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!"