CHAPTER VII.

THE DAUGHTER OF NOX.

'And you have actually found us out—here? How strange!' exclaimed Ellinor, blushing deeply with pleasure and surprise.

'Through my appreciative friend—appreciative in art, I mean—who bought your charming landscape, the view of that dear old—what is it?—Linn—Linn of the May—yes, darling,' replied Sleath—Sleath the slimy, with the china-blue eyes and Mephistophelian smile, as he twirled out his tawny moustache, and regarded the girl with a passionate expression rippling over his face. 'Après moi le deluge! you will think, perhaps; but now, darling Ellinor, that I have found you at last, we must not part again.'

Ere leaving Birkwoodbrae Ellinor had felt mortified, even insulted, on finding that Sir Redmond, after the night of the frustrated elopement, made no sign that he remembered her existence; but the moment she saw him the barriers she had mentally raised between them fell at once, and she no more sought, as she had done of late, to erase him from her heart.

Poor foolish Ellinor!

'I had ever a hope,' said Sleath, caressing her, 'that I would come upon you suddenly again, and take you by surprise with the earnestness and passion of my love; and, Ellinor, the time has come—thank heaven, the time has come!'

And he cast his eyes upward and sighed sentimentally to the ceiling.

'An age seems to have elapsed since that night,' he added.

'I was at the appointed place,' said Ellinor, softly, and colouring deeply.

'So was I,' said Sir Redmond.

'And why—why——'

'Did I not appear, you would ask?'

'Yes—though perhaps it was as well not now.'

'I was pinned by the leg by that accursed brute of your sister's.'

'Jack.'

'D—n him—yes! Pardon me; but there was something grotesque, humiliating, and exasperating in the whole episode.'

'I was certain it was thus; but—but why did you never write to me?'

'Never write to you!' exclaimed Sleath, with well-feigned surprise; 'you left—what's its name—Birkwoodbrae——'

'Early in September.'

'Exactly—that is the reason you did not get my letters.'

'You wrote, then?' exclaimed Ellinor, her soft face brightening with pleasure.

'A score of letters, and they were all returned to me from the Post Office,' replied Sleath, unblushingly.

So Ellinor thought, 'I have wronged him; it was but a short time ago since this man loved me passionately, and so he must love me still. No love worthy of the name would die in a couple of months.'

'I always wrote in fear, too, dearest Ellinor.'

'Fear of whom?'

'Of your sister—of that old devil-dodger Wodrow, that sly, spying fellow Colville—my uncle, too, who is ailing still, but whose wealth will all be ours—ours, Ellinor! In my heart of hearts I have ever looked forward to the time when—on finding one who loved me truly—I should settle down into a quiet life and be happy, in a cottage near a wood, and all that sort of thing if necessary, my wants are so few—so simple; but that is not required; we shall have a mansion in Belgravia, a moor in the Highlands, a bog in Ireland for the snipe shooting, a place in the Midlands, and a yacht at Cowes, and heaven only knows all what more—when my uncle dies.'

And as he folded her caressingly to his heart and nestled her face in his neck, the poor little fool believed every word he uttered; and then Sleath began to talk to her of that dangerous and fascinating past—the days of their early meeting among the Birks of Invermay.

Even while caressing and fondling her, his practised eye took in the whole details of the room in which they were seated, with its furniture and appurtenances. There was an air of poverty—even meanness—he thought (for his eye was accustomed to luxury and splendour) within the place, and this, with the ugly and sordid prospect without, as seen through the windows, encouraged him greatly in his insolent and daring projects.

He would try again to carry off the girl somehow—anyhow and without delay. Who was to punish him, or who was there to protect her?

That 'cousin' story of Colville's was, of course, all bosh! The very circumstance of her residence in such a place as Paddington proved it to be so.

By a man of his address and past experience in all manner of worldly rascality, her timidity, coyness, or scruples must, he thought, be eventually overcome. He had entered stakes on the race; he would not readily drop out of the hunt—the pursuit of a helpless girl; if it did not redound to his credit, it would at least afford him pleasure, and if successful would flatter his vanity, for her beauty was undoubted.

Moreover, he strangely felt somewhat revengeful for the trouble she had already given him, and to this sentiment the downfall of her pride and the destruction, if possible, of her delicacy and purity of nature would be soothing to his spirit.

Even amid his caresses and love-making there was an easy insolence in his manner, born of his innate and perverse vulgarity of race and nature, and encouraged by the girl's unprotected condition, without parents or brothers; but it was so veiled that poor Ellinor never suspected it till he said, with something of irritation in his manner,

'As for the old devil-dodger, we do not require his consent now, I suppose?'

'Who—what?' asked Ellinor, with perplexity.

'Doctor Wodrow—the psalm-singing old beggar.'

'Do not speak of him so irreverently,' said Ellinor, imploringly; 'he made a pet of me from my infancy, and I love him as if he was my father.'

'Oh,' said Sir Redmond, jealously, 'and his son, too, I suppose?'

'How can you speak to me thus?' asked Ellinor, as the agonised face of the young hussar she had seen in the park came upbraidingly before her. How little Sleath knew or appreciated the depth of her pure, innocent, and dreamy nature, albeit that, through fanning her ambition, he had taught her to be false to Robert Wodrow.

After a pause, resuming his softest tone, he said, while holding her hands in his, and looking fondly and admiringly down into her soft hazel eyes,

'Then, dearest, you will, as before, consent to a private marriage?'

'If Mary will give me permission,' replied Ellinor, slowly and with hesitation.

'Mary—is she your keeper?'

'She is my dear and only sister.'

'But—but will she accord her permission?'

'I can only hope so.'

'If not?'

'Then we can but wait.'

'My uncle's death, for he will never consent.'

'It is a sad event to look forward to.'

'Very,' replied Sleath, with difficulty repressing a smile; 'but I cannot wait.'

'There must be no running away—no attempt at eloping again,' said Ellinor, firmly.

Sir Redmond thought of Jack's teeth, and looked nervously and furtively about him.

'Jack is with Mary,' said Ellinor, who detected the glance.

'As you will—what you please, darling, so that you'll be mine. I'll see a sky-pilot—I mean a clergyman—on the subject,' he added, thinking that, after a little coaching, Gaiters might officiate in that capacity; but then how about the registrar and a church? 'Well, that is agreed upon, and we shall soon be one.'

To change the subject for a time, that he might consider the further development of his nefarious scheme,

'How on earth did you come to select such a queer locality as this to reside in?' asked Sleath, looking with genuine surprise at the humble but neat apartment, where, however, there were now many traces of ladies' hands and work.

'It was a chance. We were, and are, so ignorant of London.'

'And your landlady—you have one, I suppose?'

'Is the kindest, most attentive, and dearest old thing; not that she is very old either. And she has seen better days, it would seem.'

'Of course. I never knew a landlady who had not. And so she is kind to you?'

'And to Mary—unvaryingly so.'

'Ah, I must thank her for all this.'

'Here she comes to lay the tea things. Mrs. Fubsby,' said Ellinor, as the latter entered the room, 'this is the gentleman who bought——'

'Fubsby!' interrupted Sleath, in a dismayed tone. 'What the devil—Seraphina Fubsby!'

'Gentleman!' shrieked Mrs. Fubsby, letting her tray fall crash with all its contents on the floor. 'Villain! double-dyed villain, do we meet again—again after all these years?'

'She is mad!' said he, starting to his feet and keeping the table between herself and him.

'This is Sir Redmond Sleath!' exclaimed Ellinor, in tones of terror and explanation.

'The same man who married me under the name of Redmond, and then deserted me in France. My husband at last, after all these years of cruel desertion.'

'Your husband?' said Ellinor, in a voice like a husky whisper.

'Yes; and look at the white-faced craven. He does not deny it. Listen, Miss Ellinor, though what has brought him here I know not. No good, you maybe assured. I was waiting-maid to Lady Dunkeld in Paris when he and I became acquainted on the Boulevards, and he married me under the name of Redmond.'

'You married me, you mean, or thought you did, you artful and accursed Jezebel,' exclaimed Sleath, choking with rage.

'Oh, what is all this I hear?' moaned Ellinor, overwhelmed with horror, dismay, and humiliation.

'The bitter truth, young lady,' said Mrs. Fubsby, beginning partly to take in the situation.

'You have no proofs now of what you say, you infernal Jezebel, who in your maturer years entrapped me in my boyhood!' thundered Sleath.

'No proofs!'

'No—the old devil-dodger—the curé who performed the ceremony, as I suppose you will call it, was shot in the days of the Commune.'

'True, but the records of his chapel still exist.'

'What is all this to me?'

'You will soon learn to your cost, now that I have discovered you under your true name.'

As related, Mrs. Fubsby (who had resumed her maiden name) was not without personal attraction; but she was wasted in aspect, though only about forty—perhaps forty-five—years of age; and now her dark eyes were ablaze with rage and grief. Thus she spoke the truth when she said,

'I was a pretty young woman, Miss Ellinor, when I first met this wretch in human form; but disappointment, disgust, neglect, and shame, too, have all made me what I seem now—old-looking, wasted, and blasted!'

At this crisis Robert Wodrow came upon the scene. Entering abruptly and unannounced, he regarded the trio with extreme bewilderment. He saw Mrs. Fubsby, whom he knew not, convulsed with just indignation; Ellinor in tears on a sofa, her bowed face hidden in her hands, her whole air that of one completely crushed, and sitting gathered in a heap, as it were; while Sleath, pale with rage, spite, and baffled knavery, was about to withdraw.

Robert Wodrow never stopped to make any inquiry. He could only conceive one thing—that Ellinor had been somehow insulted or wronged. All the jealousy, fury, and hatred that had so long swelled in his heart now gushed up in fiercer heat, and, endued with thrice his usual strength thereby, he sprang upon Sleath, grasped him by the collar behind, and, with many a kick and heavy lash of his riding-switch thrust him from the room, down the stair, and headlong into the street, where by one final impetus from his foot he flung him in a half breathless heap by the kerbstone, and then closed the house door.

Gathering himself up quickly, Sleath hastened away, registering a truly infernal vow of vengeance—a vow all the deeper that it was unuttered.

Thus had light been suddenly and luridly thrown on the great secret of his life—the secret which prevented him from raising his eyes to Blanche Galloway, as stated in the fifth chapter of our first volume—which he dared not do as a married man.

He was decidedly unfortunate in his views regarding Ellinor Wellwood; and now the daughter of Nox—inevitable Nemesis—had overtaken him!

Panting with exertion, and with something of a grim laugh, Robert Wodrow returned to the room, muttering to himself,

'He'll not forget that last kick with my regulation boot, in the region of the os coccygis. By Jove, I haven't forgotten my Quain and Turner! And now to find out what all this was about.'

We need scarcely say that Ellinor's soul almost died within her at the contemplation of the two narrow escapes she had from ruin and despair!

Robert Wodrow literally ground his teeth when he heard of all that had just transpired.

He looked worn and haggard, and amid her own mortification Ellinor's heart bled for him, for she knew that his life had been crushed by her; while she was ever to him

'His love that loved him so,
His love who loved him years ago.'

'I don't think, Ellinor, said he, 'that even in my dear old governor's "Analecta" would he find a quotation suitable to this fellow's rascality; but I agree with Calvin and Knox in their views of some men.'

'How?'

'That they are born to be damned, and this fellow Sleath is one of them.'

'If men or women are bad they often become so through the faults of each other,' said the landlady; 'but I'll bring my man to book if there is law to be had in London.'

And now Mary arrived, accompanied by her faithful four-footed friend, who recognised Robert Wodrow, despite his hussar uniform, and was profuse in his delight, leaping almost to his face at times.

The minutes of this farewell interview sped like lightning!

Robert Wodrow, without a thought of himself, had always loved Ellinor in the past, and he loved her still, 'for true love can live even in despair,' says a writer; but true love is scarce as the phœnix; and he had for Ellinor, despite her ill-usage of him, all the reverence that went out with the age of chivalry.

'I am going far away,' said he, while hot tears rolled over the cheeks of both girls, and his own too; 'and when we meet again, if ever—if ever, Ellinor—we shall both be old and cold perhaps—old in experience, and—thank God—cold in heart—old and cold, and feeling none of the bitterness of an hour like this!'

A few days after the public prints announced the departure of the Hussars for India, and the sisters thought sadly that, too probably, never would they see or hear of Robert Wodrow again.

CHAPTER VIII.

MRS. DEROUBIGNE.

The advent of Sleath, and perhaps the influence she had upon the life of Robert Wodrow, had a crushing effect upon the overwrought nervous system of Ellinor. She was again ill—ailing with something mental rather than bodily—and many little comforts were necessary for her, thus taxing Mary's slender exchequer sorely, and adding to her anxieties.

Colville had passed out of the life of the latter, but not quite out of her thoughts. He was going to India—she had heard him say so.

Perhaps he was already gone. So far as the newspapers were concerned, she had seen no notice of his marriage to Blanche Galloway, an engagement with whom he had so distinctly disavowed.

For a moment vanity whispered to Mary's heart, was he going far away that he might forget herself?

In this idea she was, perhaps, nearer the truth than she knew. Her first and only love affair—if such it really was—had been a dream, and she thought,

'Life and the world and mine own self are changed
For a dream's sake.'

And Colville might, to a great extent, have applied the quotation to himself, as we may soon show.

Times there were when Mary thought bitterly, 'Why did he teach me to love him, and then neglect me so? It was cruel, cruel! I was so happy and content till he came.'

And often did this idea haunt her while she taught her little pupils to play the sweet, low 'Birks of Invermay.' But ere long a shock awaited her.

On leaving the house of these pupils one day near Portman Square, she incidentally saw, when taking her parasol off the hall table, the visiting-cards of Lady Dunkeld and the Hon. Blanche Galloway lying there, and a thrill, a presentiment of coming evil, filled her heart; this emotion was verified when, on calling next day, a brief note was handed to her, enclosing a little cheque, with the blunt information that her services were dispensed with.

Her name had by some means caught the ears of these malevolent ones, and this, she knew, was the result of their influence and enmity; and, gentle though her nature, a rush of anger and disgust, not unmingled with dismay, filled her heart.

How was she to break this new calamity to poor ailing Ellinor—the tidings of her rude dismissal? And, loth to return to her home, she wandered through the streets for a time in aimless misery.

To add to the gloom of her spirit, it was a foggy November afternoon, and she felt the most intense depression, all the more so that she was as yet unaccustomed to the breathless atmosphere, or rather want of atmosphere—peculiar to London generally, and never so much as in that season—the month of death, as the French call it.

Walking onward in the aimless way described, she found herself at the end of Upper Brook Street, where it opens into Grosvenor Square, and there a lady was stepping from her carriage before one of the stately mansions. Mary, full of her own sad thoughts, nearly jostled her, and, pausing, apologised.

The lady, a tall and handsome woman, paused too, and Mary recognised Mrs. Deroubigne, who had complimented her upon her playing, and spoken so kindly to her at Lady Dunkeld's dance; and something pleading and pathetic in Mary's whole air and face now made Mrs. Deroubigne regard her attentively for a moment.

'We have met before,' said she. 'You are the young lady I had the pleasure of hearing play at Number 60, Park Lane?'

'Yes, Mrs. Deroubigne,' replied Mary, in a low voice.

'You know my name!'

'I heard it mentioned incidentally, and the kindness of your manner made it dwell in my memory.'

'You look both pale and ill, my dear,' said the lady; 'come in, and let me give you a glass of wine—it will do you good.'

Mary thought of Lady Dunkeld, with whom she had last seen this lady, and, pausing, muttered her thanks, and accepted the invitation, but hesitatingly.

Little could she foresee that her whole future life hinged—if we may use the old parliamentary expression—upon that chance meeting with Mrs. Deroubigne!

The latter would not, we may be assured—for she was very aristocratic in her tastes and proclivities—have noticed an ordinary 'person,' young or old, employed to furnish music for any dance she had been at; but there was something so sweet and pathetic, as stated, in Mary's face and manner—more than all, something so perfectly ladylike in her bearing, that Mrs. Deroubigne felt attracted towards her.

Mary did not get the proffered wine a moment too late; so much was she overcome, mentally and bodily, by the bitter mortification to which she had that day been subjected, that the stately drawing-room in which she found herself seemed to be whirling round her.

'As you know my name, my dear,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, 'may I inquire yours?'

'Mary Wellwood.'

The lady's colour changed a little.

'Wellwood?' she repeated; 'that name was very familiar to me once. I knew a captain—latterly he was colonel—Wellwood, who left the Army, and went to reside near Invermay in Scotland. Perhaps he was a relation?'

'He was my dear father,' replied Mary, in a broken voice.

'Indeed—your father! He was my dearest friend.'

How very dear he had been to her once, the old lady did not say then; but thereby hung a tale!

'Your face seemed strangely familiar to me,' she said, while regarding Mary with tender interest, and patting her hand as she held it between her two. 'Your father is dead?'

'And mamma too, otherwise I might not have been reduced to accept the occupation in which you found me.'

'This is sad—very sad!' said Mrs. Deroubigne, her eyes suffusing as she spoke. 'Your father, I repeat, was the dearest friend of my girlhood—how long, long it seems ago now—my dear girl, I might have been your mother, and for his sake I should like to act as one to you now.'

Mary's heart went forth to the speaker, and then she thought of Ellinor. The words of Mrs. Deroubigne came as a kind of revelation to her; she had heard a rumour of some old and early love affair of her father's, which had led to the bitter family quarrel referred to in the first chapters of our story.

'And you knew mamma?' asked Mary, wistfully.

'Well, indeed; she was the queen of our regiment and the belle of every town where it was quartered. I can say so now, when I am old and widowed.'

'Ellinor is thought very like her.'

'Who is Ellinor?'

'My only sister.'

'If so, she must be very handsome. And are there only you two left in the world?'

'Yes,' replied Mary; and little by little Mrs. Deroubigne, with growing commiseration, elicited from her some information about herself and sister—their plans and hopes in coming to London; and on hearing them she muttered something about her own 'two little girls,' as if comparingly, and shook her head sorrowfully.

Mrs. Deroubigne was evidently a very charming woman, who had seen much of the world, and as a friend and companion was clever and delightful. After a little pause, she said, suddenly,

'Of course you know your cousin, Captain Wellwood, of the Scots Guards?'

'Only by name, and an unfortunate reputation.'

'Oh, I forgot—there was a family quarrel. He is one of my dearest friends—Leslie Wellwood Colville, as he calls himself now.'

'Wellwood—Colville!' said Mary, inquiringly. 'I beg your pardon, Mrs. Deroubigne, but are there two officers of that name in the Scots Guards?'

'No, only one—Wellwood, who added Colville to his name as successor to a large property—your cousin, in fact—and the peerage he claims, Lord Colville of Ochiltree.'

A light seemed to break on Mary; she knew not what to think; she had no voice to reply. She felt that she changed colour, while a sudden dryness came over her lips and tongue.

She heard the door-bell ring, and knew that Mrs. Deroubigne was speaking again, yet scarcely understood what she said.

'He starts for India in a day or two, and is to lunch with me this afternoon. To meet you—a cousin so charming—will be quite a little surprise for him; and here he comes!' she added, as the door was opened, and Colville—the identical Colville of Birkwoodbrae—was ushered in!

CHAPTER IX.

WAS IT NOT A DREAM?

He came forward through the long drawing-room with his usual easy bearing, his head well set up, his military air, and calm, unflinching eyes, which dilated on seeing Mary Wellwood, and then he paused.

For fully a minute there was dead silence—the silence of dumb bewilderment, and Mary felt how loudly and painfully her heart was beating; while to both Colville and Mrs. Deroubigne it was apparent how much she was agitated, thereby involving a secret which the latter was yet to learn.

Mary had felt that she had cause to be indignant and to feign indifference. As the lover who had trifled with her, as she thought, and gone to the very verge of a declaration or proposal, and then paused, and he—the obnoxious cousin, the heir of entail, one and the same person—stood before her, in her eyes of deep violet blue there came for a brief space the light of a sudden determination, with something of a horrified stare; but ere Mrs. Deroubigne could approach an explanation or introduction, Colville sprang towards the pale and trembling girl, and took both her hands within his own.

'Mary—Mary Wellwood!' he exclaimed, in a voice full of passion and pathos; 'you here!—and do we meet again after all? What mystery is this?'

'Probably a portion of that which seems to have involved all your actions of late,' replied Mary, with the slightest soupçon of hauteur in her manner, while with difficulty restraining her tears.

'But are you not glad to see me again—you whom I loved, and love with all my heart?'

'Captain Colville,' said Mary, attempting, but in vain, to withdraw her hands, 'this painful and degrading mode of treating me must not to be resumed!'

'Painful and degrading? Mary, you know that I love you.'

'You never told me so. I wish I had never seen you, or that I were dead!' exclaimed Mary, a little incoherently, while averting her face, and feeling her determination giving way.

'Never told you so—but you knew; and we were interrupted when we parted last; and then I met with that accident, the wound in my right hand, which prevented me from writing or going to Birkwoodbrae in time to prevent you and Ellinor from vanishing, without trace, as you did.'

By this time she had wrenched her hands away, and, thinking with alarm and dismay of how Mrs. Deroubigne might view this singular scene, she covered her face with them.

'Captain Colville!' she exclaimed, with a tone of expostulation, as he gently pulled them down, while triumph and joy sparkled in his eyes.

'Now, don't look vexed with me any more,' said he, in a tone of tender entreaty, while kissing her hands. 'My dear, dear cousin—dearer than all the world to me,' he added, as the mingled expression of indignation, perplexity, and doubt passed out of her sweet, pale face; 'let me explain all, and tell you how I love you!'

Mary was so shaken by all she had lately undergone that she could only weep now; thus for a moment or two she yielded to him; he pressed her to his heart, and covered her eyes and lips with fast-falling kisses, forgetful of the presence of Mrs. Deroubigne, who looked laughingly on. The good old lady seemed to like the romance of the situation, and of the episode she had so unwittingly brought about.

'And how is Ellinor?' he asked, as Mary drew blushingly back towards their hostess.

'Far from well. Of late she has suffered much——'

'Through my folly?'

'And other matters too.'

Mary felt her poor little head in a whirl, with some difficulty recognising the whole situation.

So the Colville she had learned to love and her cousin Wellwood were one and the same person! Thus, much which had puzzled her on many occasions in the bearing of Dr. Wodrow was accounted for now. They had been in the plot together. Many things that had seemed perplexing and strange were now clear as day. She recalled the initials, and the mystery he made about the W that stood for the middle name, and remembered that she had seen the Wellwood crest—a demi-lion—on his signet ring; nay, it was on it now! She recalled, with some shame and bewilderment, all her sharp and antagonistic utterances about him and his father, and she cast down her long dark lashes as these things came to memory.

And so it was of himself he had spoken, and to himself he had referred, as having been the worse for wine in the cantonments at Lahore; himself he had referred to as being 'not a half bad fellow,' and being wounded in action with the hill tribes; himself on whose supposed coldness and selfishness he heard her descant; and it was regard for her as a beautiful and friendless girl, with the charming tie of cousinship hitherto unknown, that had inspired him as he stood with her side by side at her parents' grave!

'I knew not what love really was till I knew you, Mary,' said he, caressing her again. 'In the world I live and move in, I never thought it would touch me as it did, for there money seeks money or rank. Out of novels and plays, I doubted its existence; but I have learned the sweet lesson at last, and you—the dear cousin who loathed my very name—were my preceptor, Mary!'

'But why—oh, why all this mystery—this concealment of your real position, name, and relationship?'

'Can you ask me, after what I have said? I wanted to know you thoroughly, after all Dr. Wodrow had told me about you and Ellinor. I then wanted you to love me, not as the owner of a landed estate—not as a lounging Guardsman—not for the pretty woods of Birkwoodbrae, that I could perhaps give to you, and would have done so had they not been entailed; but, like the hero of a romance, Mary, for myself alone.'

'And now to lunch, dears,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, as she laughingly kissed Mary. 'I am tired of playing the part of Gooseberry.'

How much they had to talk about, to describe, to explain to each other, out of all the cross-purposes, confusion, and pain that had arisen from her cousin's scheme, the little romance he had concocted, and the end of which he had not foreseen; while, worse than all, but for the doctrine of chances, they might never have met again!

He heard with astonishment of the two episodes of Lady Dunkeld's dance and Westminster Abbey.

'To think that I should be so near you, and have no consciousness of your presence!' he exclaimed. 'Where were my eyes—where was my heart? My poor little Mary, had you only thought of looking in the Army List, you would there have seen that your wicked cousin and Leslie Colville were one and the same man!'

The astonishment of the latter, on hearing of the recent cruel conduct of Lady Dunkeld and her daughter, was only equalled by his just indignation.

'Oh, for the rarity of Christian charity!' he exclaimed.

'I can forgive them now,' said Mary, in a tremulous voice, and with a swift, bright glance at Leslie Colville.

'I cannot,' said he; 'forgiveness is indifference, or nearly so, but no one can quite forgive a wrong like this. But I see the origin of this hostility to one who was helpless against it. When I think how—as you know, my dear Mrs. Deroubigne—how that half-French brat, Blanche Galloway, in her flirty, Continental way, has sung to me, played at me, talked to me, and made œillades, I am disgusted.'

'Come now, Captain Colville,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, 'that is scarcely fair; did you not encourage her a little à la soldat?'

'Not at all! She was ever admiring the rose or flower I had in my button-hole, and when I begged her acceptance thereof, it duly figured in her bosom or hair afterwards, while she flattered herself, no doubt, in the depths of her French imaginings—but I shall teach these Dunkelds a sharp lesson ere I go.'

'Now that you talk of it—and now especially—I do not see why you should go to the East at all,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, while Mary grew paler than before, and felt as if roused from a startling dream.

'True, true, but needs must now. In sorrow for the loss of Mary, I volunteered for special service abroad; and so I find her but to lose her again,' exclaimed Colville.

'Special service!' she asked, in a strange voice. 'What is that?'

'It means detached for staff work where—where operations are in progress,' said he, evasively.

'Speak to the point, Captain Colville,' said Mrs. Deroubigne. 'You go to the north-west frontier of India.'

'India!' repeated Mary, with whitening lips. 'Has life so little joy for you?'

'It had but little till within this hour, dearest Mary.'

'Can you not withdraw your application?' said Mrs. Deroubigne.

'As a soldier's widow, you should know that, unless overtaken by illness, I could not do so with honour.'

'You are right. How unfortunate it is!'

'So, my darling and I have met but to part again.'

Mary heard all this with more dismay than she dared exhibit just then, or trust herself to speak about, and it was with a mingled sense of joy she found herself pledged, before Mrs. Deroubigne, to be Leslie Colville's future wife, and saw flashing on her engaged finger the same diamond ring he had brought for her acceptance on that eventful day at Birkwoodbrae, for then, as now, Mary Wellwood was the one woman in the world for him. 'Whether our passion be prudent,' says Hawley Smart, 'whether the woman we have asked to tread life's path with us is likely to be approved in our maturer years, we reck little. She is the one woman, so far as we are concerned just now, and has she not pledged herself to be so always?'

But no doubt of himself or of his choice came into the heart of Colville. She had already been tried like gold in the fire; and he was yet to be further tried to an extent he little expected.

When the time came to depart, Mary left Mrs. Deroubigne with a heart too full of regard and gratitude for utterance in words. She could only sob on her ample and motherly breast; and Colville, when conveying her in a cab to that home which he had resolved she must change for one more suitable, heard of its locality with sorrow and dismay, and with emotions very different from those of Sir Redmond Sleath when he obtained the address of Ellinor.

'Paddington—Paddington Green! My Heaven, how came you to select such a place?' he exclaimed.

'Through the guard of the train. We asked his advice,' replied Mary, simply.

'This is intolerable! Such a hole—such a den—such a locality! You must quit it without delay,' he added, as the only homes he knew were in Mayfair, Tyburnia, and Belgravia: and though his heart was full of joy the first genuine laugh that escaped him was when he heard the address he was to inquire for.

'Mrs. Seraphina Fubsby! Good heavens, where did she pick up such a name?'

Mary had no time then to inform him that the good woman was fully entitled to another. She was too full of her own thoughts, and, though the fog of that horrible London November day had deepened and darkened all around her, in her heart there seemed sunshine now!

Could it be that so much had passed—that events to her so momentous had occurred—since she had turned away in gloom and almost in despair from the great door of that house near Portman Square, afraid even to tell and crush poor Ellinor's heart by tidings of the new misfortune that had overtaken them?

Was it not all a dream, from which she would awake to a world of bitterness?

But, no. Leslie Colville's betrothal ring was on her finger; his strong, firm and loving hand was clasping hers; and all about her was truth and reality.

'What tidings I bring, dear Ellinor!' she thought, as the cab stopped at the door of their humble abode, and Leslie Colville sprang out to assist her to alight as they heard Jack's bark of welcome.

CHAPTER X.

GOING TO THE FRONT.

So they were solemnly engaged at last, plighted to each other, these cousins, and to be married; but when? For Colville had now to face the perils of the war in Afghanistan ere that event could come to pass.

He was going straight and almost immediately to the scene of strife among the savage passes there, and for Mary to accompany him was impossible just then, and as Ellinor could not be left alone she would have to go too; so the idea was not considered for a moment.

They could but wait the future in trust and hope, and amid the brief joy of the present time was a dread of that future, for he who was departing might never—return.

'All is unchanged at Birkwoodbrae, and old Elspat is there in charge, dearest Mary,' said Colville, 'so you and Ellinor may return if you will, and live there till I come back from the East.'

The temptation to do so was strong—the crave to be at home again, to see the faces of old friends, the dear familiar hills, the silver birks, and the fast-flowing May. But though understanding each other fully as the cousins did now, and though their positions as such were changed and strengthened, Mary in her independence of spirit and character thought she would prefer to struggle on as they were, till he could take her there as his wife.

For her kindness to the sisters, Colville slipped quietly into Mrs. Fubsby's hand a cheque for an ample sum, saying, after he had heard her story, that it would help her in her plans to prove herself Lady Sleath and punish her wrong-doer.

This was on the following day, when Mary told him the simple story of all their recent troubles, while he gazed down upon her with eyes full of truth and tenderness, and her heart was beating tumultuously with its new-found joy. She knew that he loved her now, he whom she felt inclined to adore.

Yet the future seemed to loom darkly before her. There was this terrible campaign in Afghanistan, with its certain and far separation, its remote and fearful contingencies to be faced, endured, and undergone; so Fate seemed still to be cruel to her.

When, in broken accents and with mingled emotions of anger and shame, while her head reclined upon his breast, Mary told Colville of Sir Redmond Sleath's systematic attempts, though secretly married, to lure away her unsuspecting sister Ellinor, great was the wrath and fury of her lover.

Whip in hand, he would assuredly have taken condign vengeance on the back and limbs of the parvenu baronet, but that the latter had to quit London—even England—just about that time, in some haste and in dire disgrace.

At his club he had gambled deeply with Lord Dunkeld and others, from whom he had won great sums of money—more than the peer especially could well afford—and before it was discovered that his wonderful success was due to the use of marked cards.

During a game of quinze one of the players—a brother-Guardsman of Colville's—noticed that several of the cards were in some way indicated, and, after a careful examination, it was found that all the fives and the court cards were marked by the prick of a needle at the corners, and some in the centre, too.

These marks, though almost invisible to the eye, were recognisable by the sense of touch. A storm of indignation burst over Sleath. He was flung down the club stairs, had to eat very 'humble pie' indeed, and was now gone to the Continent, none knew or cared precisely where, with a congenial friend, Mr. Adolphus Dewsnap (of whom more anon); so whatever legal plans Mrs. Fubsby meant to adopt to relinquish her maiden name and insist upon the adoption of that of Lady Sleath, were partially frustrated or delayed for a time by the baronet's disappearance.

On the very day after the engagement, Mary and Ellinor bade her farewell—it could scarcely be said with regret, though the good woman shed abundance of tears on the occasion.

Colville, who resented as absurd and infra dig. Mary's desire of maintaining herself and adding to the slender patrimony their father had left them, brought an invitation from Mrs. Deroubigne, in whose care they were to be left for the future—certainly for a time at least; and she received them with open arms, and a welcome all the more warm that she was just then alone, her two little daughters being absent at a boarding establishment; and, amid the new comforts and ease that surrounded her in Grosvenor Square, Mary forgot for a time the old wish of her heart to go 'home,' as she ever considered Birkwoodbrae her home.

At the commencement of the present century, Malcolm says 'that this square is the very focus of feudal grandeur, religion, fashion, taste, and hospitality, and that the novel-reader must be intimately acquainted with the description of residents within it, when the words "Grosvenor Square" are to be found in almost every work of that species written in the compass of fifty years past.'

Before the house of Mrs. Deroubigne were still to be seen iron link-extinguishers, a remnant of the past, when links were carried before carriages at the West-End till 1807. Though old-fashioned, the mansion was a lofty and stately one; and Mary, when she gazed upon the tall windows on the spacious square and the landscape garden in the centre, with its old trees planted by Kent, wondered if she was the same Mary Wellwood who for so many weeks past had contemplated the frowsy view from the windows of her late abode.

In her regard for Colville, and inspired no doubt by memories of the past and the dead, Mrs. Deroubigne, to do her justice, was unwavering in her kindness and hospitality to her new friends; and times there were when she actually, amid her dream-thoughts, seemed to forget her own married life, and her heart yearned, warmly and strangely, to the two orphan girls of her old lover—the girls who might, she averred laughingly, have been her own daughters, had fate so arranged it.

'Your face, Mary, always reminds me of your father,' she would say, taking the girl's dimpled cheeks caressingly between her hands; 'but yours, Ellinor, suggests to me more of your mamma—you have the same dreamy hazel eyes. And you are romantic, no doubt?' she added, with a fond smile.

'Perhaps; every girl has, it is said, at least one romance in the course of her life,' said Ellinor, thinking of poor Robert Wodrow and the wretched Sleath.

'And, certainly, I have had mine!' said Mrs. Deroubigne, kissing Mary, while old memories floated through her mind, known and clear to herself alone.

Mary thought that though it might be delightful in summer to visit Birkwoodbrae, with Mrs. Deroubigne as a chaperone, she would never go back to it as a home on sufferance—on that she was resolved; and until she was a wedded wife she could but wait in hope, love, and confidence; besides, Mrs. Deroubigne, at Colville's suggestion, had a plan for a little tour on the Continent to occupy some of the time of his absence, and to make the sisters forget some of the mortifications they had recently undergone.

Though the temporary loss of Mary and the mystery involving her movements—her very fate after leaving Perthshire—had so tortured the heart of Colville that he had resolved to seek for change amid the stirring scenes of Eastern war once more, he felt that he could now leave England with emotions of comparative happiness and content.

He knew that she was in safety—surrounded by every comfort, even by splendour—and had been saved from much he could not quite foresee, by the slender but blessed chance of her meeting with Mrs. Deroubigne!

To him and Mary the few meetings before his departure seemed heaven-sent—though a sorrowful separation was at hand—the happiest of all their past existence.

Neither seemed to question, as yet, how they would feel or could exist during the months—perhaps the more than year—of separation that had to come.

Never, never would she forget the time when he placed the engagement-ring upon her engaged finger, and when their eyes met in one long and deep glance—a glance that, though no word was uttered, proved the silent compact of his avowed and her accepted love.

So the fatal day came inexorably at last; after a farewell dinner to him at the Guards' Club in Pall Mall.

'Good-bye, dear girls,' said he, cheerily; 'good-bye, love Mary—another kiss and another. I'll bring you back such wonderful things from India—tiger-skins, and tiger claws set in gold; Delhi jewellery from Chandney Chowk; ivory carvings, and I know not what more,' he added, and, in spite of himself, strove to be cheerful; 'and when I do come back, Mary, you will be my own darling little wife till death parts us.'

So the hour, the supreme moment, had come at last, and Leslie Colville was gone!

His letters were Mary's only solace after that; long letters full of loving and passionate expression, to be read and re-read again; from Suez, burning Aden, and beautiful Bombay; they came regularly, but became fewer and further between as he proceeded up country by railway, and his last, before they left London for the Continent, informed her that he had been appointed to the staff at Jellalabad, where Sir Samuel Browne was concentrating his forces prior to an advance on Cabul. Thus he would soon be going to the Front.

CHAPTER XI.

AT JELLALABAD.

'Well, Colville, how do you like India from what you have seen of it?' asked Colonel Spatterdash, as he sat smoking in his shirt and pyjamas, for, though the month was March, the solar heat was already considerable in that part of Afghanistan, and quite disagreeable by eight in the morning.

'I don't like it at all,' replied Colville; 'besides, I have been in India before, and you forget, colonel, that this is not India, but rather beyond it.'

'True, I am not likely to forget that, when the rocks are bristling with Afghan juzails! But, if you don't like it, what the deuce brought you out now?'

'To have a new sensation, to see a little more of the world again,' said Colville, evasively, as he was not disposed to tell his thoughtless listeners—some four or five officers—assembled for tiffin (i.e., lunch) about his romance, and the temporary loss of Mary Wellwood.

'A new sensation!' exclaimed Algy Redhaven, a handsome young captain of the 10th Hussars, who had just entered the bungalow; 'you are likely to have it soon enough. Have you heard the news that has just come in from the front, colonel?' he added to Spatterdash.

'No—what the devil is up?' growled the old field-officer.

'Fresh complications are likely at Cabul—the Ameer Shere Ali has gone to visit the Russian general at Tashkend.'

'Whew!' whistled old Spatterdash; 'that will likely precipitate matters. I always thought the invasion of British India by Russia would be as practicable a few years hence as that of Italy by Austria, and now, by Jove, we seem close upon it.'

And since the date we write of the Russians have pushed on to Merv in Turkomania!

The group of officers who were invited to the colonel's table were all happy and heedless young fellows belonging to Sir Samuel Browne's column, and high in anticipation of a protracted 'shindy' with the Afghans, as a force was being concentrated at Jellalabad.

A couple were on the staff, like Colville; one—Redhaven—belonged to the Royal Hussars; two others to a native infantry regiment; all were somewhat airily attired, and, till tiffin made its appearance, all were smoking cheroots so industriously that clouds of their pale smoke curled among the rough rafters and straw roof of the bungalow.

Jellalabad, where the fortune of war had then cast them, the winter residence of the Cabul monarchs since the consolidation of the Dooranee Empire, is situated in an extensive valley of considerable beauty and fertility, eight-and-twenty miles long by about four broad, and the town had before this been rendered memorable by the heroic stand which Sir Robert Sale, with a handful of British soldiers, made in it against the Afghans some forty years before.

In importance it was originally only next to Cabul and Candahar, but its fortifications had been completely destroyed by General Pollock after the war that ended in 1842. Like all Afghan cities of note, it had its Balla Hissar, half palace and half citadel, with a poor population estimated at from three to ten thousand.

Many streams fertilise its valley—namely, the Cabul River, which flows near the walls; the Surkh Rud, or Red River, and the Kara Su, or Black River, while around it are numerous castles, and picturesque villages, and groups of forest trees, though an arid desert spreads in its immediate vicinity.

Nearly four months had elapsed since Leslie Colville had parted from Mary Wellwood, and already as many ages seemed to have elapsed since the few brief days of reunion they had spent together at Grosvenor Square; and now he knew that many more months must elapse, must be faced and endured, ere he could hope to turn his steps towards Europe; and even while sitting there, among these bantering and somewhat noisy fellows, he looked around him as one in a dream, whose thoughts were far away, while Mary's soft, sad features came vividly before him in memory and in their beauty, though the latter, as some old poet says,

'Is in no face, but in the lover's mind.'

'How silent you are, Colville!' exclaimed old Spatterdash, relinquishing the mouthpiece of his hookah for a moment. 'Gad, I believe the fellow's in love.'

So full were his thoughts of Mary at that precise moment that he almost coloured as if they had been read by the colonel, who continued, in a tone of banter,

'With you, I suppose, it is,

"——to bid me not to love
Is to forbid my pulse to move,
My beard to grow, my ears to prick up;
Or, when I'm in the mood, to hiccup."

Is it so? Well, anyway, stick to the brandy pawnee till tiffin comes.'

Again the old familiar sound of the cantonment ghurries, or gong-bells, as they were clanged for the change of sentries, was in his ear, and the view from the open windows of the bungalow was strange and striking.

Far away above the misty horizon rose amid the clouds—and cloudlike themselves, so bright and varied were their tints—the majestic mountains that tower between the shallow valley of Jellalabad and the ramparts of Cabul, and chief of them is the stupendous Suffaidh Koh, fourteen thousand feet in height, then covered with dazzling white snow; and if wondrously beautiful by day, it was perhaps still more so by night, when the full moon lit up its chasms and peaks with its Asiatic splendour.

In the immediate foreground, just before the windows of the bungalow, a curious scene—one illustrative of the distant region and the manners of our Indian fellow-subjects—was in progress.

The Poojah of a battalion of H.M. Native Infantry, a Hindoo regiment, was being celebrated towards evening.

The battalion, in full marching order, with its colours, was drawn up in a circle. At each cardinal point of the compass was a small clod of earth, with barley and rice on it; and in the centre were the attendant Brahmins with a beautiful young goat, which had been sprinkled with pure water, barley, and rice. Then the sacrificer drew a huge Ghoorkali knife, and, after muttering some prayers, by one trenchant slash severed the head of the goat from its body. At the moment of immolation twelve guns boomed through the air and drums were beaten, after which the battalion was wheeled back into line, and marched by fours into its lines, with band playing and colours flying.

Colonel Spatterdash, Colville's host, was a thorough Indian officer of the old school, who had broiled for so many years in Bengal that he had lost much of his European identity, all memory of home nearly, and religion too, and had become so bronzed that evil-disposed fellows used to hint—but not in his presence—that he had 'a dash of the tar-brush in him—was fourteen annas to the rupee,' and so forth.

The wags of the station at Chutneypore declared that he wore a gold bangle given to him by the orange-visaged Rani of that place, who liked him as 'a wicked old man,' that squeezed her brown paws when he assisted her into the silk-curtained howdah of her great tusker elephant, which had carried 'Colonel Wellesley's' baggage at the battle of Assaye.

He was full of old Indian memories of the Rangoon Rangers and Bhurtpore Bulldogs, as he had heard of them when he came out from Addiscombe a cadet and griffin; and had many a story to tell of the pre-railway times, when, if not marching, people travelled by dâk, night and day, in palanquins; when the old Bengal colonel was a father to his regiment, the guide of his subalterns, and was never so happy as when he had a dozen or so at his table, all eager for Kowab, fresh eggs, with Phillibut rice, kedgere, &c., and Bhola in plenty.

He was a captain when the mutiny occurred; and its horrors, with the dismay that his beloved Sepoys—the Spatterdash-ka-Pultan, so-called from his father—should prove untrue to their salt, nearly broke his heart; and he thought the end of the world had come when they flung him down a well at Gungawallah; but he was hard to kill. A banyan-tree that grew half way down broke his fall, and to that he clung till rescued by some Highlanders, after which he solaced himself mightily by blowing whole batches of 'pandies' from his guns.

And now tiffin came, curried chickens, rice, green chillis, mutton and chutney, &c., &c., with plenty of wine and brandy, all laid out by his faithful old Kitmutgar, wearing an enormous white turban.

'Anything,' said the colonel, 'is better than bitter beer that has been boiling on the dusty road between Peshawur and Jellalabad, till the cask hoops grow hot in the sun.'

So he took a huge beaker of brandy pawnee, as he reclined in the cane easy-chair in his well tattied bungalow, with punkah wallahs crouching in the verandah outside, and smoked his hookah, for he preferred such a residence to a double-poled tent or a tumble-down brick house in that city of earthquakes, till the troops marched.

'I knew your uncle, Wellwood, thoroughly,' said the colonel to Colville. 'He and I were great chums, and I once saw him do a plucky thing—a very plucky thing, by Jove!—when we were giving a fellow a tight flogging under fire.'

'A flogging under fire—that was remarkable, surely?'

'Not so in those days; we were never squeamish about anything then.'

'And this plucky thing?' said Redhaven, the hussar.

'Convinced me that Wellwood was pretty reckless of life. He had been soured by some disappointment in love, we heard—the idea of such a thing!'

And, while old Splatterdash laughed a little contemptuously at the thought of a tender passion, Colville, remembering the secret episode of Mrs. Deroubigne's life, listened with some interest.

'It came about in this way, you see,' said the colonel, after taking a long pull at his hookah. 'After we advanced upon Jhansi under Sir Hugh Rose to crush the rebellious Sepoys who held the place (which was a town and fortress of the Mahrattas of old), we bombarded it heavily for four days, but not without resistance, for the shattered remains of the Gwalior contingent, augmented to twenty-five thousand bayonets and sabres, and eighteen pieces of cannon from Kalpee, came marching along the right bank of the Jumna, hoping to raise the siege, d—n them!

'In that, however, the Pandies were disappointed. During the bombardment, when we were pitching shot and shell into each other, a great thirteen-inch bomb from an old mortar happened to fall close by where the soldier of a European regiment was tied up to "the halberts," as we still called the triangles, to receive a hundred and fifty lashes for insubordination when mad with drink and heat. The sudden appearance of this great missile, with its fuse burning and hissing, caused such confusion and consternation that the companies, formed in hollow square, fell back on all sides, even breaking their ranks, for none could composedly await such an explosion under their noses.

'Instead of yielding to this natural impulse, Wellwood took from his pocket a penknife, and, walking up to the helpless and terrified creature who was bound to the triangles, he cut the cords that bound his wrists and ankles, setting him free, and both had barely time to retire a little way and throw themselves flat on the ground, when the great shell burst, and a hurricane of iron swept over them and all around. Thus did he save this poor fellow, who must inevitably have perished from his inability to save himself; and Wellwood did more, for, in consideration of the mental agony the man had undergone, he remitted the remainder of the punishment; and, by a curious coincidence, the culprit perished a few days after in the action of Roohea when saving the life of Wellwood, whom some rebels were about to bayonet as he lay wounded and helpless on the ground.'

'This will be an episode in her father's life to tell Mary of when next I write to her,' thought Colville. And now the conversation drifted into the subject then uppermost in the minds of all—the probability of serious complications if Russian intrigues proved successful at Cabul, and none could expect them to be otherwise when the Ameer Shere Ali had departed openly to visit General Kauffmann at Tashkend, in Central Asia, which place, however, he was fated not to reach.

The subject that caused our dispute with him, and brought our troops to Jellalabad and elsewhere upon his frontier, was the dispute known then as the "Resident" question, because he rather favoured the Russians, and thus refused to have any such British official at his court for three reasons—firstly, the person of a Briton would not be safe there; secondly, that European officers might make demands that would occasion quarrels; and thirdly, that if Britain was represented, Russia would expect to be represented also. But it was known that he was in close correspondence with General Kauffman, and only feared that a British Resident might, if present, throw some light upon it; and in the end a convention was signed, by which Russia bound herself to give at least moral support to the existing Afghan dynasty.

An envoy sent by our government to Cabul never reached it, being forced back at a place called Ali Musjid. For this an apology was demanded, and Afghanistan was entered by a British army in three columns that won several victories, and the Ameer finding his case hopeless started for Tashkend, but died on the way, and was succeeded by his son, Yakoub Khan, who eventually showed a disposition to come to terms with us; but in this we are a little anticipating the events of our story, for, at the time Leslie Colville joined the staff at Jellalabad, Sir Samuel Browne was, as stated, collecting a force there, while General Maude relieved his post between that place and Dakka, and the gallant Roberts, posted further forward at the Peiwar Pass, was improving the difficult mountain road between that place and Cabul for the passage of guns and baggage.

So thus it was that our troops were now engaged in what was known as the second Afghan War—to counteract Russian influences.

As the evening advanced and darkness closed in, some yells and oaths in Hindostanee and Pushtoo were heard at a little distance outside the hedge of the colonel's compound, and Colville, who had been looking from a window, now started to his feet.

'I can't look on and permit that!' he exclaimed.

'Can't permit what?' asked Spatterdash, tartly.

'A lot of fellows——'

'Budmashes, no doubt, by the row they make.'

'Ill-using one man; and now, as it is time for me to go, colonel, I shall interfere en passant.'

'Don't think of it—don't bother!'

'But they may kill him.'

'What the devil does it matter? A nigger less in the world won't be missed,' growled Spatterdash, who had lost all sympathy with the natives since the Mutiny.

'Call the nearest guard—the picket—or some chowkeydars,' said Redhaven and others; 'but don't interfere in a row of this kind.'

Colville, however, buckled on his sword and revolver, lit a fresh cheroot, laughingly bowed himself out, and hurried away; for, sooth to say, he was a little tired of old Spatterdash, and as no one actually thought he would interfere in a native row, no one followed or accompanied him.

'The inlying pickets have been doubled to-night by order of the general,' said the colonel.

'Why?' asked some one.

'Because rumour says that the Sirdir Mahmoud Shah, a tearing Afghan devil, has come to lead the Mohmunds against us.'

'With what object?' asked Redhaven of the Hussars.

'A row, of course.'

CHAPTER XII.

THE HADJI.

'The world is a small place, after all!' thought Colville, as he left the Colonel's bungalow behind him. 'Think of hearing here that anecdote of dear Mary's father from that old subadar! Well, well, "life," as some one says, "is a perpetual enigma, to which no theological system offers a satisfactory solution—against the reefs of which all philosophies break into foam and empty bubbles." But here are more than bubbles, by Jove! Now what is all this deuced row about?' he added, drawing his sword, on seeing before him the authors of the noise he had heard, engaged still in a wild and fierce mêlée.

This was in a sequestered part of the town, and near some of the ruins of houses shaken down by the earthquakes some forty years ago. One man was contending single-handed against no less than five, and in the clear starlight Colville could see the flash of their gleaming eyes, their set teeth, their dark and infuriated faces. The man assaulted wore an Afghan costume, a cloak, a kind of blouse with loose sleeves, and on his head a loonjee. The others had flowing garments and large turbans, and were armed with heavily-loaded clubs, against which the stranger was defending himself with no small dexterity with only a pilgrim's staff; for, by his wallet, gourd, and beads, he was evidently a hadji, who had become involved in a quarrel with some Wahabis, who, it seemed afterwards, had been mocking him for praying at the tomb of a Santon, and told him he should call on God, and on no imaginary saint, on which, he had proceeded at once to lay about him with his pilgrim's staff.

'To call a man a Wahabi,' says Sterndale, 'is, to nine-tenths of Englishmen in India, to call him a fanatic, a rebel, a sort of Mahometan fenian, one whom the police should take under special surveillance, and whose every action is open to suspicion.'

Like the English Puritans, they—in addition to deriding the intercession of saints—despoiled the mosques of their lamps and decorations, broke down all shrines, prohibited music and dancing, and smoking was denounced as a mortal sin; and now those whom Colville found himself opposed to would undoubtedly—but for his sword and revolver—have made short work of it with the unfortunate hadji.

He drove them back a few paces, and the hadji, while panting for breath, and streaming with blood from more than one contused wound, continued to revile them bitterly.

'Wahabis—accursed Wahabis!' he exclaimed, 'dare they speak to me? I am a Soonee, not a dog! I am not a Shiah, the follower of Ali, but an orthodox Soonee, like my forefathers, blessed be God and His Prophet! Wretches,' he added, with all the ferocious rancour of religion and race, 'your souls will yet defile hell!'

'Begone, and leave the man to go on his way,' said Colville, authoritatively, as he waved his sword, for he knew enough of Arabic and Hindostanee to understand what was said and the nature of the brawl.

'Dogs!' resumed the irate hadji, encouraged by his presence and succour; 'know ye not that the time is coming when the Wahabis shall be judged according to their deserts, and each in passing a dead man's grave shall say, "Would to God that I lay there!"'

'Dog of a Soonee, when will that time come to pass?' asked one, jeeringly.

'When the sun rises in the west,' shrieked the hadji, frantic with rage; 'when the beast shall rise out of the earth near Mecca; when a smoke shall cover the earth, and the Mahdi shall come to everyone and fill the earth with righteousness.'

And much more to this effect did he vow with singular force and fluency, for the hadji was an Afghan, and, so far as regards the external forms of their religion, the Afghans are wonderfully devout, and so much of their conversation, whatever the subject, is so tinged with their religion and the Koran that one would imagine the whole people, from the Ameer to the humblest camel-driver, were engaged in holy reflections, and scarcely is a sentence uttered by them without some reference to the Deity.

One of the Wahabis now seemed to lose what little remains of sense or temper he had left, and, uttering a savage yell, swung aloft his ponderous lohbunda or staff, which was heavily shod with iron—a weapon one well-directed stroke from which would have spattered the brains of the hadji on the street—but Colville, quick as lightning, warded off the blow with his sword, in the process of which his right arm tingled to the shoulder; and as at that moment the tramp of a patrol from an inlying picquet was heard approaching, the brawlers took to flight, and Colville was left face to face with the man whose life he had saved.

'Sahib, I have to thank you gratefully for this prompt and courageous succour, but for which these dogs would no doubt have slain me,' said the pilgrim in English; 'as it is, they have handled me so roughly that I am barely able to stand.'

'You speak English very fluently,' said Colville, with genuine surprise. 'How is this?'

'My uncle was a muhafez dufter, or keeper of the records, in the office of the district magistrate, near Peshawur, who educated me to work in his office; but at his death I went back to the hills and became an Afghan soldier under Shere Ali.'

'And now——'

'I am a poor harmless hadji, Mahommed Shah, seeking but to save his soul,' said he, lowering his keen and glittering eyes, as he looked steadily around him. 'In saving me you have done a good action, and what says the fourth chapter of the Koran? "Verily, God will not wrong anyone, even the weight of an ant, and, if it be a good action, He will double it, and recompense it in His sight with a great and just reward." But these thrice accursed Wahabis,' he added, grinding his teeth with rage, and making thereby a very unpleasant sound, 'may be swallowed up by the earth as the accuser of Moses was.'

Colville looked around him warily. In the dark, unlighted, and tortuous streets of the city this poor man might easily be overtaken and murdered by these fanatics, if they were—as Colville did not doubt—still lurking watchfully about, so he said,

'Come with me to the Balla Hissar; I am quartered there, and can keep you in safety for the night; besides, your wounds must be dressed, and in the morning I would advise your instantly quitting Jellalabad.'

'As-taffur-ullah! that will I, sahib; and by the five keys of knowledge, I will never forget your kindness.'