Waller's heart was filled with genuine gratitude; but he had only his earnest thanks to bestow on this good woman, who hastened his departure; and in less than two hours after she had thus transformed him, he had left the black tents of the shepherds several miles behind him. In no other disguise than this could he have been so safe from discovery. In the character of a Fakir he might beg with impunity, revile and anathematise with a vociferation that inspired terror, or he might remain obstinately silent, according to the pretended humour or real emergency of the moment. Thus, as none might dare to question his motives, his supposed sacred calling rendered him safe alike from interruption, inquiry, or suspicion, and he went on his way rejoicing. He had many strange and quaint adventures, but encountered no more perils by the way he had to pursue on foot. His great stature and sturdy figure won him the special favour of the women, particularly of those with whom he conversed at the wayside wells; and in many instances he discovered that pleasant little perquisites must often fall to the share of Fakirs and Dervishes; for ladies contended for the honour of feeding him, and pressed upon him tillas, and even mohurs of gold, to have refused which would have been totally untrue to his clerical character. Once he had a narrow escape from encountering Osman Abdallah the Arab Hadji, the same fanatic whom he had run through the body on the day the Envoy was assassinated, and whom he saw asleep, too probably intoxicated with bhang, on a piece of mat, at the door of a village khan. On another occasion he had to endure for several miles the society of a rival Fakir--a Pandarom enthusiast, who wore an iron garden-gate, of considerable weight and size, riveted round his neck as a penance, which excited the charity and fear of all who beheld him; but on the fortieth day after the retreat from Cabul began, Waller, to his joy, saw once more before him the vast and fertile plain of Jellalabad, the stately city with all its white wails and round towers, and its green background of magnificent mountains, many of them being wooded to the summit; but, to his eye, the most pleasing features in the scene were the scarlet coats of the sentinels on the ramparts of the Bala Hissar, on which the union-jack was waving in the morning wind.