From the circumstance of Robert Wodrow being a gentleman by birth and education, and that both had loved two sisters, there had been a bond of friendship between the staff-captain and the luckless private of hussars. They were Europeans--another tie; and more than all, when so far away from all who loved them, they were 'brother Scots.' Hungry and athirst--though the latter suffering could be appeased at any passing stream--the evening of the day after the massacre, when Wodrow finally turned his back upon the smoking ruins of the Residency, saw him disguised and armed as we have described, resolutely pursuing the mountain-path which led, he knew, from Cabul, past Buthak towards the Lataband Pass, a distance of twenty-two miles; but, disguised though he was, he felt that it was necessary for his safety to avoid all towns and villages, among which, no doubt, news of the destruction of the Feringhees must have spread like wildfire. He found himself in a solitude--a place of the most intense loneliness, so he paused to rest himself awhile beside a runnel that trickled down the rocks, and to gather a few wild apples and grapes. On one side rose the Katcha mountains to the height of eight thousand feet; on the other were mountains quite as lofty. It was such a scene and place as would require the pencil of Salvator Rosa to depict, so deep were the shadows in the dark and savage passes, so red the light that glowed on the eastern slopes of the mighty hills as the sun veered westward. Vast groves of jelgoozeh pines, black and solemn, cast a gloom in some places; in others the sturdy, snake-like roots of the banyan-tree curled and twisted themselves among the rocks, and through the holes and crevices of a little ruined musjid, or wayside house of prayer, built of red and white marble, which was open and empty. Wodrow looked at it wistfully, as if he would select it as a place wherein to pass the night and escape the mountain dews; but he thought of the snakes he had seen, and scorpions too, and remembered, with a shudder, the huge and venomous reptiles of that kind he had seen on the plains of Peshawur. He selected a crevice in the rocks where a quantity of dry and dead leaves had been drifted by the wind, put his Afghan shield and tulwar under his head as a pillow, muffled his furred choga around him, and, soldier-like, accustomed to sleep anywhere, anyhow, or at any time, he slept till morning was well in, so much had he been overcome by the weariness of the preceding twenty-four hours. Another ten miles would bring him, he knew, to Jugdulluk--that place of evil omen and blood--towards which the lonely fugitive trod on through black and frowning gorges, where fantastic rocks, savage and weird, flung grey and purple shadows that made the deeper passes dark as midnight, and there the waters of the mountains could be seen reflecting the sky above, as they rolled through the obscurity so far down below.