If the _sense of exile_ is so strong in the heart of the Anglo-Indian, even amid all the luxuries and splendours of Calcutta, the city of palaces--amid the gaieties and frivolities of Chowringhee,--what must that sense have been to the heart of this lonely English girl, far away beyond Peshawur, the gate of Western India, beyond the Indus, fifteen hundred English miles, as the crow flies, "up-country," from the mouth of the Hooghley and the shore of Bengal--where the railway whistle will long be unheard, and where Murray, Cook, and Bradshaw may never yet be known! Notwithstanding all that Rose had undergone of late, and all that she had schooled herself to anticipate as but too probable, she was still unable fully to realise the actual extent of the misfortunes that threatened her. Much of that deep misery which Sybil had endured elsewhere, when crouching in the damp and mist outside her mother's door, came over Rose's spirit now. Henceforward, she felt that life must be objectless; that safety or pursuit, freedom or captivity, sea or land, must be all alike to her; and for a time her poor brain, so long oppressed by successive sorrows and excitements, became almost unconscious of external impressions, and she sat as one in a dream, hearing only the buzz of the summer flies and the voice of the pagoda-thrush. Suddenly another sound seemed to mingle with the notes of the birds; it came on the air from a great distance. She started and looked wildly up--her once-clear hazel eyes all bloodshot and tearless now. What was it? what _is_ it? for the sound was there, and she seemed to hear it still, and the Khanum heard it too! Nearer it came, and nearer. It was the sound of drums--drums beaten in regular marching cadence, coming on the wind of evening down from the rocky pass in the hills of Siah Sung. Oh, there could be no mistake in the measure--British troops were coming on; and how welcome once would that sound have been to the young soldier who lay on his pallet there, and whose ear could hear the English drum no more! She started to the window, and looked forth to the black mountains, which, though distant from it, towered high above the Kuzzilbashes' fort. The dark Pass lay there, its shadows seeming blue rather than any other tint, as the receding rays of the setting sun left it behind; but her eyes were dim with weeping and with watching now, so Rose, with all her pulseless eagerness, failed to see the serried bayonets, the shot-riven colours tossing in the breeze, or the moving ranks in scarlet, that showed where the victorious brigades of Pollock, Sale, and Nott were once more defiling down into the plain that led to humbled Cabul. Welcome though their sound, they had come, alas, _too late_!