The farmer's wife--Nouradeen Lai had but one helpmate--saw how pale and wan their prisoner looked, and speedily set some food before him; a pillau of rice, dhye (or sour curds), odious stuff, which he ate with his fingers in the fashion of the country. One or two of "Malcolm's plums" (as the Persians and Afghans call the potato), with a little ghee or clarified butter, completed his simple repast. As he ate, falling to without uttering "Bismillah!" an omission which his captors did not fail to remark, he thought that cookery must be a sublime science at home--a veritable branch of the fine arts; but hunger is ever an excellent seasoning to any meal. The snow had now begun to melt fast, and for four days Waller was kept a close prisoner, without a chance of escape, though he brooded over it incessantly, and writhed in spirit to be thus detained from his duty in Jellalabad, where doubtless the task of vengeance--it might be the deliverance of the unhappy hostages--had already begun. Besides, he was intensely bored by the hypocrisy of having to enact the part of Mussulman, by the pretended prayers and genuflexions, upon a piece of coarse felt, for the old man Nouradeen watched him closely. In all this Waller salved his conscience by the conviction that one is scarcely answerable for an act committed under a power one cannot resist. On the morning of the fifth day the hills appeared in all their greenery; the sunshine was bright, and the atmosphere was clear and calm. "The snow is gone," said Nouradeen; "when spring comes, the bones of your people will be whitening like ivory among the long green grass in the passes of the Khyber and Khoord Cabul." These words came fearfully and literally true, as the Afghans never interred one of the slain. "But sit not there so moodily," he added to Waller; "grieve not over that which is broken, lost or burnt; after prayer we go to plough; come with me." "Willingly," replied Waller, and his breast filled with a hope that was soon extinguished; for when he found himself between the stilts of the Afghan plough, which was of the most primitive construction, and drawn by two oxen--a machine of the mode of working which he was utterly ignorant--he perceived a little old humpbacked fellow, armed with a loaded juzail, watching all his movements, and with an expression of face which showed how much he longed for some sign of an attempt to escape, and Waller, remembering the skill of the farmer with _his_ firearms, resolved not to risk it.