a fatal error, for which he made terrible atonement. But there are few who will not pity rather than condemn the man, who found himself suddenly, with all his weakness upon him, in a sea of difficulty which demanded almost superhuman strength to buffet through it. In these pages he has appeared only as the military leader—as one who, in the hour of danger, was tried and found wanting. His fine social qualities cannot be accepted as a set-off to his military deficiencies. It is not to be pleaded in answer to the charge of having sacrificed an army at Caubul, that he was an agreeable gentleman in private life, that he was always ready with an anecdote and told it well, and that it was very hard not to love him. But now that it has been recorded how the soldier became the captive, and how the captive passed away to his rest, these things may be set down with a kindly hand upon the last page which bears his name; and it may be permitted to us, for a little space, to forget the deficiencies of the soldier whilst we sympathise with the sufferings of the man.[197] CHAPTER IV. [December: 1841-June: 1842.] Stoddart and Conolly—Intelligence of the Caubul Outbreak—Arrest of the English Officers—Their sufferings in Prison—Conolly’s Letters and Journals—Death of the Prisoners. There is a painful episode in this epic of the Afghan war, which perhaps can be introduced in no place more fitly than in this. Whilst the prisoners, who surrendered themselves on the march between Caubul and Jellalabad, were suffering such hardships only as were inseparable from their position in a rude and inhospitable country, and the hostages at Caubul were under the protection of a benevolent and high-minded Afghan nobleman, two enlightened and chivalrous British officers were enduring unparalleled sufferings in the dungeons of an Oosbeg tyrant, far beyond the snowy mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh. Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly were being devoured by vermin in a cheerless prison in the city of Bokhara.