All unaware of the evil tidings that were awaiting him, Denzil, stiff and well-nigh frozen, aching in every limb, staggered like a tipsy man to his feet, so sore and cramped were every joint and limb. As the dawn came slowly in, he gazed around him. Waller was already awake, and had been to look after his men. He proffered his cigar-case, saying: "Have a weed, Devereaux--it's all the breakfast you are likely to get. We are as ill off here as Mother Hubbard's ill-used cur." "Are the ladies stirring yet?" asked Denzil with chattering teeth. "No--and Lady Sale has not had the bullet extracted from her arm yet." Once or twice during the dark hours that were passed, a little hand cased in lavender kid and drawn from a warm fur-lined riding gauntlet, had come out from under the wall of the tent, and Waller's lips had touched it, for it was Mabel's, and gloved though it was, the touch of that little hand, especially under circumstances so terrible, made big Bob Waller's honest heart to vibrate with emotion. Once Rose, in her old spirit of waggery, had put out her hand in the same way and laughed when Waller, who was just dosing off to sleep in the wretched cold without, kissed it with great _empressement_, for she too wore pale lavender kids under her riding gloves. "Look round, Waller," said Denzil, as he lit the cigar; "did you ever behold such a scene?" "Never--and hope never to see such again!" The lofty mountains and impending rocks that overhung the Pass, and that fatal route back to the hills of Siah Sung, being covered with snow, looked singularly close and nigh. The sky was clear now; and far as the eye could reach the way was studded by the dead bodies of human beings, camels, horses, baggage yaboos, artillery bullocks, cannon and waggons, drums, weapons and abandoned dhoolies, the inmates of which might be either living or dead; the latter most probably, for everything there lay half buried in the white winding-sheet of winter, with the black vultures settling in flights over them. In the immediate vicinity of where Denzil stood, many men who in the night had perished of cold and exhaustion lay frozen hard and firmly to the earth, with their muskets beside them. The corpses of the Hindoos and dusky Bengal sepoys seemed like pale Venetian bronze in the frosty air. In the eyes of the survivors, by over tension of the nerves, and the fierce wild excitement they had undergone for some time past, but more particularly during the preceding day and night, a keen and unearthly glare or glitter was visible. Each was aware of this hunted-expression as he looked in the worn face of his comrade. General Trecarrel seemed to be sorely changed by the sharp anxiety he suffered for his daughters' safety. Thus the usually bluff and florid looking old soldier had become pale, wan and haggard in face, and wild and defiant in eye, like the rest.