He was sore in spirit at this time because, as he said, his actions were watched and his measures criticised, and letters written to Calcutta, setting forth that things were not going on well in Afghanistan. He complained that the Governor-General was too willing to listen to all the stories which reached him from uncertain sources of information, and he looked upon Lord Auckland’s reasonable credulity as unreasonable want of confidence in him. “I am much obliged to you,” he wrote to a friend in August, “for the kind hint contained in your last. I should never for a moment think of resigning my post from any difference of opinion between myself and my superiors, as to the measures which should be adopted for the security of our interests in this quarter; but when a want of confidence is shown in myself personally, I would rather not wait till I get a less equivocal hint to move. Of late, I find that there has been kept up a system of espionage on my proceedings, and that the most ready credence has been afforded to the malevolent tales of every idle fellow about camp, to say nothing of newspaper fabrications, which are taken for gospel. I cannot well help myself as to my correspondents, for Colvin evidently writes to me with the sanction of the Governor-General.” But above all these petty cares and distractions rose the one dominant thought in Macnaghten’s mind, of the great and beautiful game that was to be played by the annexation of Herat and the coercion of the Sikhs; and still he continued to write to Lord Auckland that there was nothing else to be done. One letter of many will suffice to show how this leading idea still overbore everything in his mind:—