It is possible that, whilst all these circumstances were being narrated and discussed at Avitabile’s dinner-table, there may have been present one or two officers much troubled with self-questionings regarding the justice of these proceedings. But the general opinion, all throughout Afghanistan and India, was that this Mehrab Khan had been rightly punished for his offences. Few knew distinctly what these offences were. There was a general impression that he had been guilty of acts of indescribable treachery; and that during the passage of the British army through Beloochistan, he was continually molesting our advancing columns. It was the fashion to attribute to the wickedness of Mehrab Khan all the sufferings which afflicted the Army of the Indus on its march to Candahar, the scarcity which pressed so heavily upon man and beast, and the depredations of the marauding Beloochees. The very barrenness of the country, indeed, was by some laid at his door. It was not very clearly seen, at this time, that the Army of the Indus was at least as much the cause, as it was the victim of the scarcity in Beloochistan. When our troops passed through the dominions of the Khan of Khelat, there was already, as has been shown by Burnes’s admissions, a scarcity in the land; and our vast moving camp increased it. The safe passage of the Bolan Pass was effected through the friendly agency of the Brahoo chief. And we have it emphatically, upon the authority of Macnaghten, that the progress of the Army of the Indus through the country of Mehrab Khan was attended by much devastation—that a great injury was inflicted upon the people—and that nothing would have been easier than for the Khan to have destroyed our entire force. Such was the language of our diplomatists up to the end of March; but in April, Burnes recommended the castigation of the Khan of Khelat; and Mehrab Khan was doomed to be stripped, on the first convenient opportunity, of his territory, and deprived either of his liberty or his life. The evidence of Mehrab Khan’s treachery is not sufficiently strong to satisfy me that the British righteously confiscated his principality and sacrificed his life. He was surrounded by traitors. When his stronghold was entered, it was seen that the servants he had trusted had the means of betraying their master; and it was clear, to all who investigated the charges against him with judicial impartiality, that he had been betrayed. It was clear that many of the offences imputed to him were to be ascribed rather to the machinations of his secret enemies than to his own enmity and bad faith. But he had been early doomed to destruction. The recommendations of the British diplomatists in Afghanistan had been adopted by the Governor-General; and the deposition of Mehrab Khan, and the annexation of Shawl, Moostung, and Cutchee, had been decreed in the Simlah Council Chamber.[22] It was true that Shah Soojah had, in the hour of need, been succoured by Mehrab Khan.