Dejected as he was before, this crowning calamity sunk him into a state of still deeper dejection. Every report of the designs of the enemy, however incredible, filled him with new terror. It was said that the insurgents were running a mine from the Shor Bazaar under the very walls of the palace. Dreading an immediate explosion, he quitted his apartments, and took up his residence at the gate of the Harem, where, seated at a window commanding an extensive view of the cantonments and the surrounding country, he traced, through a telescope, the progress of the exciting events passing below. Day after day he sate at the same window, looking down, from morning to evening prayer, upon a scene which seldom yielded aught to comfort or reassure him. Shah Soojah had never been a courageous man; but he had always been a very proud one. That now, enfeebled and desponding, he should have clung to any support, turned anywhere for assistance, was not strange; but when they saw the pompous and arrogant monarch now so humbled and obsequious, laying aside all the environments of royalty, to which before he had clung with such pitiful tenacity, the English officers about him felt that the shock must have been great indeed so to revolutionise his whole nature. He made even the British subalterns sit beside him on chairs; conversed familiarly with them; enquired into their wants, and condescended to supply them. “If,” said one who had good opportunities of narrowly watching the behaviour of the King at this time, “he is acting a part, he certainly performs it admirably!” Other reports soon came in from the city, or started up in the Balla Hissar itself, still more to terrify the King. It was alleged that the Arabs in the fort were about to rise up in a body, to massacre the troops and to give the place over to the rebels. The King, who never withheld his belief from any story however improbable, seized the chief of the Arab tribe, and ordered that no women or children should be suffered to leave the fort. But women and children of all kinds were now clamouring for egress. Collecting in crowds before the Wuzeer’s house, they importuned him, with loud lamentations, to suffer them to depart. The Wuzeer appealed to the King, who strictly prohibiting the egress of any Arab families, suffered more than seven hundred other women and children to pass out of the fort. The English officers thought, that if all the Arabs and Afghans had been removed from the fort, and all the provisions secured for the use of the fighting men, the whole force might have been saved.