At night, crouching on a piece of xummal (or coarse blanket) and covered with sheepskins, Waller would dream at times of Mabel's bright face and merry laugh; but more often, perhaps, of those terrible seven days and seven nights of the retreat through the snowy passes, where the living trod sullenly, doggedly, on over the dead, till they too fell, to be trod on in turn. Horrid phantoms haunted him. Had he outlived, out-trodden all? Alas, it almost seemed so. Shots would seem to ring in his drowsy ear, and he fancied it was the Afghan juzailchees again; anon he would think himself at home in pleasant Cornwall; that he was after the brown pheasants within sight of the sounding sea, or among the quails on wild and rugged Lundy Isle; and then he would start to wakefulness and lie for hours, revolving in his mind the means, the chances of reaching Jellalabad; but, alas! so much time had elapsed, that he might only reach it to find that the garrison had abandoned it to save the hostages from death, or that the city was besieged by the victorious Afghans! But now he was to have a proof of how often chance was better than the deepest laid design. Joharah, the wife of the shepherd with whom Jubar Khan had left him, and whose name when translated signifies "a jewel," was a woman of singular kindness of heart, sweetness of disposition, and not without moderate pretensions to beauty. She was unusually kind to Waller, and did all in her power to alleviate the wretched condition to which fate had reduced him. Her husband was wont to boast that "she knew the language of the birds," and hence that they would inform _her_ if Waller attempted to escape, for to understand the language of the feathered tribe was peculiarly one of the boasted sciences of the Arabians. The art is frequently referred to in the "Thousand and One Nights," and tradition records that Balkis, Queen of Sheba, had a lapwing which conveyed all her messages verbally to King Solomon. Waller could have smiled on being told all this; and he wished in his soul he had no other informants to dread than the birds that twittered about the valley. Joharah, the Afghan woman, had remarked the growing depression that seemed to prey upon the spirit of Waller, and she was not without some interest in him, for the fairness of the European complexion contrasted in her eye pleasantly and favourably with the extreme darkness of the people around her. She had more than once detected him with a lock of Mahel Trecarrel's bright brown hair in his fingers, and with a woman's acuteness she speedily divined that thereby hung "a tale." One day she surprised him thus occupied when he was seated moodily and alone under a pistachio tree that grew near where their tents were pitched. Approaching softly, she laid a hand timidly on his shoulder, and after glancing hastily about to see if they were observed, she bent her dark bright eyes on his, and said-- "I dreamt of you last night." "Of me?"