A season of painful anxiety and suspense followed the receipt of the letter from Pottinger and Elphinstone. But it was not without its alleviations. Money had become scarce at Jellalabad. The cupidity of the Afghans had seldom been proof against English money; and now to lack the means of appealing to it was to lose one of our principal means of defence. It was, therefore, with no common delight that the garrison now welcomed the arrival of a sum of money which Mackeson, ever strenuous in his activity, had sent on from Peshawur, through the agency of Tora-baz Khan, the loyal chief of Lalpoora. The defences of the place, too, were rising under Broadfoot’s hands, and “by the middle of January, the commencement of the rainy season, a parapet, nowhere less than six feet high, with a banquette as wide as the nature of the rampart allowed, was completed entirely round the place. The gates were repaired and strengthened by buttresses. Two of them were re-trenched, and a ditch carried round the north-west angle, whilst some of the most dangerous ravines were laid open to our force, and roads were opened into the low ground on the north side.”[223] There was little, indeed, at this time, except a scarcity of ammunition, to render the garrison apprehensive on their own account; but every day made them more and more anxious concerning the fate of their countrymen, who by this time had left Caubul on their perilous retreat through the snowy passes. A letter from Captain Lawrence, dated on the 4th instant,[224] announced that the force was to march in a day or two, with every expectation of being attacked upon the road. Nothing could Sale’s brigade do in this emergency, but patiently abide the result. At last, on the 13th of January, when the garrison were busy on the works, toiling with axe and shovel, with their arms piled and their accoutrements laid out close at hand, a sentry, on the ramparts, looking out towards the Caubul road, saw a solitary, white-faced horseman struggling on towards the fort. The word was passed; the tidings spread. Presently the ramparts were lined with officers, looking out, with throbbing hearts, through unsteady telescopes, or with straining eyes tracing the road. Slowly and painfully, as though horse and rider both were in an extremity of mortal weakness, the solitary mounted man came reeling, tottering on. They saw that he was an Englishman. On a wretched, weary pony, clinging, as one sick or wounded, to its neck, he sate or rather leant forward; and there were those who, as they watched his progress, thought that he could never reach, unaided, the walls of Jellalabad.