Many officers began to think, even to talk, hopefully of leave of absence to visit India, to look up old chums in Peshawur, Rawul Pindi, or Lahore; or when longer leave for Europe must be given; when news of the attack on the Residency at Cabul, and the massacre of the envoy and his people fell upon them like a clap of thunder! These terrible tidings were brought by Taimur, a Usbeg Tartar, who served as a trooper in the Guide escort--a man of undoubted daring, bravery, and hardihood--who had achieved his escape from the city of blood by the aid of some of his own race who were among the Cabulee troops that had come in from Herat. After twelve days' wandering, and enduring great suffering in those savage and stupendous mountain gorges that lie between Cabul and the Kotal of Lundikhani, he reached the advanced post in the Kurram Valley, in rags, famished, and every way in a deplorable state of destitution, to make his report, which was instantly telegraphed by the officer commanding to the Viceroy at Simla. 'Everyone cut off as close as a whistle! By Jove, colonel, we'll have to be up and doing something,' said Algy Redhaven, the hussar, as he lounged, pipe in mouth, and hands in the pockets of his pyjamas, into the tent of old Spatterdash. The early summer months had been passed peacefully and pleasantly by our embassy at Cabul, notwithstanding the petty insults and annoyance we have already referred to. In the cool, breezy morning, when the sun was coming up above the hills that look down on the clear, shallow, and rapid Cabul flowing towards the Indus; or in the evening, when he was setting behind the summits of the Haft Kotal, Sir Louis Cavagnari, attended by Colville and others, escorted by a few of the Guide Corps, rode through the city to view places of interest in the neighbourhood, sometimes towards the Chardeh Valley eastward, or the plains of Killa-Kazi on the west. Their quarters in the picturesque and ancient Bala Hissar were rendered as comfortable as furniture of English style and make--relics of Elphinstone's slaughtered army and plundered cantonments--could make them; but the walls of the rooms were scribbled over with ribald pencillings, anti-English hits and insolent political allusions there was no mistaking, left there by members of the late Russian mission; while 'from the Ameer himself, as from the commandant, dalis of fruit and vegetables, fish, milk, and sweetmeats were daily provided; and whatever Cabul could offer in the way of entertainment or amusement was readily forthcoming.' All seemed so peaceful, and the chances of renewed hostility so remote, that Colville was about to make arrangements for quitting the Embassy, resigning his appointment, and procuring an escort through the passes to Lundi Khani Khotal in the Kurram Valley on his homeward way.