--one with a skin as fair as if she had bathed in the waters of
Cashmere; an idol more lovely than ever adorned the house of Azor!
She was under yonder tree asleep, when I lifted her veil and looked
on her."

"Allah Ackbar--now we have it!" exclaimed Saleh Mohammed, with
something between irritation and amusement.  "Well, know, aga, that
to quote a Parsee or Hindoo banker's book in lieu of Hafiz might be
more to the purpose."

"Perhaps so: we have more metal in our scabbards than in our purses,
in the desert here."

"They have tempers, these Feringhee women, I can tell you," said the
Dooranee, with a quiet laugh.

"So have ours, for the matter of that, and are free enough with their
slipper heel on a man's beard at times."

"Ah! all women, I dare say, are like the apples of Istkahar, one half
sweet and one half sour," said the old Khan, shaking his long beard.

"You must seek the well of youth again," rejoined the young
Toorkoman, laughing.  "There is another Kaffir damsel whose voice
sounded sweetly, as if she had tasted of the leaves that shadow the
tomb of Tan-Sien," he continued, using in his ordinary conversation
figures and phraseology that seem no way far-fetched to an Oriental;
"yes, aga, tender and soft, for I heard her sing her two children to
sleep in yonder hut.  Yet she may never have been in Gwalior," added
Zoolficar; for the lady was an officer's widow, young and pretty,
with two poor sickly babes; and the _tomb_ he referred to was that of
the famous musician, who once flourished at the court of the Emperor
Ackbar, and the leaves of a tree near which are supposed to impart,
when eaten, a wondrous melody to the human voice.

"Then am I to understand that you have set eyes upon both these
prisoners?" asked Saleh Mohammed, his keen black eyes becoming very
round, as he seemed to make up more fully to the matter in hand.

"Please God, I have.  In a word," said Zoolficar Khan, lowering his
voice, "I shall give you a purse of five hundred tomauns for them
both--peaceably, and help you to plunder the Hazarees on your way
home."

"And what of the Sirdir?"

"Tell him they died on the way: moreover, I don't want the two
children--you may keep them."

This liberality failed to find any approbation in Saleh Mohammed, who
affected to look indignant, and exclaimed--

"I am Saleh Mohammed Khan, chief of the Dooranees, and not a
slave-dealer, staferillah!--God forbid!"

"Neither is Ackbar Khan--a son of the royal house of Afghanistan; yet
he has sent hither those people for sale, in _your_ charge--for sale
to the Toorkomans; and what am I?"

"I have no final orders--as yet," replied the Khan, doggedly.

"For their disposal, you mean?"

"No."

"For what, then?"

"Simply to halt here; to act peaceably, but watchfully, Zoolficar
Khan--_watchfully_," replied the other in a pointed manner; "and
hourly now I may expect a cossid with a firmaun from Cabul."

"The Hazarees are in arms in your rear, and, ere your cossid comes,
there may be a chupao in the night, and the fort may be looted."

"By them, or your people?"

"Nay, I said not mine, aga."

"But you thought it," was the blunt response.

"Who, save Allah, may pretend to know what another man thinks?"

"Well, we are prepared alike to protect ourselves and to keep or
slay; yea--for it may come to that--to slay, root and branch, those
Kaffir hostages.  I would not betray my trust, were you Kedar Khan
with all his wealth!" continued Saleh Mohammed, flushing red, and
speaking as earnestly as if he really felt all he said, while
referring to that ancient king of Toorkistan, whose fabled riches
were so great, that when on the march he had always before him seven
hundred horsemen, with battle-axes of silver, and the same number
behind, with battle-axes of gold.

So far as slaughter was concerned, if that sequel were necessary,
Zoolficar Khan felt sure that Saleh Mohammed would keep his word; and
he was about to retire partially baffled, with his mind full of
visions for securing the plunder by a midnight attack on the
Dooranees, either while in the fort or when on the march; and he was
casting a furtive glance to where he had last seen Mabel, combining
it with a low salaam to his host, when, ere he could take his leave,
a strange figure on a foam-covered yaboo rode furiously into the fort
and dismounted before them.  He was almost nude; his lean body,
reduced to bone and brawn, was powdered with sandal-wood ashes; his
hair hung in vast volume over his back and shoulders; his only
garment was a pair of goatskin breeches; a gourd for water hung by a
strap over his shoulder, and this, together with a long Afghan knife,
a large wooden rosary of ninety-nine beads, and a knotted staff,
completed his equipment.

"Lah-allah-mahmoud-resoul-Allah!" he yelled, flourishing the staff as
he sprang from his shaggy yaboo.

"We know that well enough, Osman Abdallah," said the Dooranee chief,
impatiently, to the Arab Hadji, for it was he who came thus suddenly,
like a flash of lightning; "but from whence come you?"

"Cabul; or the mountains near it, rather."

"To me?"

"Yes, Khan, with a message from the Sirdir," replied this fierce,
wild, ubiquitous being, whose skin bore yet the scarcely healed marks
of Waller's sword-thrust, as he drew from his girdle a sorely soiled
scrap of paper, and bowed his head reverentially over it; for the
bearer of a letter from such a personage as the Prince Ackbar must
treat the document with as much respect as if he himself were present.

"And what of the Sirdir?" asked Saleh, starting forward.

"Allah kerim; he has been defeated by the Kaffir's dogs at
Tizeen--routed by Pollock Sahib--totally!"

"Silence, fool!" cried the Dooranee, with a swift, fierce glance at
the Toorkoman, as he snatched from the hands of the Hadji, and
without a word of greeting or thanks, the little scroll, and then
opened it deliberately and slowly, as if the disposal of a flock of
sheep were the matter in hand, and not the lives or deaths, the
captivity or liberty, of so many helpless human beings.  The missive
contained but three words, and the seal of Ackbar--

"_March to Kooloom._"

And Zoolficar Khan, who peeped over his shoulder without ceremony,
had read it too.  The beetle brows of Saleh Mohammed were close over
his fiery eyes, as he said, haughtily--

"Where is this place?  I may ask, as you have read the name."

"Kooloom--it is a steep, rugged, and perilous journey, Khan."

"And what am I to do when I get there?" asked Saleh Mohammed,
ponderingly, of himself, and not of his companion.

"But you are not yet there," said the latter, in a low voice.

"How--what do you mean?"

"The way may be beset.  Have I not said that it is perilous?"

"Well, perhaps we shall not go," replied the other, with an
unfathomable smile; and with low salaams they separated, each quite
ready for and prepared to outwit the other.

One fact they had both learned: Ackbar Khan was defeated, and not
victorious!




CHAPTER XIX.

THE ALARM.

"Then you have seen the fighting against the Kaffirs, I suppose?"
asked Saleh Mohammed, grimly.

"Seen!  Nay, Khan, I fought against them in person; at Jugdulluck,
the defence of the village was entrusted to me----"

"And lost by a Hadji," said the Khan, with a sneer.

"Yes, even as the heights of Tizeen were lost by a Khan," retorted
the other.

"A Khan--who?"

"Amen Oolah--who was killed there."

"Was the slaughter great?"

"Of the Faithful, mean you?"

"Yes: I ask not of the Kaffirs--may their white faces be confounded!"

"The slaughter might remind Azrael, and the angels who looked on us,
of the Prophet when he fought at Bedr.  It was not so great, of
course, as that of the Feringhees when they left Cabul; for Ackbar's
orders were then, that but one should be left alive, if even that;
but the white smoke, as it rolled on the wind, along the green sides
of the hills, and ascended skyward out of the deep, dark Passes, was
like that which shall precede the last day, and for two moons fill
all space, from the east to the west, from the rising to the setting
of the sun."

"Silence!" grumbled Saleh Mohammed, who was full of earnest thought,
and in no mood for religious canting just then, as the orders of
Ackbar and the collateral news of his defeat perplexed, while the
hints and covert threats of the Governor of Bameean alarmed and
irritated him.  "So this is all you know, Hadji Osman?"

"All, save that I have a letter for Pottinger Sahib."

"From whom?" asked the chief, sharply.

"Shireen Khan, of the Kuzzilbashes."

"Fool! why not speak of this before?  Yet perhaps it is as well that
yonder Toorkonian dog is gone," exclaimed Saleh Mohammed, as he
impetuously tore the missive from the hand of the cunning Hadji, who
probably knew its contents; for a most singular leer came into his
repulsive face, as he watched the dark visage of the Dooranee,
seeming all the darker in the twilight now; for the golden flush was
dying in the west, and its fading light fell faintly on the rock-hewn
edifices and wondrous colossi that towered on the hill-slope above
the fort, one half of which was sunk in shadow.

The Arab Hadji, as his creed inculcated, loathed the infidels, but
this loathing did not extend to their loot and treasures; he was not
indifferent to their wines and other good things (in secret, of
course), and he loved their golden English guineas and shining
rupees--their shekels and talents of silver--quite as much as any of
"the cloth" (not that he indulged in that commodity), the reverend
faquirs, doctors, and dervishes of enlightened Feringhistan; so, for
"a consideration," he had actually brought a message to a "Kaffir,"
concerning the redemption of his companions.  The letter briefly
detailed the victory of General Pollock at Tizeen, placing beyond a
doubt the rout of Ackbar, and his flight to Kohistan, and suggested
that the Major, in his own name and those of five other British
officers, who were prisoners with him, should offer to Saleh Mohammed
the sum of twenty thousand rupees as a ransom for all--especially the
ladies and children--the sum to be paid down on their release; and a
glow of triumph, satisfaction, and avarice filled the keen eyes and
face of the old Dooranee as he read over the words carefully thrice;
and then stroking his mighty beard, as if making a promise to
himself, and seeming already to feel the rupees loading his girdle,
he exclaimed--

"Shabash!  Allah keerim!  (Very good!  God is merciful!)  The Major
Sahib will act like a sensible man, and trust to my generosity.  The
game of Ackbar--whose dog is _he_ now?--is about played out at Cabul;
he is checkmated--has not a move on the board.  So Saleh Mohammed may
as well act mercifully, and treat with the Feringhee Major for the
ransom of his people."

The night was passed as usual, after prayers were over, in stupor or
the wonted listlessness of despair, by the captives, who were crowded
all together in the mud hovels of the fort, their Dooranee guards
lying outside in their chogahs, poshteens, and horsecloths; but in
the morning they saw with surprise that a new flag--a scarlet
one--had replaced the sacred green, which had floated on the outer
wall at sunset.

And each asked of the other what might this portend?  It was the
signal that Saleh Mohammed had revolted from the cause of Ackbar
Khan; but of what his own movements or measures were to be they knew
nothing yet.  This new feature in affairs bewildered and baffled the
ulterior views of Zoolficar Khan, who was still more surprised when,
soon after dawn, the old Dooranee, with a detachment of his people,
sallied from the fort, attacked and captured--not, however, without
resistance, some sharp firing, and use of the sabre--a whole convoy
of provisions which passed en route for Bokhara--an act of daring for
which he found it difficult to account, as it would be sure to rouse
the terrible Emir of that kingdom again these intruders in
Toorkistan; but doubtless, thought Zoolficar, the Afghan must know
his own plans and power best.

Loth, however, not to pick up something in the broils or forays that
were so likely to ensue, he began gradually to muster his Toorkoman
followers, desiring them to draw to a head in a wood near the Bameean
river, about nightfall, to watch the Dooranees in the fort, and to
gall or attack them either in advancing or retiring therefrom; but,
ere dark came, there occurred what was to him a fresh source of
surprise, and to Saleh Mohammed of serious alarm, while it chilled
with a new-born fear the hearts of the prisoners, to whom Major
Pottinger had now communicated his letter, his promises and plans,
with all the tidings of the Hadji, thereby for a time exciting their
wildest and most joyous anticipations (at a moment when hope had sunk
to its lowest ebb) of freedom and restoration to the world: so
friends were rushing to congratulate friends, and weeping with
happiness, mothers were wildly clasping their children to their
breast, and all were giving thanks to God.

Affecting ignorance of any change that had taken place in the mind of
the Dooranee, towards evening Zoolficar Khan in all his bravery, but
alone, rode to the gate of the fort, when, greatly to his wrath, he
was denied admittance by Saleh Mohammed in person.

"Take care lest you are the dupe of your own fortune," said he
haughtily.

"Covet not the goods of another, aga," responded Saleh, who had now
resumed his Oriental amplitude of costume.

"Are we to understand that you have abandoned the cause of Ackbar?"

"Fate has done so--wallah billah--why should not I?"

"How now about Khedar Khan and his riches, O Saleh Mohammed the
Incorruptible?" laughed the Toorkoman.

"Dare you mock me?" asked the Dooranee, scowling, with his hand on a
pistol.

"No; but what means all this change since yesterday?"

"It means that what is good for me may be bad for you?  Who can read
the book of destiny?  The same flower which gives a sweet to the bee
gives poison to reptiles?"

"Does all this mean that you will neither sell nor barter?" asked
Zoolficar, shaking haughtily his huge turban and white heron's plume.

"Exactly--that I will do neither," replied the Dooranee, with a
mocking laugh.

"Then, by the hand of the Prophet, there perhaps come those who may
deprive you of all you possess!" exclaimed the young Toorkoman, with
fierce triumph, as he pointed suddenly along the road that led
towards the Akrobat Pass.

The sun, now in the west, was shedding a lovely golden light along
the brilliantly green slopes of the mighty mountains, whose
snow-capped peaks stood up sharply defined, cold and white, against
the deep, pure blue of the sky.  The barren and desolate Akrobat
Pass, overhung by rocks of slate and limestone, yawned like a dark
fissure between the masses of the impending hills, and out of it a
cloud of white dust was now seen to roll, spreading like mist, and
increasing in magnitude like the vapour released by the fisherman in
the Arabian story from the vase of yellow copper on the seashore.

On and on it came--onward and downward into the plain where the
Bameean river winds, and where the silent city of the Colossi towers
upon its rock-hewn hill.

Bright points began to flash and gleam ever and and anon out of this
coming cloud of dust--points that could not be mistaken by a
soldier's eye,--and speedily the whole advancing mass assumed the
undoubted aspect of a great body of armed horsemen, whose tall spears
shone like stars, as they came on at full speed from the mountains!

"Hazarees--wild Hazarees or Eimauks--by Allah!" exclaimed the
Toorkoman, gathering his reins in his hands; "a chupao--an attack on
you, Saleh Mohammed!  Now look to your damsels and spoil, for you
will be looted of every kusira!"*


* An Afghan coin, worth about .083 of a penny, English.


With a shout of exultation and defiance, he wheeled round his horse,
and galloped away towards the wood and river.

The Arab Hadji, Osman, declared these newcomers to be some Usbec
cavalry, whom he had seen but yesterday encamped by the side of the
river Balkh.

"Kosh gelding!  Usbecs, Toorkomans, or Hazarees,--let them come and
welcome; they shall not find us unprepared!" exclaimed Saleh Mohammed
through his clenched teeth, while his black eyes shot fire, and he
rushed away for his weapons, and, by all the horrible din that his
Hindostanee drummers and buglers could make, summoned his
quaint-looking followers to arms; for, in that lawless land, he knew
not whose swords might be uplifted against them now, as the downfall
of Ackbar would encourage all to make spoil of his adherents.  Even
in the kingdom of Afghanistan there were bitter quarrels, and the
tribes were all divided against each other now.

In a moment the fort became a scene of the most unwonted bustle.  The
Dooranees are one of the bravest of the Afghan clans, and this party
of them prepared to make a resolute defence, and, if necessary, to
sell their lives as dearly as possible.  Muskets, matchlocks, and
jingalls were loaded on every hand.  The gate of the fort was hastily
closed and barricaded behind with earth, and an old brass 9-pounder
gun, covered with Indian characters--a perilous and too probably
honeycombed piece of ordnance, which was found in the place--was
propped on a heap of stones, just inside the entrance, where it was
loaded with bottles, nails, and other missiles, to sweep a storming
party.

Meanwhile all the European male prisoners, under Major Pottinger,
were now armed to make common cause with their late guards; and among
them many a pale cheek flushed, and many a hollow eye lighted up once
more, at the prospect of a conflict, though the weapons with which
our poor fellows were armed were only quaint matchlocks, rusty
tulwars, and old notched Afghan sabres.

And now in front of the column of advancing horse, two cavaliers came
galloping on at headlong speed, far before all their comrades, whose
ranks were loose and confused, and all unlike Europeans; so Saleh
Mohammed, his face darkened by a scowl, his eyes glistening like
those of a rattlesnake, and his white beard floating on the wind,
crouched behind the old and mouldering wall, adjusting with his own
hands a clumsy jingall, or swivel wall-piece, with the iron one-pound
shot of which he was prepared to empty the saddle of one of those two
adventurous riders--he cared not a jot which.

Thus far we have followed Anglo-Indian history; and now to resume
more particularly our own narrative.




CHAPTER XX.

TOO LATE!

When Doctor C----, though the anxious and watchful eyes of Rose
Trecarrel were bent upon him, had shaken his head so despondingly,
and thereby gratified the professional spleen of the long-bearded Abu
Malec, he had done so involuntarily, and from sincere medical
misgivings that his aid had been summoned when too late; and with
tears in her eyes, did Rose needlessly assure him that, until she had
seen him enter the sick room, she knew not of his existence, or that
he had been permitted to survive.

To this he replied by taking both her hands kindly within his own,
for he was a warm-hearted Scottish Highlander, and in turn assuring
her that, "until brought to the fort of Shireen Khan by the Hakeem,
he also had been ignorant of the vicinity of her and her companion;
but without proper medicines," he added, "little could be done--now
especially."

Yet she hoped much.  He gave her valuable advice, and the Khanum,
too, and promised to return without delay, and with certain
prescriptions, made up from his little store kept in Cabul for the
few wounded soldiers who were hostages there.  He rode off, and
Rose's blessings and gratitude went with him.  No curiosity as to the
relations of the nurse and patient--peculiar though their
circumstances--prompted a question from the doctor.  That Rose should
attend the sick officer seemed only humane and natural.  Who other so
suitable was nigh?  And to find one more European--a friend
especially--surviving, was source of pleasure enough!

The doctor retired; but, instead of hours, days went by, and he
returned no more; for on the very evening of his visit he was seized
and despatched, with all the rest, under Saleh Mohammed, to
Toorkistan.  In another place the doctor was thus enabled to be of
much value to Mabel Trecarrel, and _en route_ towards the desert did
much to alleviate her sufferings, and restore her health; but the
assurance he gave her that he had seen her sister and Denzil
Devereaux too, and that they were safe--perfectly safe--in the
powerful protection of Shireen Khan, did more to this end than all
his prescriptions.

But his advice ultimately availed but little the patient he left
behind, for Denzil grew worse--sank more and more daily; he had but
the superstition and follies or quackery of Abu Malec to interpose
between him and eternity.

Terribly was Rose sensible of all this, as she sat and watched by the
young man's bedside in that desolate room of the fort; for it was
intensely desolate and comfortless, an Afghan noble's ideas of luxury
and splendour being inferior to those possessed by an English groom.
Save the bed on which he lay, two European chairs and a trunk brought
from the plunder of the cantonments, it was as destitute of furniture
as the cell of a prison; and, as if in such a cell, daily the square
outline of the window was seen to fall with the yellow sunshine on
the same part of the wall, and thence pass upward obliquely as the
sun went round, till it faded away at the corner, and then next day
it appeared again, without change.

And there sat the once-gay, bright, and heedless Rose Trecarrel, the
belle of the ball, of the hunting-meet, of the race-course, and the
garrison, with a choking sensation in her throat, and a clamorous
fear in her heart, Denzil's hot, throbbing hand often clasped in one
of hers, while the other strayed caressingly over his once-thick
hair, or what remained of it, for by order of Doctor C----, she had
shorn it short--shorter even than the regimental pattern; and so
would she sit, watching the winning young fellow, who loved her so
well--he, whose figure might have served a sculptor for an Antinous
in its perfection of form, wasting away before her, with a terrible
certainty that God's hand could alone stay the event; and whom she
had but lately seen in all the full roundness of youth and health,
with a face animated by a very different expression from that now
shown by the hollow, wan, and hectic-like mask which lay listlessly
on the pillow--listlessly save when his eyes met hers, and then they
filled or grew moist with tenderness and gratitude, emotions that
were not unmixed by a fear that the pest, if such it was, that preyed
on him might fasten next on her.  Then _who_ should watch over Rose,
as she had watched over him, like a sister or a mother?

His head, in consequence of the blow he had received from the
pistol-butt of the fallen Afghan--the wretch he had sought to succour
in the Khyber Pass--was doubtless the seat of some secret injury; for
not unfrequently he placed his hand thereon and sighed heavily, while
a dimness would overspread his sight, and there came over him a
faintness from which Rose, by the use of a fan and some cooling
essences--the Khanum had plenty of them--would seek to revive him,
and again his loving eyes would look into hers.

"Ah, you know me again," she would say, in a low soft voice, and with
a smile of affected cheerfulness; "you are to be spared to me, after
all, Denzil--we shall live and die together."

"Nay--not die together, Rose: don't say die together, darling."

"Why?"

"That would be too early--for you, at least."

"You deem me less prepared than yourself, Denzil.  Perhaps I am; yet
what have I to live for now?"

"Do not talk so, Rose."

"God will take pity on us, Denzil, and will make you well and whole
yet," she would reply, and kiss the aching head that rested on her
kind and tender bosom; and with all the young girl's love, something
of the emotion almost of maternal care and protection stole into her
heart, as she watched him thus; he clung to her so, and was so gentle
and so helpless.

"If--if--after this" (he did not say, "after I am gone," lest he
should pain her even by words)--"if, Rose, after all this, you should
ever meet my sister--my dear little Sybil--you will tell her of
me--talk to her about me, talk of all I endured, and be a sister to
her, for my sake--won't you, Rose?"

"I will, Denzil--I shall, please God."

"Oh yes--yes; one who has been so good to me, could not fail to be
good to her, and to love her for her own sake--for mine perhaps."

And then Denzil would look half vacantly, half wildly up to the
ceiling, and marvel hopefully yet apprehensively in his heart where
was now that homeless sister, so loved and petted at Porthellick, and
whom we last saw crouching by the old cottage door near the stone
avenue, on that morning when her mother died, and when the cold grey
mist was rolling from the purple moorland along the green slopes of
the Row Tor and Bron Welli.

Alas! her story Denzil knew not, and might never, never, know it.

But he was beginning now to know and to feel that "the God who was
but a dim and awful abstraction before" seemed very close and nigh.
No fear was in his heart, however: he was very calm and courageous,
save when he thought of Rose's future, and how lonely and lost she
should be when he was gone.  This reflection alone brought tears from
him; it wrung his heart, and made him the more keenly desire to live.

No Bible or Book of Common Prayer had Rose wherewith to console
either the sufferer or herself; all such had gone at the plunder of
the cantonments and the baggage, and had likely figured as cartridge
paper at Jugdulluck and Tizeen; but no printed or hackneyed formulæ
could equal in depth or earnestness the silent yet heartfelt prayers
she put up for Denzil and herself.

"My poor Denzil--poor boy!  I never deserved that you should love me
so much: I have thought so a thousand times!" Rose would whisper
fervently, and, heedless of any danger from fever, and perhaps
courting it, place his brow caressingly in her neck, and kiss his
temples, as if he were a child, telling him to "take courage, and
have no fear."

"Fear! why should I fear death, Rose?" he would respond, speaking
quickly, yet with difficulty--speaking thus perhaps to accustom
himself to the topic, or to accustom her, we know not which; "why
should I fear death, since I know not what it is?  Why fear that
which no human being can avert or avoid, and which so many better,
braver, and nobler than I have so lately proved and tested in yonder
Passes?--aye, Rose, my mother too, at home--my father on the
sea--Sybil perhaps--all!"

Then his utterance became incoherent, his voice broken, and Rose felt
as if her heart were broken too; for when he spoke thus, there spread
over his young face a wondrous brightness, a great calm; and the girl
held her breath, in fear, if not awe, for she read there an
expression of peace that denoted the end was near.

All was very still in the great square Afghan fort and in the Khan's
garden without.

The summer sun shone brightly, and the birds, but chiefly the
melodious pagoda-thrush--the king of the Indian feathered
choristers--was there; and the flowers, the wondrous roses of Cabul,
were exhaling their sweetest perfume.  There the world, nature at
least, looked gay and bright and beautiful; but here, a young life,
that no human skill, prayer, or affection could detain, was ebbing
away so surely as the sea ebbs from its shore, but not like the sea
to return.

If Denzil died, what had she to live for?  So thought the heedless
belle, the half coquette, the whole flirt, of a few months past; but
such were "the uses" or the results of adversity.  Was not the end of
all things nigh?  Without Denzil Devereaux and his love, so tender,
passionate, and true, what would the world be? and her world, of
late, had been so small and sad!  This love had been all in all to
her; and now all seemed nearly over, and nothing could be left to her
but forlorn exile and the gloom of despair.

As there is in memory "a species of mental long-sightedness, which,
though blind to the object close beside you, can reach the blue
mountains and the starry skies which lie full many a league away," so
it was with Denzil; and now far from that bare and desolate vaulted
room in the Afghan fort, from the mountains of black rock that
overshadowed it, and all their harassing associations, even from the
presence of the bright-haired and pale-faced girl who so lovingly
watched and soothed his pillow, the mind of the young officer flashed
back, as if touched by an electric wire, to his once-happy home.
Again his manly father's smile approved of some task or feat of skill
performed by bridle, gun, or rod; again his mother's dark eyes seemed
to look softly into his; the willowed valley (that opened between
steep and ruin-crowned cliffs towards the billowy Cornish sea), the
little world of all his childhood's cares and joys, was with him now,
and with that world he was mingling over again in fancy, though death
and distress had been there as elsewhere; the hearth was desolate, or
strangers sat around it; their household gods were scattered, and
home was home no longer, save in the heart, the memory, of the dying
exile.

And so, for a time, his thoughts were far away even from Rose and the
present scene.  Far from the images that were full of the warlike and
perilous present, he was revelling in the past, and talked fluently,
confidently, and smilingly with the absent, the lost, and the dead.
Often he said--

"Lift my head, dearest mother; place your kind arm round my neck and
kiss me once again."

And Rose obeyed him, and he seemed to smile upward into her face; and
yet he knew her not, or saw another there.

Then he talked deliriously of his father's rights, of his mother's
wrongs, and of his cousin, Audley Trevelyan, till his voice sank into
whispers and anon ceased.

This was what Shakspeare describes as the

  "Vanity of sickness! fierce extremes,
  In their continuance, will not feel themselves.
  Death having preyed upon the outward parts,
  Leaves them invisible; and his siege is now
  Against the mind, which he pricks and wounds
  With many legions of strange fantasies,
  Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,
  Confound themselves."


He fell asleep; and, without prolonging our description further,
suffice it that poor Denzil never woke again, but passed peacefully
away...

Rose sat for a time in a stupor, like one in a dream.  Summoned by
her first wild cry, the Khanum was by her side now.

Denzil, so long her care, her soul, her all, lay there, it would
seem, as usual--lay there as she had seen him for many days; yet why
was it that his presence, and that rigid angularity and stillness of
outline, so appalled her now?

As the crisis so evidently had drawn near, strongly and wildly in the
girl's heart came the crave for medical, for religious, for any
Christian aid or advice; but there none could be had, any more than
if she had stood by the savage shores of the Albert Nyanza; and now
the dread crisis was past!

So, from time to time the pale girl found herself gazing on the paler
face of the dead--of him who had so loved her--gazing with that
mingled emotion of incredulity, wonder, and terror, awe and sorrow,
which passeth all experience or description.

There was no change in the air; there was no change in the light: one
was still and calm, and laden with perfume; the other as bright and
clear as ever: and the blaze of yellow sunshine poured into the room
precisely as it did an hour ago; but now it fell on the face of the
dead!

And the clear voice of the pagoda-thrush sang on; but how
monotonously now!

Rose was stunned, and sat crouching on the floor, with her face
covered by her hands, her head between her knees, and her bright
dishevelled hair falling forward in silky volume well nigh to her
feet.  Ignorant of what to say, or how to soothe grief so passionate,
the Khanum, unveiled, hung over her in kindness of heart, but with
one prevailing idea--that the death of an idolater must be very
terrible; that already the fiends must be contesting for the
possession of his soul; that the prescribed portion of the Koran had
not been read to him; and even if it had been, what would it avail
now, till that day when the solid mountains and the soft white clouds
should be rolled away together by the blast of the trumpet of Azrael?

So his last thoughts had been of his dead mother, as Rose remembered,
and not of her.  Her father was dead; Mabel was gone to Toorkistan,
too surely beyond ransom or redemption: oh, why was _she_ left to
live?

If the _sense of exile_ is so strong in the heart of the
Anglo-Indian, even amid all the luxuries and splendours of Calcutta,
the city of palaces--amid the gaieties and frivolities of
Chowringhee,--what must that sense have been to the heart of this
lonely English girl, far away beyond Peshawur, the gate of Western
India, beyond the Indus, fifteen hundred English miles, as the crow
flies, "up-country," from the mouth of the Hooghley and the shore of
Bengal--where the railway whistle will long be unheard, and where
Murray, Cook, and Bradshaw may never yet be known!

Notwithstanding all that Rose had undergone of late, and all that she
had schooled herself to anticipate as but too probable, she was still
unable fully to realise the actual extent of the misfortunes that
threatened her.  Much of that deep misery which Sybil had endured
elsewhere, when crouching in the damp and mist outside her mother's
door, came over Rose's spirit now.  Henceforward, she felt that life
must be objectless; that safety or pursuit, freedom or captivity, sea
or land, must be all alike to her; and for a time her poor brain, so
long oppressed by successive sorrows and excitements, became almost
unconscious of external impressions, and she sat as one in a dream,
hearing only the buzz of the summer flies and the voice of the
pagoda-thrush.

Suddenly another sound seemed to mingle with the notes of the birds;
it came on the air from a great distance.  She started and looked
wildly up--her once-clear hazel eyes all bloodshot and tearless now.

What was it? what _is_ it? for the sound was there, and she seemed to
hear it still, and the Khanum heard it too!

Nearer it came, and nearer.

It was the sound of drums--drums beaten in regular marching cadence,
coming on the wind of evening down from the rocky pass in the hills
of Siah Sung.

Oh, there could be no mistake in the measure--British troops were
coming on; and how welcome once would that sound have been to the
young soldier who lay on his pallet there, and whose ear could hear
the English drum no more!

She started to the window, and looked forth to the black mountains,
which, though distant from it, towered high above the Kuzzilbashes'
fort.  The dark Pass lay there, its shadows seeming blue rather than
any other tint, as the receding rays of the setting sun left it
behind; but her eyes were dim with weeping and with watching now, so
Rose, with all her pulseless eagerness, failed to see the serried
bayonets, the shot-riven colours tossing in the breeze, or the moving
ranks in scarlet, that showed where the victorious brigades of
Pollock, Sale, and Nott were once more defiling down into the plain
that led to humbled Cabul.

Welcome though their sound, they had come, alas, _too late_!

The drums were still ringing in her ears; and this familiar sound,
like the voices of old friends, caused her now to weep plentifully.
Once again she turned to the bed where Denzil lay so pale and still,
his sharpened features acutely defined in the last light of the sun;
and she felt in her heart as she pressed her interlaced hands on her
lips, seeking to crush down emotion--

  "So the dream it is fled, and the day it is done,
    And my lips still murmur the name of one
      Who will never come back to me!"





CHAPTER XXI.

THE PURSUIT.

The same evening of this event saw the Union Jack floating on the
summit of the Bala Hissar, and our troops in or around Cabul, in the
narrow and once-crowded thoroughfares of which--even in the spacious
and once-brilliant bazaar--the most desolate silence prevailed.  The
houses of Sir Alexander Burnes, of Sir William Macnaghten, and all
other British residents were now mere heaps of ashes, and their
once-beautiful gardens were waste.  Human bones lay in some; whose
they were none knew, but they remained among the parterres of flowers
as terrible mementos of the past.

Having, among many other trophies, the magnificent and ancient gates
of Hindoo Somnath with them, the victorious troops of General Nott
were encamped around the stately marble tomb of the Emperor Baber,
where the British were watering their horses at the Holy Well,
quietly cooking their rations of fat-tailed dhoombas or of beef,
newly shot, flayed, and cut up, after a long route; and the natives
were gravely boiling their rice and otta; while the staff officers,
Generals Pollock, Sale, Nott, Macaskill, and others, some on foot and
some on horseback, were in deep conference about a map of Western
India, and Bokhara, and as to where the hostages were, and what was
to be done for their relief, if they still lived.

Waller, who in his energy and anxiety had come on with the advanced
guard of cavalry, looked around him with peculiar sadness.  Save
Doctor Brydone and one or two others, he alone seemed to survive of
all the original Cabul force; and every feature of the place before
him was full of melancholy memories and suggestions of those he could
never see again, and of the past that could come no more.

To Sir Richmond Shakespere, his new friend, he could not resist the
temptation of speaking affectionately and regretfully of the dead,
and the places associated with them.  He found a relief to his mind
in doing so.

"A time may come," said he, as they sat in their saddles twisting up
cigarettes, and passing a flask of Cabul wine between them, while the
syces gave each of their unbitted nags a tobrah of fresh corn, "when
these Passes of the Khyber Mountains may be as familiar to the
English tourist as those of Glencoe and Killycrankie are now--for
there was a day when even the land beyond them was a terra incognita
to us; and a time may come when the lines of railway shall extend
from Lahore even to Peshawar--ay, and further--perhaps to the gates
of Herat--though it may not be our luck to see it; but I can scarcely
realise that in our age of the world, an age usually so prosaic and
deemed matter-of-fact, men should see and undergo all that we have
undergone and seen, and in a space of time so short too!"

Would a quiet home, a peaceful life, after a happy marriage, ever be
the lot of him and Mabel?  Loving her fondly and tenderly, with all
the strength that separation, dread, and doubt and sorrow, could add
to the secret tie between them, he had almost ceased to have visions
of her associated with admonitions and prayer from a lawn-sleeved
ecclesiastic; a merry marriage-breakfast; a bride in her white bonnet
and delicate laces, and smiling bridesmaids in tulle.  Such
day-dreams had been his at one time; but amid rapine and slaughter,
battle and suffering, they had become dim and indistinct, if not
forgotten!

"Yes, Waller," replied his companion, after a pause, "a British
army--we have actually seen a British army, with all its accessories
and appurtenances, exterminated at one fell swoop!"

"All this place is full of peculiarly sad memories to me, Sir
Richmond."

"Doubtless; and, like me, you won't be sorry when we all turn our
backs on it for ever, as we shall do soon."

"True.  See! yonder lie our cantonments, ruined walls and blackened
ashes now; beyond them are the hills where, with my company--not one
man of which is now surviving, myself excepted--I scoured the
fanatical Ghazees from rock to rock, and far over the Cabul river, so
victoriously!  Here, by that old tomb and ruined musjid, we once had
a jolly picnic: half the fellows in the garrison, and all the ladies
were there--the band of the poor 44th too.  By Jove!  I can still see
the scattered fragments of broken bottles and chicken bones lying
among the grass."

"I have felt something of this regret when coming on the remembered
scene of an old pig-sticking party or bivouac," replied Sir Richmond,
with a half-smile at the unwonted earnestness of Waller, who had
seemed to him always a remarkably cool and self-possessed man of the
world; but he knew not the deeper cause he had for feeling in these
matters.  "You may say, as an old poem has it--

  'Now the long tubes no longer wisdom quaff,
  Or jolly soldiers raise the jocund laugh;
  The scene is changed, but scattered fragments tell
  Where Bacchanalian joys were wont to dwell.'

Is it not so, Waller?"

"By this road I smoked a last cigar with Jack Polwhele, of ours, and
Harry Burgoyne, of the 37th," resumed Waller.  He remembered, but he
did not care to add, how broadly they had bantered him about Mabel
Trecarrel on the evening in question.  "And all round here," he
resumed, pursuing his own thoughts aloud, "are the scenes of many a
pleasant ride and happy drive.  Here I betted and lost a box of
gloves with the Trecarrels."

"You seem to have always been betting on something with those ladies,
and with a gentleman's privilege of losing."

"It was on the Envoy's blood mare against Jack Polwhele's bay filly,
in the race when Daly, of the 4th Dragoons, won the sword given by
Shah Sujah," said Waller, colouring a little.  "There, by those
cypresses, I once met the sisters half fainting, one day, with heat,
their palanquin placed in the shade by the gasping dhooley-wallahs;
so, at the risk of a brain fever, I galloped to the Char-chowk for a
flask of Persian rose-water, fans, and so forth."

"The Trecarrels again!  By the way, it seems to me," said the other,
"that of all the friends you have lost, those two young ladies--one
especially----"

What the military secretary of General Pollock was about to say, with
a somewhat meaning smile, we know not, save that he was heightening
the colour of Waller's face by his pause; but a change was given to
the conversation by the opportune arrival of Shireen Khan, of the
Kuzzilbashes, mounted, as usual, on his tall camel, and accompanied
by a few well-appointed horsemen.  He had ascertained that
"Shakespere Sahib" was the _katib_, or secretary, to the victorious
Feringhee general, and had come to tender, through him, his services
to the family of the fallen Shah, to the conquerors, to the Queen
they served, and, generally, to the powers that were uppermost.

Many of the Afghan chiefs, who, with their people, had acted most
savagely against us, were now extremely anxious to make their peace
with General Pollock; and though it can scarcely be said that towards
the end (after his own jealousy of Ackbar's influence, fear of his
growing power that curbed all private ambition, caused a coolness in
the Sirdir's cause) Shireen and his Kuzzilbashes had been our most
bitter enemies, yet he and they were among the first now to meet and
welcome the conquerors of Ackbar, against whom they had turned, not
as we have seen Saleh Mohammed meanly do, in the time of his
undoubted humiliation and defeat, but when in the zenith of his
power; and now this wary old fellow, who played the game of life as
carefully and coolly as ever he played that of chess, knew that the
protection he had afforded to Rose Trecarrel and to Denzil--the
supposed Nawab--must prove his best moves on the board--his trump
cards, in fact; and as a conclusive offer of friendship, he now
offered six hundred chosen Kuzzilbash horsemen to follow on the track
of Saleh Mohammed, and rescue the whole of the prisoners, a duty on
which Shakespere and Waller at once joyfully volunteered to accompany
them.

"Shabash!" he exclaimed, stroking his beard in token of faith and
promise, "punah-be-Kodah!--it is as good as done; and the head of the
Dooranee dog shall replace that of the Envoy in the Char-chowk!"

Waller soon divined that the lady now residing in Shireen's fort must
be no other than the younger daughter of "the Sirdir Trecarrel," who
was spirited away on the retreat through the Passes, on that night
when the Shah's 6th Regiment deserted; but of who "the Nawab" could
be he had not the faintest idea, until he and Shakespere galloped
there, saw the living and the dead, and heard all their sad story
unravelled.

With her head, sick and aching, nestling on the broad shoulder of Bob
Waller, as if he was her only and dearest brother, Rose told all her
story without reserve, and it moved Waller and his companion deeply,
to see a handsome and once-bright English girl so crushed and reduced
by grief and long-suffering; yet her case was only one of many in the
history of that disastrous war.  She ended by imploring them to lose
no time in following the track of those who had borne off her sister
and the other hostages.

No words or entreaties of hers were necessary to urge either Waller
or Shakespere on this exciting path; and instant action became all
the more imperative when Shireen announced that he had sure tidings
from Taj Mohammed Khan, and also from Nouradeen Lal, the farmer, who
had been purchasing horses on the frontier, that all the lawless
Hazarees were in arms to cut off the entire convoy; and that if a
junction were once effected between them and the Toorkomans of
Zoolficar Khan, all hope of rescue would be at an end.

The permission of the general was, of course, at once asked and
accorded, and it was arranged, that, immediately upon their
departure, a body of cavalry and light infantry should follow with
all speed to second and support them.

Kind-hearted Bob Waller waited only to attend the obsequies of his
young comrade (while the Kuzzilbashes were preparing); and over these
we shall hasten, though of all the Cabul army he was, perhaps, the
only one interred with the honours of war; the battle-smoke had been
the pall, the wolf and the raven the sextons, of all the rest!

The spot chosen was a little way outside the Kuzzilbashes' fort, on
the sunny and green grassy slope of a hill, where a grove of wild
cherry-trees rendered the place pleasant to the eye.  From her window
Rose could alike see and hear the rapid ceremony; for by the stern
pressure of circumstances it was both brief and rapid.  No prayer was
said; no service performed; no solemn dropping of dust upon dust; no
requiem was there, but the drums as they beat the "Point of War,"
after the last notes of the Dead March had died away.

The quick, formal commands of the officer came distinctly to her
overstrained ear, as the hurriedly constructed coffin of unblackened
deal, covered by the colour of the 44th Regiment, was being lowered,
as she knew, for ever, into its narrow bed; the steel ramrods rang in
the distance like silver bells, and flashed in the sunshine; then a
volley rang sharply in the air, finding a terrible echo in her heart,
while the thin blue smoke eddied upward in the sunshine; another and
another succeeded, and Rose--the widowed in spirit--as she crouched
on her knees, knew then that all was over, and the smoke of the last
farewell volley would be curling amid the damp mould that was now to
cover her lost one.

Anon the drums beat merrily as the firing party, after closing their
ranks, wheeled off by sections, with bayonets fixed, and Denzil
Devereaux was left alone in his solitary and unmarked grave, just as
the sun set in all his evening beauty; and a double gloom sank over
the soul of Rose Trecarrel.




CHAPTER XXII.

THE HOSTAGES.

Swiftly rode Shakespere, Waller, and their six hundred Kuzzilbashes
on their errand of mercy, and midnight saw them far from the
mountains that look down on Cabul.  Of all his five thousand horse,
old Shireen had certainly chosen the flower.  All these men rode
their own chargers, and all were armed with lance and sword,
matchlock and pistols; all had their persons bristling with the usual
number of daggers, knives, powder-flasks, and bullet-bags, in which
the Afghan warrior delights to invest himself; and all wore the
peculiar cap from which they take their name--a low squat busby, of
black lambs'-wool, not unlike those now worn by our Hussars, and
having, like them, a bag of scarlet cloth hanging from the crown
thereof.

To avoid all suspicion or attention _en route_, Waller and Shakespere
had cast their uniforms aside, and rode at their head _à la
Kussilbashe_, dressed in poshteen and chogah, and armed with lance
and sabre.

The discovery of Rose Trecarrel--an event so unexpected and unlooked
for after all that had occurred--seemed to Waller as an omen of
future good fortune, and his naturally buoyant spirits rose as he
rode on.  The expedition was full of excitement, especially for a
time: it was an act of courage, mercy, and chivalry, that all Britain
should eventually hear of; and Mabel was at the bourne, for which
they were all bound.  Even poor Denzil, so recently interred, was
partially forgotten: soldiers cannot brood long over the casualties
of war, especially while amid them; and Denzil's death was only one
item in a strife that had now seen nearly fifty thousand perish on
both sides.

However, let it not for a moment be thought that Waller was careless
of his friend's untimely end, his memory, or his strange story; for,
ere he left Rose, he had promised that as soon as he could write, or
get "down country" again, one of his first acts should be to seek out
and succour "this only sister" of whom poor Devereaux had always
spoken so much and so affectionately.

When he parted from Rose, leaving her in the safe and more congenial
protection afforded by the European camp, she had not been without
one predominant fear.  As friends had come too late to save or
succour Denzil, they might now, perhaps, be too late to rescue Mabel
and her companions from this new conjunction of enemies against them,
even in Toorkistan.  Besides, Ackbar the Terrible, with the ruins of
his infuriated army, was to fall back on the deserts by the way of
Bameean, and thus, to avoid him, the two British officers, with their
Kuzzilbashes, at one time made a judicious detour among the hills.

At Killi-Hadji, they found traces of the first halt made by the
caravan outside the old fort, where a shepherd had, as he told them,
seen the captives; thence by the mountain pass and the fair valley of
Maidan, where a Hadji bound afoot for the shrine of Ahmed Shah at
Candahar, the scene of many a pilgrimage, told them that the risk
they ran was great, as the Hazarees were undoubtedly drawing to a
head in the Balkh; and this was far from reassuring, as they were
conscious of having far outridden their promised supports.

"Let us push on, for God's sake!" was ever Waller's impatient
exclamation at every halt, however brief; and even Sir Richmond
Shakespere, with all his activity and energy, was at times amused by
the restlessness of one who seemed by nature to be a rather quiet and
easy-going Englishman.

"These are tough rations, certainly," said he, as they halted for the
last time near the Kaloo Mountain, and masticated a piece of kid
broiled on a ramrod at a hasty fire (broiled ere the flesh of the
shot animal had time to cool), and washed it down by a draught from
the nearest stream.

"Tough, certainly; but we get all that is good for us."

"If not more," added Shakespere, pithily; "for this is feeding like
savages--or Toorkomans, who drink the blood of their horses."

"At a halt, when marching up country, I always used, if possible,
like a knowing bachelor, to tiff with a married man."

"Why?"

"You will be sure to find that he has some daintily made sandwiches,
cold fowl, or so forth, in his haversack: the women, God bless them,
always look after these little things.  But that is all over now; we
are no longer in Hindostan.  A little time must solve all this--the
safety of our friends----" added Waller, looking thoughtfully to the
distant landscape; and as if repenting of a momentary lightness of
heart, "I would give all I have in the world----"

"Say all you owe," suggested Shakespere, smiling.

"Well, Sir Richmond, that would be a round sum perhaps--to see them
all within musket shot of us.  As for ransom, I have but my sword at
their service.  I can't do even a bill on a Hindoo schroff, or raise
money on a whisker, as John de Castro did at Goa; but I can polish
off a few of those savages, as they deserve to be."

The dawn of a second day saw them descending the mighty ridges of the
Indian Caucasus, and a picturesque body they were, with their bright
particoloured garments floating backward on the wind; their black fur
caps with scarlet bags, their dark, keen visages and sable beards,
their polished weapons and tall tasselled lances flashing in the
uprisen sun, as they galloped, without much order certainly, at an
easy but swinging pace, over green waste and grey rocky plateau, up
one hill-side and down another, now splashing merrily, and more than
girth deep, through the clear, sparkling current of some brawling
mountain nullah whose waters had been imbridged since Time was
born--their horses light in body, with high withers, fine and
muscular limbs, square foreheads, small ears, and brilliant eyes, and
to all appearance fall of speed, spirit, and a strength that seemed
never to flag.

And sooth to say, the gallant Kuzzilbashes took every care to
preserve those qualities so desirable alike for pursuit or flight.

At every brief halt, they were carefully unbitted, unsaddled,
groomed, and lightly fed, and picketed in the old Indian fashion,
with the V-ended heel-rope fastened round both hind fetlocks and
secured to a single pin; near cuts over the hills were taken, but
rivers were never forded or swum, unless the horses were perfectly
cool; once or twice, pieces of goat's flesh were rolled round their
bridle-bits; and hence by all this care, the cattle of the whole
troop, unblown and ungalled, were in excellent order, when, on the
fourth day--for their progress had been swifter than that of Saleh
Mohammed, as they were unincumbered by women, children, camels, and
ponies--they left the Kaloo Mountain behind, and ere long, without
seeing aught of Hazarees or Toorkomans, though always prepared for
them, they came in sight of Bameean, towering on its green mountain,
its elaborate but silent temples and great solemn giants of stone
reddened by the bright flood of light shed far across the plain by
the sun, which was setting amid a sea of clouds that were all of
crimson flame.

In deepest purple the shadows fell far eastward; the gleam of arms
appeared on the walls of the old fort in the foreground, when Waller
and Sir Richmond Shakespere darted forward, by a vigorous use of the
spur, far outstripping their less enthusiastic followers.  After they
had carefully reconnoitred the fort through their field-glasses,
Shakespere began to rein in his horse, and check its pace.

"Waller," said he, "a red flag has replaced Ackbar's invariable
green, one on the fort.  We had better parley."

"But we have neither trumpet nor drum."

"Nor would those fellows understand the sound of either, if we had;
but look out--pull up, or, by Heaven, we shall be fired upon!  You
are rash, Waller, and in action seem quite to lose your head."

"But my hand is ever steady--ay, as if this sword were but a cricket
bat," retorted Waller, whose blue eyes were sparkling with light.

"True, my dear fellow; but to be potted now, when within arm's length
of those we have risked so much to save, would be a sad mistake."

"Egad, yes; and that old devil with his jingall--for a jingall it
is--may speedily send one of us into that place so vaguely known as
the next world," responded Waller, as he tied a white handkerchief to
the point of his sword, and then Saleh Mohammed Khan was seen to
unwind and wave the cloth of his turban in response.

By this action they knew that all idea of resistance was at an end,
and that they should be received as friends.  The gates of the fort
were unbarricaded and thrown open, and many of the ladies now began
to appear, timidly but curiously and expectantly, thronging forward
to meet those whom they had been told were come "to meet and to save
them."

Waller, who had manifested an air of blunt and soldierly resolution
and energy up to this period, now felt his emotions somewhat
overpowering, or perhaps he wished to see and hear something of
Mabel, before making himself known; so checking his horse, he
permitted Sir Richmond Shakespere, as his leader, to ride forward.

Lifting his Kuzzilbash cap, his frank English face, though sunburned
and lined, beaming with pleasure and joy the while,

"Rejoice," he cried, enthusiastically, "rejoice, ladies!  Your
delivery is accomplished.  Dear ladies and comrades, all your fears
and your sufferings are at an end!"

There was no loud or noisy response; the emotions of all were too
deep and heartfelt for such utterances; and, with feelings which no
description can convey to the imagination, Waller and Shakespere
found themselves surrounded by the captives, male and female, exactly
one hundred and six in number, of all ranks--captives whom by their
energy, activity, and rapid expedition they had saved from a fate
that might never have been known; for the news of their arrival
caused Hazarees and Toorkomans alike to disperse, and even Zoolficar
Khan abandoned all idea of attempting to carry them off.

The happiest moments of existence are perhaps the most difficult to
delineate on paper; but Bob Waller, as he folded Mabel Trecarrel
sobbing hysterically to his breast, laughing and weeping at the same
moment, despite and heedless of all the eyes that looked thereon--he
a thorough-bred Englishman, and as such innately abhorrent of "a
scene"--forgot the crowd, the Kuzzilbashes, the Dooranees, the
grinning grooms and dhooley-wallahs--he forgot all in the joy of the
moment, or by a chain of thought remembered only a passage of
"Othello," when, in garrison theatricals, he had once figured as the
Moor, with Harry Burgoyne for a Desdemona--

        "If it were now to die,
  'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear
  My soul hath her content so absolute
  That not another comfort like to this
  Succeeds in unknown fate."

And Sir Richmond Shakespere, as he stood smiling by the centre and
blissful-looking group (now beginning clamorously to pour questions
upon him), ladies and officers, hollow-eyed, haggard, and pale, began
to perceive what had made Captain Robert Waller, of the Cornish Light
Infantry, take so deep an interest in the Trecarrels, and why he had
been the most active, energetic, and, so far as danger went, the most
reckless staff officer during our perilous advance up the Passes and
in the subsequent pursuit.

Waller did not find Mabel quite so much changed as he had feared she
might be; yet she was the wreck of what she had been in happier
times--the tall, full-bosomed, and statuesque-looking English girl,
with clear, calm, bright, and confident eyes.  The latter were still
bright, but their lustre was unnatural; their expression was a wild
and hunted one; her colour was gone, and her cheeks were deathly
pale.  But all in the group of hostages were alike in those respects.
For many months, had they not been daily, sometimes hourly, face to
face with death?

But Waller, as she hung on his breast and looked with eyes upturned
upon him, had never seemed so handsome in her sight: his form and
face were to her as the beau-ideal of Saxon manliness and beauty; but
his complexion, once nearly as fair as her own, was burned red now,
by the exposure consequent to the two last campaigns; his forehead
clear and open, his nose straight, his mouth large perhaps, but
well-shaped and laughing; and then he had in greater luxuriance than
ever his long, fair, fly-away whiskers; and, save his Afghan dress,
he looked every inch the jolly, frank, and burly Bob Waller of other
times, especially when, as if he thought "the scene" had lasted long
enough, he drew Mabel's arm through his, led her a little way apart,
and proceeded leisurely to prepare a cigar for smoking.

"So Bob, dear, dear Bob, my presentiment has come true after all,"
she exclaimed; "and this horrid Bameean has seen the end of all our
sorrows!"

"But it was not such an end as this your foreboding heart had
anticipated, Mabel," replied Waller, caressing her hand in his, and
pressing it against his heart.

Major Pottinger, who had now the command, ordered that all must
prepare at once to quit Bameean, and avoid further risks by falling
back on their supports, lest Ackbar Khan might come on them after all.

To lessen the chance of that, however, the wily Saleh Mohammed, who
knew by sure intelligence from his scouts that Ackbar was to proceed,
with the relics of his army, through the Akrobat Pass into the Balkh,
advised that all should take a circuitous route towards Cabul; and
this suggestion was at once adopted by the now-happy hostages and the
escort.

Two days afterwards, as they were traversing the summit of a little
mountain pass, their long and winding train of horse and foot guarded
by Kuzzilbash Lancers and the wilder-looking Dooranees, they came
suddenly in sight of those whom General Pollock had sent to meet and,
if necessary, to succour them.

These were Her Majesty's 3rd Light Dragoons, the 1st Bengal Cavalry,
and Captain Backhouse's train of mountain guns, all led by Sir Robert
Sale in person; and who might describe the joy of that meeting, when
the rescued hostages cast their eager eyes and hands towards them in
joy, and when they saw the old familiar uniforms covering all the
green slope, while the cavalry came galloping and the infantry
rushing tumultuously towards them!

The dragoons sprang from their horses, the infantry broke their
ranks, and the men of the 13th Light Infantry crowded round the wife
of their colonel and the other rescued ladies, holding out their hard
brown hands in welcome; eyes were glistening, lips quivering, and
many a hurrah was, for a time, half choked by emotion and sympathy,
while officers and soldiers again and again shook hands like brothers
that had been long parted.

Friends now met friends from whom they had been so long and painfully
separated; wives threw themselves exultingly and passionately into
the arms of their husbands; daughters leaned upon their fathers'
breasts and wept.  Many there were whose widowed hearts had none to
meet them there; and many an orphan child stretched forth its little
hands to the ranks wherein its father marched no more, though some
might give a kiss or a caress to "Tom Brown's little 'un--Tom that
was killed at Ghuznee," or to the "little lass of Corporal
Smith--poor Jack that was killed with his missus at Khoord Cabul;"
but these sad episodes were soon forgotten amid the general joy.

Wheeled round on the mountain slope, the artillery thundered forth a
royal salute; muskets and swords were brandished in the sunshine;
caps tossed up, to be caught and tossed up again; reiterated English
cheers woke the echoes of the hills of Jubeaiz, which seemed to
repeat the sounds of joy to the winds again and again.




CHAPTER XXIII.

THE DURBAR.

"Coincidence," saith Ouida, "is a god that greatly influences human
affairs;" and the sequel to our story will prove the truth of this
trite aphorism, when we now change the scene from Cabul to our
cantonment, in the territory between the Sutledge and the Jumna--to
the Court Sanatorium of Bengal--the country mansion of the
Governor-General at Simla, a beautiful little town of some five
hundred houses, built on the slope of the mighty Himalayas, where,
amid a veritable forest of oak, evergreens, and rhododendron, and the
loveliest flora a temperate zone can produce, surrounded by that
wondrous assemblage of snow-covered peaks that rise in every
imaginable shape (a portion of those bulwarks of the world, that
slope from the left bank of the Indus away to the steppes of Tartary
and the marshes of Siberia), the representative of the Queen retires
periodically to refresh exhausted nature, and mature the plans of
government in those cool and pleasant recesses, where the punkah is
no longer requisite; where one may sleep without dread of mosquitos
and green bugs, nor welcome cold tea at noon as preferable to iced
champagne.

By the time that Audley Trevelyan had reached this occasional seat of
government--the Balmoral of India--Lord Auckland, whose vacillation
and mismanagement of the Cabul campaign gave great umbrage, had
returned to Britain, and another Governor-General had arrived--one
who boldly stigmatised the Afghan project of his predecessor (now
created an earl) "as a folly, and that it yet remained to be seen
whether it might not prove a crime;" and so Audley presented, of
necessity, the reports and Jellalabad despatches of Sir Robert Sale
to this new Viceroy, whose firmness of character and past promise as
a statesman gave a guerdon that we should yet retrieve all that we
had lost of prestige beyond the Indus; to which end he took the
executive power from the weak hands of those secretaries to whom it
had been previously committed, and resolved to wield it himself,
though he found in India a treasury well-nigh empty, an army
exasperated, and the hearts of men depressed by fears for the future.

But tidings of the storming of Ghuznee by General Nott, of the
advance upon Cabul, the recapture of it after our victory at Tizeen,
and the rescue of the hostages, followed so quickly upon each other
to Simla, that soon after the arrival of Audley, he was informed that
as there would be no necessity for his return to Jellalabad, he was
to remain provisionally attached to the staff, either till he could
rejoin his regiment, or our troops re-entered the Punjaub--a little
slice of India, having a population equal to all that of England.  So
by this arrangement he found himself a mere idler, a dangler attached
to the Viceregal court, where now the glorious war that Napier was to
inaugurate against the treacherous Ameers of Scinde was schemed out,
and where a series of reviews, dinners, balls, and a durbar, or
assembly of the native princes, was proposed to welcome Pollock's
troops when they came down country, and were once again, as the
Viceroy expressed it, in "our native territories;" and the programme
of all those gayeties was to be fully arranged when his lady and
other ladies of the mimic court arrived, after the rainy season,
which continues there from June till the middle of September, was
nearly over.

On the first day of October, when her ladyship and the suite were to
arrive, the durbar of native princes was to be held, and the final
proclamation of the Governor-General concerning the affairs of
Afghanistan was to be read aloud and issued.  As this was but an
instance of Anglo-Indian pageantry, though Audley Trevelyan rode amid
the brilliant staff of his Excellency, and it all led to something of
more interest, we shall only notice it briefly.

The durbar was, indeed, a magnificent spectacle!  On a great plateau
of brilliant green, smooth as English turf, that lies near the ridge
which is crowned by the white plastered mansions of Simla, dotted
here and there and finally bordered by dark clumps of heavily
foliaged oaks, towering rhododendrons, and over all by mighty,
spire-like Himalayan pines; it took place under a clear and lovely
sky, and the locality was indeed picturesque and impressive; for in
the distance, as a background, towered that wonderful sea of
snow-clad peaks, covered with eternal whiteness--peaks between which
lie the deep paths and passes that lead to Chinese Tartary, the
wilderness of Lop, and the deserts of Gobi.  Here and there amid the
green clumps and gardens full of rare trees and lovely flowers, a
white marble dome, or a tall and needle-like minaret, each stone
thereof a miracle of carving, broke the line of the clear blue
cloudless sky.

On this auspicious occasion all the Rajahs, Maharajahs, chiefs,
Maliks, Sirdirs, and other men of rank, from the protected Sikh
territory that lies between the Sutledge and the Jumna, and even from
beyond it, were present with their trains of followers, in all the
gorgeous richness of oriental costume, bright with plumage, silks,
and satins, brilliant with arms and the jewels of a land where
sapphires and diamonds, rubies and opals, seem to be plentiful as
pebbles are by the wayside in Europe.

At the extreme end of the plateau stood the lofty, parti-coloured
tent of the Viceroy, with its cords of silk and cotton; within it was
placed a dais that was spread with cloth of gold, and covered by a
crimson canopy.  On each side of his throne, ranged in the form of an
ellipse, were divans or seats for six hundred Indians of the highest
rank, while all the officers of the garrison, the guards, and the
staff, in their full uniform, with all their medals and orders, added
to the splendour of the spectacle, when chief after chief was
introduced, duly presented, and marshalled to his seat in succession,
amid the sound of many trumpets.

Opposite this ellipse were ranged their followers, on foot or
horseback; and immediately in the centre of all, were drawn up in
line more than fifty elephants, stolid, and well-nigh motionless,
trapped in velvet and gold from the saddle to their huge, unwieldy
feet, bearing lofty and gilded howdahs, some like castles of silver,
wherein were the wives and families of some of the princes present.
All around glittered spears and arms; scores of dancing-girls were
there too, richly dressed, singing the soft monotonous airs of the
land in Persic or Hindoo-Persic; and a mighty throng of
copper-coloured natives, turbaned and scantily clad in a cummerbund
or the dhottie at most, made up minor accessories of the general
picture.

Over all this, Audley, on foot and leaning on his sword, was looking,
glass in eye, with somewhat of the listlessness of the _blasé_
Englishman; for he had been amid scenes so stirring of late, that
mere pageantry failed alike to impress or interest him.  Neither
cared he, assuredly, for the address of the Governor-General, who was
announcing in the Oordoo language that, the disasters in Afghanistan
having been fully avenged, the army of the Queen would be withdrawn
for ever to the eastern bank of the Sutledge; then his glances began
to wander over the bright group of English ladies, so brilliantly
dressed, so exquisitely fair, to the eye accustomed so long to Indian
dusk, and who now attended the recently arrived wife of the
representative of British royalty.

Among them was one whose face and figure woke a strong interest in
his heart.  Her dress was very plain, even to simplicity--too much so
for such a place; her ornaments were very few, all of jet, and rather
meagre.  All this his practised eye could take in at a glance; but
there was something about her that fascinated and riveted his
attention.

Not much over nineteen, apparently, and rather petite in stature, she
looked consequently younger--more girlish than her years; but her
figure was graceful, her air indescribably high-bred, and having in
it a hauteur that, being quite unconscious, was becoming.  Her eyes
were dark, her lashes long and black, her complexion colourless and
pure, and her thick hair was in waves and masses, dressed Audley
scarcely knew in what fashion, but in a somewhat negligent mode that
was sorely bewitching.

Her face was always half turned away from where he stood; for she,
utterly oblivious of the Oordoo harangue of his Excellency, was
toying with her fan or the white silk tassels of her gloves, while
chatting gaily, confidently, and with a downcast smile to a young
officer of the Anglo-Indian Staff, and clad in the gorgeous uniform
of the Bengal Irregular Cavalry.

That she was a beautiful girl, a little proud, perhaps, of the
_sang-azure_ in her veins, was pretty evident; that she might be
impulsive, too, and quick to ire, was also evident, from the little
impatient glances she gave about her, by a quivering of the white
eyelid, and an occasional short respiration; that she might be a
little passionate too, if thwarted, was suggested by the curve of her
lips and chin.  For the critical eye of Master Audley Trevelyan saw
all this; but his spirit was seriously perplexed: he had certainly
seen this attractive little fair one before--but where?

He was about to turn and ask some one near concerning her, when a
hand was laid on his shoulder, and a young officer, whose new scarlet
coat, untarnished epaulettes, and fair ruddy face announced him fresh
from Europe, said smilingly,

"Ah, Trevelyan, how d'ye do?--remember me, don't you?"

"I think so: surely we met at Maidstone, when I first joined."

"Maidstone! why, you griff, I should think so.  Don't you remember
leaving us at Allahabad, after Jack Delamere died?"

"By Jove, Stapylton--Stapylton, of the 14th!  How are you, old
fellow?"

"The same;" and they shook hands, as he now recognised a brother
subaltern of his old Hussar corps.

"And you are here on the staff?" said Stapylton.

"Like yourself; but _pro tem._ till sent off to headquarters.  You
came up country with her ladyship?"

"Ah--yes."

"Who is that lovely girl near her?"

"Which?"

"She in the white silk, and lace trimmed with black--a kind of second
mourning I take it to be."

"Oh, you needn't ask with any interested views.  A proud, reserved
minx is that little party; but she has been going the pace with that
fellow of the Irregular Horse, to whom she is talking and smiling
now, and did so all the way out overland.  It was an awful case of
spoon in the Red Sea, just where Pharaoh was swallowed up; and the
Viceroy's wife is very anxious to make a match of it, as a plea for
an extra ball."

"But who is she?"

"Oh, some interesting orphan."

"But her name?"

"A Miss Devereaux--Sybil Devereaux.  I made an acrostic on it off the
Point de Galle," added the ex-Hussar, as the object of their mutual
interest turned at that moment casually towards them, and for the
first time looked fully in their direction; and then Audley, while he
almost held his breath, recognised the dark eyes, the minute little
face, the firm lips, and even now could hear the once-familiar voice
of Sybil; but she was talking smilingly to another; and as the words
of the heedless Stapylton began to rankle in his heart, something of
anger, jealousy and pique mingled with his astonishment.

Another was now playing with Sybil the very part that he had done at
Cabul with Rose, to the exasperation of poor Denzil, whom, for months
before he really died, Sybil had schooled herself to number as among
the slain in Afghanistan; hence her little jet ornaments and black
trimmings, the only tribute she could pay his memory now.




CHAPTER XXIV.

THE LAMP OF LOVE.

And this fellow of the Irregular Horse--this fellow who was so
insufferably good-looking, and seemed to know it too--this
interloper, for so Audley Trevelyan chose to consider him--what
manner of advances had he already made, and how had she received
them, on that overland route, so perilous from the propinquity and
the hourly chances it affords of acquaintance ripening into
friendship, and of friendship into love?

Was he only to meet her unexpectedly, and, by that strange influence
of coincidence already referred to, to find himself supplemented, it
might be, and on the verge of losing, if he had not
already--deservedly as he felt--lost her?

Did it never occur to the Honourable Mr. Audley Trevelyan that,
separating as they did, there were a thousand chances to one against
their ever meeting again in this world, and, more than all, the world
of India?

He watched long and anxiously; there was no sign of her seeing or
recognising him, and, placed where they were, apart, he had neither
excuse nor opportunity for drawing nearer her.  The durbar closed at
last; a banquet, solemn and magnificent, followed; then, on lumbering
elephants and beautiful horses, the various dignitaries withdrew,
each followed by his noisy and half-nude _suwarri_.  A small but
select evening party of Europeans was invited that night to the house
of the Viceroy; thither went Audley; and there, as he had quite
anticipated, they met, not in the suite of rooms, however, but in the
magnificent gardens, where there was a display of those wonderful
rockets, stars, wooden shells that burst in mid air, displaying a
thousand prismatic hues, and many others of those pyrotechnic
efforts, in which the Indians so peculiarly excel.

In a walk of the garden, while actually seeking for her, he met Sybil
face to face, but leaning on the arm of the same brilliantly dressed
officer; for no uniform is more gorgeous or lavish than that of the
Irregular Horse, for fancy, vanity, and the army-tailor "run riot"
together.  He was carrying his cap under his other arm, and seemed
entirely satisfied with himself and his companion, in whose pretty
ear he was whispering, while smiling, with all the provoking air of a
privileged man.

"Ah, Miss Devereaux--you surely remember me?" said Audley, bowing
low, with a flush on his brow, and, despite all his efforts, an
unmistakable sickly smile in his face.

Sybil grew a trifle paler, as she presented her hand, with a far from
startled expression; for she had been quite aware that he was
somewhere about the Viceregal Court, and therefore, to her, the
meeting was not quite so unexpected.

"You do not seem surprised?" said he.

"Why should I, Mr. Trevelyan, when I knew that you were here?" she
replied with perfect candour; "but I am so--so delighted--indeed I
am, Audley;" then perceiving that there was an undoubted awkwardness
in all this, she coloured, while her eyes sparkled with vexation, and
she introduced the two gentlemen rather nervously by name, and then
added, in an explanatory tone, to the cavalry officer, "He is quite
an old friend, believe me--the same who saved my life.  Surely I told
you?"

"I am not aware--oh yes--perhaps," drawled the other: "at Cairo, was
it not?"

"No, no--in Cornwall."

"But it was in Cairo you told me, when we visited the citadel by
moonlight----"

"And we are, as I said, such old friends," she added hastily.

"That, doubtless, you will have much to say to each other.  Permit
me; for I am perhaps _de trop_," interrupted the other, twirling a
moustache, and looking somewhat cloudy; "but I shall hope to see you
ere the trumpets announce supper;" and with a smiling bow he resigned
Sybil to Audley's proffered arm, and retired with a good grace to
join another group.

"Sybil," said Audley, after a half-minute's pause, during which he
had been surveying her with fond and loving eyes, "by what singular
incidence of the stars are we blessed by meeting thus!"

"You may well ask, if such you feel it to be," she replied calmly,
and her voice made his heart vibrate as she spoke; "yet it is simple
and prosaic enough.  I am here solely by the influence of misfortune."

"Misfortune?"

"Yes."

"Oh, explain."

"When poor mamma died, what was left for me but to eat the bread of
dependence?--and I am a dependent now."

"Sybil!"

"I came to India as that which you find me."

"And that is----"

"The humble friend--the companion, for it is nothing more in plain
English--of the Governor-General's lady.  Mamma gone--Denzil, too, in
Afghanistan--was I not fortunate in finding such a home?"

"My poor Sybil," exclaimed Audley, gnawing his moustache and pressing
her soft hand and arm against his side.  Then he became silent, as
the past and present, for a little, held his soul in thrall; and far
from the brilliant fête of the Anglo-Indian Court his mind flashed
back to other days, and he saw again only Sybil Devereaux and the
purple moorland, the solemn rock-pillar, the lonely tarn, with its
osier isles, the long-legged heron and the blue kingfisher amid its
green reedy sedges, and in the soft sunlight the grey granite earns
cast their shadows on the lee, as when he had seen her on that day
when first they met; and much of shame for himself and for his father
mingled with the memory and his emotion.

But there was a change here!

The poor, pale girl, who had so anxiously and wearily sought to sell
her pencilled sketches and water-coloured drawings in the shops of
the little market town, who so often with an aching heart took them
back, through the mist and the rain and the wind, to the humble
cottage where her mother lay dying, was now in a very different
sphere, richly though modestly dressed, easy in air and bearing,
perfectly self-possessed, surrounded by wealth and rank, yet with all
the secret pride of her little heart, nieek, gentle, and happy in
aspect.

She, too, was silent for a time, during which she glanced at him
covertly and timidly.

"Here again was Audley," was the thought of her heart; "did he love
her still?  Had he truly loved her, even _then_?" was the next
thought, and her heart half answered, "Yes--he had loved her, but
only as the worldly love;" and this fear, this half-conviction,
dashed her present joy.  Yet no woman wishes to believe, or cares to
admit even to herself, that the power she once exerted over a man's
heart can, under any circumstances, pass altogether away.

"Sybil," said he, "you, any more than I, cannot have forgotten all
our past, and the scenes where we met--the wild shore, the
precipices, the grey granite rocks of our own Cornwall; and that
awful hour in the Pixies' Cave, too--can you have forgotten that?"

"Far from it, Audley,--I have forgotten nothing; and now I must
remember the difference of rank that places us so far--so very far
apart," she added with a strange flash in her eye and a quiver in her
short upper lip.

"Come this way, dear Sybil.  I have much to say--to talk with you
about--but we must be alone;" and he led her down a less frequented
walk, apart from the company, the strains of the military music, the
coloured lights and lanterns that hung in garlands and festoons from
tree to tree, and the soaring fireworks that ever and anon filled the
soft dewy air with the splendour of many-lined brilliance.

"Will this not seem marked?" asked Sybil nervously and almost
haughtily.

"How?"

"I must beware of attracting notice now--here especially; and you are
no longer the mere Audley Trevelyan of other times."

"Then, dearest, who the deuce am I?" asked he, laughing.

Sybil had seen the Hindoo maidens--slender, graceful, and dark-eyed
girls--launching their love-lamps from the ghauts upon the sacred
waters of the Ganges--watching them with thrills of alternate joy and
fear, as they floated away under the glorious silver radiance of the
Indian moon.  She had heard their wails of sorrow if the flame
flickered out and died; or their merry shouts and songs of glee if
they floated steadily and burned truly and bravely.  Audley's
affection had been to her as a light in her path that had vanished;
but now her love-lamp seemed to be lit again; for Audley, with
admirable tact, conversed with her as if on their old and former
footing, expressing only what he felt--the purest and deepest joy at
thus suddenly meeting her again, and he had too much good taste to
make the slightest reference to the gossip of his friend Stapylton,
the ex-Hussar, though certainly he had neither forgotten it, nor the
unpleasantly offhand mode in which it had been communicated to him.

"But how strange--to come to India, my dear girl, of all places in
the world!  What led you to think of it?" he asked.

"Have I not already told you?  I did not think of it: chance threw
the offer in my way; and I had two sufficient reasons, at least, for
accepting of it."

"And these--bless them, say I!--these were----"

"That my brother, dear Denzil, was here--here then, at least."

"And I--too?"

"I do not say so--least of all must I say so now; and then Lady
----'s offers were most advantageous to a penniless girl like me.
You and, more than all, your father, deemed me no suitable match for
you, when we were in England--when I was an inmate of my parent's
house at Porthellick.  You see, I speak quite plainly, Audley, and as
one who is quite alone in the world; now, when by death and--and
misfortune, I am reduced to eat the bread of dependence, the matter
is worse than ever."

"But you love me still, Sybil--do you not!"

She was silent and trembling now.

"Speak," he urged; "you do love me still?"

"Yes, Audley."

"And will marry me, Sybil!"

"No."

"You love another then--another in secret?"

"No--one may not, cannot, love two."

But Audley thought of Stapylton and that devilish Irregular Horseman,
and struck the heel of his glazed boot viciously into the gravel of
the path.




CHAPTER XXV.

CONCLUSION.

After a panse he resumed--

"There is something in your tone, Sybil, that I do not understand.
Doubtless your heart has much to accuse me of; but I have been the
victim of circumstances, of my father's odd whimsical views--his
selfishness, in fact; but here I can cast all such at defiance," he
added, gathering courage as he perceived that she still wore on her
hand--and what a pretty plump little hand it was!--his diamond
betrothal ring--the diamond that whilom had figured as an eye of
Vishnu, till Sergeant Treherne poked it out with his bayonet at Agra.
"Listen, dearest Sybil; we are far away from England with all its
insular and provincial prejudices--away from those local influences
which my family exercised over me--my father's hostility, my mother's
sneers, and so forth.  I am secure of staff appointments--better
these than casual loot or batta, I can tell you.  I am independent of
home allowances; and, to talk solidly and plainly, can think now in
earnest of matrimony.  Listen to me, Sybil;" and glancing hastily
about, he tried to slip an arm round her, but she nimbly eluded him,
and said--

"Then you have not heard the news we brought up country with us!"

"News!"

"Yes--my poor Audley."

"About what?"

"Your change of circumstances."

"Mine!--dearest Sybil, what can you mean?"

"Your succession to the title."

"Circumstances--title!--explain, in Heaven's name, Sybil."

She then told him that his father had died suddenly--died, as the
_Morning Post_ announced, in the same library at Rhoscadzhel, and
somewhat in the same manner, as his late uncle, when he was in the
act of composing a long and elaborate paper legally reviewing the
merits of the Afghan war; another grave had been opened and closed in
the family tomb; another escutcheon hung on the porte-cochère of the
princely old manor-house; and that he, Audley Trevelyan, was now Lord
Lamorna, as the Governor-General would doubtless announce to him on
the morrow.

And in his lonely tomb beside the Kuzzilbash fort lay one who could
never dispute the family honours with him, and whose sorrows and
repinings were past for evermore.

Audley was overwhelmed for a few minutes by this unexpected
intelligence.  There had been no great love, no strong tie, no fine
yet unseen ligament, between father and son; yet the dead man _was_
his father, and he knew had ever been proud of him.  He was shocked,
but not deeply grieved; and "some natural tears he shed:" no more.

His father, however, prudential and unscrupulous in his children's
interests, had always been cold, prosaic, undemonstrative, and
unloveable to them and to all.  Hence he passed away, having so
little individuality that the blank made by his absence left no
craving, and required no filling up; but, nevertheless, for a time,
his cold, pale eyes and equally cold, glittering spectacle-glasses
came vividly back to his son's memory.

Audley was, however, to say the least of it, so much disconcerted by
the news Sybil had given him, that he lacked sufficient energy to
retain her when she was swept from his side by the officer of the
Irregulars, on a theatrical flourish of the vice-regal trumpets
announcing that the supper-rooms were open.

The course of balls and other entertainments that followed the durbar
and the news from Cabul were attended by neither Sybil nor Audley,
now recognised and congratulated by all the European society at Simla
as Lord Lamorna, and by the Viceroy, who offered him all the leave he
might require to settle his affairs at home.  Sybil had her brother's
recent death to plead; and she looked forward with intense interest
to seeing Waller, and to the returning army, though Denzil was no
longer in its ranks.

They heard at Simla, how General Pollock had dismounted or destroyed
every cannon in the Balla Hissar and in the city, and given to the
flames the Mosque of the Feringhees, an edifice built by the vanity
of Ackbar to consecrate and commemorate the sanguinary destruction of
Elphinstone's army; the great bazaar also, once the emporium of the
Eastern world; and how all the castles and forts of the khans and
chiefs had likewise been given to the flames; how the sky was
reddened for days and nights, and that the fiery gleam of the burning
city was still visible on the close of the fourth day, when our rear
guard was defiling through the mountains of Bhootkak on their
homeward route to the Sutledge.  Thus was the massacre of Khoord
Cabul finally avenged; but, as Sybil thought in her heart, "would it
restore the dead!"

Their graves, unmarked and unconsecrated, and the ruined city alone
remained to tell of the strife that had been.  A touching address,
signed by all the ladies whom his energy and activity had done so
much to rescue, was delivered to Sir Richmond Shakespere; and with
Taj Mohammed Khan, the discarded Wuzeer of Cabul, a beggared fugitive
and exile, as the sole friend who accompanied them, our troops came
down on their homeward way, laden with spoil, and among it the great
gates of Somnath, an object of adoration to the Hindoos; and thus
ended the fatal war in Afghanistan.

Audley had been duly informed by letters, that his brother-officer,
Waller, and the Trecarrels were also coming down country, and should
ere long be at Ferozpore or Simla; and Sybil, who had now heard all
the story of Rose and Denzil, longed, with a longing that no words
can describe, to see her.

There is no emotion in this world more delightful, and nothing
perhaps more beautiful, than a young girl's first dream of love; for
a young man's first affair of the heart is even different in some
respects.  It is so full of innocence, of simplicity and truth, if
the girl is pure and ingenuous; it is so full, also, of a new-born
mystery, a charm, and a world of thought, of chance and risk, where
there may be triumph or defeat, victory or failure, sorrow perhaps,
and joy perhaps--but still she hopes, above all, a delight and
happiness hitherto unknown.  Hence it becomes absorbing; and such had
been Sybil's love for Audley at home when she had the shelter of her
mother's breast, and such for a time it had been after they were to
all appearance so hopelessly separated; and now, after a lull, or
being for a space, as it were, suppressed and crushed well-nigh out,
by change, by distance, time, and travel,--now the love-lamp shone
again.

And Audley, ere he had heard of his succession to that title which
should have been Denzil's, had fated Denzil lived, had made her an
abrupt but formal proposal of his hand.  Would he renew it now?

She was not left long in doubt; for under the cognizance and with the
express approbation of the wife of the Viceroy, who deemed herself in
the place of mother and protectress to Sybil, he renewed his offer,
and then the lady judiciously left the cousins--for such he had told
her they were--to settle the matter between them.

"Ah, Audley," said Sybil, "too well do you know how I am situated;
what or whom have I to cling to in this world--but you, perhaps?" she
added, with a low voice, while her breast heaved, and her
half-averted face was full of passionate tenderness.  "Now that my
poor Denzil is gone, nor kith, nor kin, nor inheritance--what can I
offer you in return!"

"Yourself, darling; what more do I ask in this world!" he said, in a
low and earnest voice, as he gradually drew her nearer him; and as
her hand went caressingly on his neck, it seemed to him a dearer
collar than either the Bath or Garter could be, for "what is all the
glory of the world compared with the joy of thus meeting--thus having
those we love?"

"Now, Sybil," said he, "you find how difficult it is to forget that
one has loved----"

"And been beloved," murmured the girl.

"More than all by such a pure-souled heart as yours.  You remember
our first meeting by the tarn?"

"Could I ever forget it?"

"And our learned disquisition on flirtation, too.  How odd it seems
now, darling."

"And dear old Rajah--you have not our rough, shaggy _introducteur_
with you," said Sybil, smiling.

"Poor dog, no.  I left him at home in Rhoscadzhel, and, somehow, he
is dead; that is all I know about it--so Gartha told me in a letter."

"All who love me die--even the poor dog.  Surely they would be kind
to your pet, for your sake."

"They--well, I don't know--doubtless."

Audley cared not to say that, by his lady-mother's orders, the dog
had been destroyed as a nuisance--the last legacy of his comrade,
poor Delamere, who died in the jungle.

"Ah, if my dear Denzil had lived to see this day!" said the happy
girl, after a pause that was full of thought.

"Sybil, God knows how for your sake, even at the time when I never,
never, hoped to see you more, I sought to protect and love your
brother; but he repelled, avoided, and seemed to loathe me.  Yet he
saved my life in the Khyber Pass.  It was through sorrow for his
mother--and--and, perhaps, love for Rose Trecarrel; for he would be
jealous of me, among other things, poor lad!"

"And she--she?"

"Rose was very heedless, Sybil; but, after all Bob Waller has
written, let us not talk of the past now.  You will learn to love her
well, I know."

"I hope so: I must--I shall, for Denzil's sake."

"My sweet little love!--my Sybil, so tender and so true!" exclaimed
Audley, pressing her with ardour to his breast.

But a short time ago, Sybil had been hoping that she would forget
him; hoping, while journeying towards the land where he was--the land
of the Sun--she who long since should have been his wife.  She had
striven for forgetfulness, hopelessly, yet with something of
earnestness in the desire; and now that she had heard his voice
again, the old spell was upon her--the spell of past hours, of
remembered days--the spell of her lover's presence; and to be with
him, the girl acknowledged in her heart, was to be in heaven again!

But now, we fear that we have intruded upon them quite long enough.

And so, till the time came when they should be joined by Waller and
the Trecarrels (for companionship, it had been arranged that they
should all take the journey by dawk and river-steamer, and then the
overland route home together), the days passed pleasantly and swiftly
at delightful Simla, in rides and drives among its wonderful scenery;
where the netted bramble, the great strawberry, and giant fern
covered all the rocks; the soft peach, the dark plum, the rosy apple,
and the golden pear grew wild; and the dark-green pines, vast in
proportion as the stupendous Himalayas, from whence they sprang, cast
a solemn shadow over all, making deep and leafy recesses where the
monkey swung by his tail, the buffalo browsed at noon, the leopard
and the wild hog lurked for their food; by mountain villages that
clustered near the fortified dwelling of the chieftain whose tower
was built like the cone of an English glass house; by hill and vale,
rock and stream, where flocks were grazing, watched by shepherds,
quaint and savage-looking as their rural god, the son of Mercury, and
by Thibet mastiffs, that reminded Sybil of her lover's four-footed
friend, the Rajah of past days; and ever and anon, as they drove, or
rode, or rambled, they talked, as lovers will do, of their future
home in Cornwall, with all its associations so dear to them, and now
so far away, and so they would marvel

  "What feet trod paths that now no more
    Their feet together tread?
  How in the twilight looked the shore?
    Was still the sea outspread
  Beneath the sky, a silent plain,
  Of silver lamps that wax and wane?
  What ships went sailing by the strand
  Of that fair consecrated land?"


Waller arrived at Simla to find himself gazetted in the _Bengal
Hurkaru_ as major, and to get, like Audley, his glittering Order of
the Dooranee Empire from the hands of the Viceroy; therefore he hung
it round the white neck of Mabel, while Rose fell heiress to that
which should, had he survived, have been her father's decoration.

So the schemes, the plotting with the wretched solicitor, Sharkley,
and all the avarice of Downie Trevelyan availed him nothing in one
sense; for now the daughter of that Constance Devereaux he had so
cruelly wronged was coming home to Rhoscadzhel as the bride of his
son, and in her own hereditary place as the Lady of Lamorna.

It is but justice to his memory, however, to record, that having some
premonition or presentiment that death was near, or might come on him
as it came on his older kinsman, something of the spirit of the
Christian and the gentleman got the better of the more cold-blooded
and sordid training of the lawyer; and Downie wrote out, sealed up,
and left a confession concerning the two papers he had obtained and
destroyed; and this document was found tied up with his will, in the
library of Rhoscadzhel, by Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole, his
astounded solicitors.  Not that any act of roguery surprised them,
but only the folly of any man ever committing the admission thereof
to ink and paper.

Audley and Sybil were but one couple out of several especially among
the rescuers and the rescued, who were seized with matrimonial
fancies to make Simla gay, after the retreat from Cabul--the result
of propinquity, perhaps, and the system of chances.  We may briefly
state that they were married by the chaplain of the Governor-General,
who gave the bride away; and not long after, Waller gave Mabel's
marriage-ring a guard, wherein was set a jewel, the envy of all the
ladies there--the sapphire which he had plucked from the steel cap of
Amen Oolah Khan at the Battle of Tizeen.

At Simla Rose was thus twice a bridesmaid, and a lovely one she
looked.

But was Rose ever married in the end? some may ask; for such a girl
could not be without offers, especially in India.  We have only to
add, that the once-gay and heedless Rose Trecarrel is unwedded still.

On many a grey earn and lofty and rugged headland in Cornwall were
fires, lighted by the miners and peasantry but chiefly about
Rhoscadzhel--beacons so bright in honour of the new lord and lady,
that they shone far over land and sea, and in such numbers that the
Guebres and fire-worshippers of old, could they have seen them, might
have deemed that the adoration of the Fire-god was again in its
glory, as when the Scilly Isles were consecrated to the sun; and
Derrick Braddon, who, on the strength of recent changes, had
installed himself as a species of deputy-governor or major-domo at
Rhoscadzhel, had a deep carouse, in which he was fully assisted by
Messrs. Jasper Funnel, old Boxer, and others of the plush-breeched
and aiguilletted fraternity.

Meanwhile, those whose fortunes we have followed throughout the
campaign of Western India and the retreat from Cabul were speeding
homeward, and when from the coast of Orissa they saw the steamer
awaiting them in the rough and dangerous roadstead of Balasore, where
usually the Calcutta pilots leave the home-bound ships, they hailed
the bright blue world of waters as an old friend; for, to our
island-born, "the sea, the sea," is what it was to the returning
Greeks of old Xenophon!

"Now, Mabel," said Waller, as with, a lorgnette in her pretty hand,
she surveyed the roadstead--the plain gold hoop on that hand being in
Bob Waller's eyes the most charming trinket there, "a few weeks more,
and all these foreign seas and shores will be left far behind; we
shall be home at our little place that looks from Cornwall on the
apple-bowers of Devon.  Ha!  Trevelyan, you and I shall then each sit
down under his own vine and fig-tree in peace, and enjoy a quiet
weed, like the patriarch of old--if the said patriarch ever possessed
one.  What say you, my Lady Lamorna?" he added, as he assisted
Sybil's light figure to spring from the handsome and well-hung
carriage in which they had travelled from Calcutta.

Sybil only smiled, and looked joyously at the sea, as she threw up
the white lace veil of her bridal bonnet; and Audley, too, was gazing
on the sea.

"Waller, we have undergone much," said he--"days of danger, and
nights of anguish, yet we have survived them all, and been true to
the end, and in the past have fully realised the force of the maxim
that--

            'Come what come may,
  _Time and the Hour_ runs through the roughest day.'"



THE END.



BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS



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


    

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