"Hallo, Denzil, my boy! what was that shindy we hear you got into in Cabul last night?" asked Waller, looking up. "Hope you were not poking your nose under the veil of some bride of the Faithful, eh? Here is Trevelyan of ours, has had a narrow escape, too. He and his escort were pursued by the Ghilzies as he came up country; but he sabred one, shot five or six and got clear off. Then I suppose you know all about this devilish business of Sale and the 13th Light Infantry in the pass?" Waller running on this, caused a diversion, and saved both Rose and Denzil some pain by giving them breathing time. So this was Audley Trevelyan, his cousin, the Audley to whom Sybil owed her life in the Pixies' Hole, was the first thought of Denzil, and his heart seemed to harden. He had come thinking to create an interest in a very tender bosom by an account of "the shindy," as Waller styled it, in the great bazaar; and here was a fellow bronzed and mustachioed already in possession of the situation--master of the position--an intensely good-looking beast, who had actually crossed swords and exchanged shots with the wild and untamable Ghilzies! To Denzil it was bitter mortification, all--yet he was compelled to dissemble. Could it be possible that he found himself _de trop_? That words of mockery had fallen on his ear? That Mabel and this man, too, knew alike of that delightful drive by the lake? There was a nervous flutter and laughing air of confusion about Rose that were neither flattering nor assuring; but the confirmed tidings of the attack, by the insurrectionary tribes upon Sir Robert Sale's regiment in its downward march to Jellalabad, luckily afforded a ready topic--a neutral ground--on which all could talk with ease; for now they were aware that Sir Robert Sale's little brigade, including the Queen's 13th Light Infantry and 35th Native Infantry, armed with flint muskets, though the stores were full of percussion fire-arms, had been attacked by the mountain tribes, and that after clearing the stupendous Khoord Cabul Pass and enduring eighteen days of incessant fighting as far as a place called Gundamuck, had succeeded in reaching Jellalabad on the 12th of November; and that now on Sir Robert's retention of that city depended all the hope of General Elphinstone's slender army having a place of refuge--a point on which to fall back--if compelled to retire from Cabul (leaving the unpopular Shah to the mercy of his own subjects), even with the knowledge that a great amount of fighting awaited them in the savage mountain passes (through which their homeward route must lie,) amid the land of the Ghilzies, a race of hereditary robbers.