This was just outside the village named Killa Kazi, which was surrounded by a very high loop-holed wall, within which the native cavalry had dismounted for the night, each trooper lying beside his horse. Toby's wound had been given by one dreadful slash, and extended from the chest to the thighs, laying the body so completely open, that water as he drank it from Robert Wodrow's wooden bottle, actually trickled from his viscera, yet he was wonderfully composed, and by his own medical skill Wodrow, who supported Toby's head, knew that it was all over with him. 'Ah, Bob, I'll be gone in a brace of shakes,' said he, speaking slowly at long intervals, and while his teeth chattered with agony and the dew of death glittered on his forehead in the bright moonlight; 'the folks in England, who live at home at ease, know nothing of this sort of thing, thank God! Take my silver flask, Bob, and keep it--keep it in memory of poor Toby Chace. It is all I have now worth offering you. A girl gave it to me in--in happier times at Ascot, one whose shoes I was not worthy to tie--but she married another fellow anyhow.' After this his voice died away, his senses seemed to wander, and whispering, with a sudden tenderness of manner, 'Mother, kiss me,' he turned his face to the right and ceased to live. After a time Robert Wodrow, carefully and tenderly as a brother would have done, rolled the dead hussar in a horse-rug and buried him under one of the tall poplar-trees that shade the village wall, and there he was left in his lonely grave, when next morning the cavalry rode off: for a reconnaisance. So narrow were the paths they had to pursue that they proceeded in single files till they struck on the great road to Ghuznee and swept along it at a gallop, finding at every pace of the way abandoned tents, baggage, cooking utensils, and dying Cabul ponies--the abandoned spoil of the Kohistanies, Ghilzies, Logaris, and others who had come to fight the British, but had lost heart and fled. Four days afterwards Leslie Colville found himself entering Cabul, when Sir Frederick Roberts rode into it publicly, accompanied by the son of the Ameer, for Yakoub Khan, imbrued as his hands were with the blood of the Embassy, and inculpated with the actors in its destruction, was too cunning to accompany the British forces, at the head of whom rode the squadron of the 9th Royal Lancers. Possession of Cabul was now taken in the name of Queen Victoria. The royal standard was hoisted on the Bala Hissar; our Horse Artillery guns thundered forth a salute, and three ringing British cheers rang along the ranks for the Empress of India. The punishment of the perpetrators of the outrage at the Residency, the terrible explosion at the Bala Hissar, and the fighting that ensued at the Shutargardan Pass and the Sirkai Kotal, lie somewhat apart from our narrative; but we cannot omit that which ensued at the Khoord Cabul and other defiles.