The courtyard was spacious. In the keep was _Dewan-i-Am_, or audience-chamber, surrounded by a divan or continuous seat; beyond it was the _Dewan-i-Kas_, or principal private apartment, and in the towers were lodged the servants of the establishment; apart from all was a zenana, or women's apartments, and elsewhere, in every corner, were stowed away the garrison, composed of the _budmashes_ and other tatterdemalions just described. When not in the courtyard or on the summit of the keep--always closely watched--Colville was generally in the _Dewan-i-Kas_, where he shared the meals of the Mahmoud. Here carpets were laid on the floor, and there was a kind of chair or stool of state, with cushions for arms, and before it lay the tulwar, shield, and pistols of the sirdir, as in a place of honour. The fort stood--and no doubt still stands--close to a bend of the clear and otherwise shallow Cabul, a river which is formed by the junction of the Ghorbund and Panjshir, and after dividing into three branches it reunites and flows into the Indus, three miles above the great fortress of Attock. And Colville, in his prison in the fort--for a prison to all intents and purposes it was--lay for many a weary hour on a charpoy, or native bed, listening to the murmur of the stream as it flowed over its pebbled bed towards the mountain passes that led to India, and marvelled what was in store for him; how long his captivity would last; whether Mahmoud wanted a ransom or held him as a kind of hostage: for that the destruction of the embassy would be amply avenged none could doubt. Then how would it fare with the crafty Ameer? 'He is the son of an animal!' said Mahmoud, on one occasion, scornfully; 'he plays fast and loose with your people and his own. According to an old fable, every man bears on his back a wallet in which are deposited his weaknesses and his vices, which, though concealed from his own eyes, are open to the inspection of those of others. Thus we see that the Ameer, if not the tool of Britain, will be the slave of the Russ.' 'Through his duplicity I am a prisoner.' 'Better that than lying yonder in the Bala Hissar,' said Mahmoud, with a cruel leer in his glittering black eyes. 'I am most unfortunate!' 'It was to be, and so it is.' The doctrine of fatalism meets and covers everything with the Mussulmans, who can thus throw on the Deity the results of their own negligence. 'If it is God's will that a man should die, let him die,' said Mahmoud, sententiously. 'If it be His will that he should live, let him live.' Colville thought this was uncommonly like the creed of the 'Peculiar People,' in the city of London.