As the game of negotiation was now to be commenced anew, it was necessary to secure the services of a new negotiator. There was a man then in cantonments of whom little had been seen or heard for some weeks, and of whom the chroniclers and journalists of the insurrection had up to this time made little or no mention, in connexion with the stirring scenes in which Macnaghten had been the chief actor, but to whom the garrison now turned as to the only man fitted to take the Envoy’s place. Ever since his arrival from Charekur, Major Pottinger had been incapacitated from active employment by the wound he had received in the early part of November. The severity of his sufferings had necessarily been much increased by the hardships of his perilous journey from Charekur to Caubul, and during the greater part of the time since his arrival at the latter place he had been confined to his bed. But he was now, in the difficult conjuncture that had arisen, ready to bring all the manly vigour and high courage which had done so much to roll back from the gates of Herat the tide of Persian invasion, to the new duty of endeavouring to rescue his country from the degradation in which it had been sunk by the faint hearts of the military chiefs. The evening of the 24th saw Pottinger in council with General Elphinstone, Brigadiers Shelton and Anquetil, and Colonel Chambers, the four senior officers of the garrison. The chiefs had sent in a letter, sealed by Mahomed Zemaun Khan, Akbar Khan, Ameen-oollah Khan, Oosman Khan, and others, with a memorandum of the terms on which they were prepared to grant the army a safe conduct to Peshawur. This was now translated to the military officers, who were eager to conclude the engagement into which Macnaghten had consented to enter for the withdrawal of all the British troops from Afghanistan. Caubul, Candahar, Ghuznee, and Jellalabad were all to be immediately evacuated. Dost Mahomed was to be released from captivity, and restored, with all other Afghan prisoners, to his own country, while Shah Soojah was to remain, or to depart, as he might please; and in the event of his electing the former course, to receive an annual pension of a lakh of rupees. A certain number of English gentlemen were to be left behind as hostages for the evacuation of the country by the British troops, whilst certain Afghan chiefs were to accompany our retiring garrisons to guarantee their safe conduct to the frontier. Such were the main features of the treaty which Pottinger found in course of negotiation when the desperate game of diplomacy was placed in his hands. It need not be added that large sums of money were to be paid to the chiefs, as the price of the immunity which they pledged themselves to guarantee to our discomfited army on their retreat through the dreadful passes.