On the same day Macnaghten sent 7000 rupees to Khan Shereen Khan, the chief of the Kuzzilbashes, but urged Mohun Lal to keep it secret, as there was scarcely any money left. He had become doubtful by this time of the honesty of intriguing with one party, whilst he was bound by engagements to another; so he urged the Moonshee to tell the Ghilzyes to send him no more grain. “If,” he wrote on the 22nd of December, “while our present agreement lasts I were to receive a large supply of grain from the Ghilzyes, suspicion would be raised that I intend to break my engagement, and wish to keep the troops here, in spite of the wishes of all the chiefs to the contrary. It would be very agreeable to stop here for a few months instead of having to travel through the snow; but we must not consider what is agreeable, but what is consistent with our faith.” It was on the evening of this 22nd of December, when Macnaghten, long tossed about on a sea of doubt and distraction—perplexed in the extreme by the manifest bad faith and the ever-increasing demands of the chiefs—seeing no end to the perilous uncertainties of his position, and wearied out beyond human endurance by days and nights of ceaseless anxiety and bewilderment—was in a temper to grasp at any new thing that might seem to open a door of escape from the embarrassments which surrounded him, that Akbar Khan sent in Captain Skinner from the city with a new string of proposals. The Envoy had been warned of the danger of treating independently with the young Barukzye Sirdar; he had been told that treachery was spreading itself around him, and that he would be enclosed in its toils. But he had now become desperate. Anything was better than the wearing uncertainty which had so long been unhinging his mind. Akbar Khan sent tempting proposals; and the Envoy flung himself upon the snare. He knew that there was danger, but he had become regardless of it. Anything was better than the life he had so long been leading. Even death itself was better than such a life.