Lord Auckland yielded his own judgment to the judgment of others, and an order went forth for the assembling of a grand army on the frontier, to be set in motion early in the coming cold weather, in support of Shah Soojah and his levies; to cross the Indus; and to march upon Candahar. In August, the regiments selected by the commander-in-chief were warned for field-service, and on the 13th of September he published a general order, brigading the different components of the force, naming the staff-officers appointed, and ordering the whole to rendezvous at Kurnaul. The reports, which all through the dry summer months had been flitting about from cantonment to cantonment, and making the pulses of military aspirants, old and young, beat rapidly with the fever of expectancy, now took substantial shape; and everywhere the approaching expedition became the one topic of conversation. Peace had reigned over India for so many years, that the excitement of the coming contest was as novel as it was inspiriting. There was not an officer in the army who did not long to join the invading force; and many from the distant Presidency, or from remote provincial stations, leaving the quiet staff-appointments which had lapped them long in ease and luxury, rushed upwards to join their regiments. Even in that unpropitious season of the year, when the country was flooded by the periodical rains, corps were set in motion towards Kurnaul, from stations as low down as Benares, and struggled manfully, often through wide sheets of water, to their destination at the great northern rallying point. There had been no such excitement in military circles since the grand army assembled for the reduction of Bhurtpore; and though the cause was not a popular one, and there was scarcely a mess-table in the country at which the political bearings of the invasion of Afghanistan were discussed without eliciting the plainest possible indications that the sympathies of our officers were rather with the Barukzye chief than the Suddozye monarch, there was everywhere the liveliest desire to join the ranks of an army that was to traverse new and almost fabulous regions, and visit the scenes rendered famous by the exploits of Mahmoud of Ghuzni and Nadir Shah.