"Solomon, as we may read, knew three thousand proverbs, and the songs that he sang were a hundred and five; yet what was Solomon when compared with Shah Sujah?" sneered Ackbar, as his white teeth glistened under his coal-black mustache. "You will ask this Envoy on the morrow, if it was really his intention to send me, Ameen Oollah Khan, Shireen Khan, and others, bound as slaves, to the feet of his Queen, in her Island of the Sea?" said one with sombre fury. "I shall, without fail." "And the white-faced dog will deny it!" "Perhaps; but it shall be the last lie of the unbeliever's tongue," replied Ackbar, with a grim smile as he touched the hilt of his Afghan dagger. "Slay him, even as I slew Burnes Sahib!" added that pleasant personage who rejoiced in the name of Ameen Oolah Khan. "Ha! what said the Khan of Khelat-i-Ghilzie to him, when he heard of the Feringhees first coming hither by the Khyber and the Khoord Cabul passes? 'Ye have brought an army into the land of the Pushtaneh; but how do you propose to take it back again?'"* * These were almost the words of the Duke of Wellington (by a singular coincidence) when intimation was first made in Parliament of our advance into Afghanistan.--Macfarlane's _Hist. of British India_, p. 537. "Had we killed Burnes Sahib when first he came among us alone, he had not returned with all those Kaffirs who are now cantoned between yonder hills of Siah Sung and Behmaru," said another chief, who wore the sword of Sir Alexander Burnes in his girdle; "so now, that we have the opportunity, let us slay the dogs ere they can escape us." "Nay, let us get the ransom _first_," suggested Shireen Khan. "Yes; and then let them march and be in the Passes, we know by which they must depart; and remember," added Ackbar, with a tone and face of indescribable ferocity, "the old Arab proverb--_Al harbu Khudatun_!"--(All war is fraud). "Moreover," said Ameen Oollah, "the Prophet tells us, that promise as we may, no faith is to be kept with heretics." "I came to retake my father's rights; the rights he sold to the Feringhees. It was written that I should do so; for who that could sit on a lofty throne in yonder Bala Hissar, would content him with a carpet in a tent? Those Feringhees--those Anglo-Indians are the most presumptuous dogs in the world," continued Ackbar, "they are accustomed to see their servile sipahees, their effeminate Hindoos, and others cower before them; but did they expect the same homage from us--the free men of Afghanistan?" A fierce laugh answered the question, and those who had lances, made their iron-shod butts to crash on the marble floor.