Waller did not find Mabel quite so much changed as he had feared she might be; yet she was the wreck of what she had been in happier times--the tall, full-bosomed, and statuesque-looking English girl, with clear, calm, bright, and confident eyes. The latter were still bright, but their lustre was unnatural; their expression was a wild and hunted one; her colour was gone, and her cheeks were deathly pale. But all in the group of hostages were alike in those respects. For many months, had they not been daily, sometimes hourly, face to face with death? But Waller, as she hung on his breast and looked with eyes upturned upon him, had never seemed so handsome in her sight: his form and face were to her as the beau-ideal of Saxon manliness and beauty; but his complexion, once nearly as fair as her own, was burned red now, by the exposure consequent to the two last campaigns; his forehead clear and open, his nose straight, his mouth large perhaps, but well-shaped and laughing; and then he had in greater luxuriance than ever his long, fair, fly-away whiskers; and, save his Afghan dress, he looked every inch the jolly, frank, and burly Bob Waller of other times, especially when, as if he thought "the scene" had lasted long enough, he drew Mabel's arm through his, led her a little way apart, and proceeded leisurely to prepare a cigar for smoking. "So Bob, dear, dear Bob, my presentiment has come true after all," she exclaimed; "and this horrid Bameean has seen the end of all our sorrows!" "But it was not such an end as this your foreboding heart had anticipated, Mabel," replied Waller, caressing her hand in his, and pressing it against his heart. Major Pottinger, who had now the command, ordered that all must prepare at once to quit Bameean, and avoid further risks by falling back on their supports, lest Ackbar Khan might come on them after all. To lessen the chance of that, however, the wily Saleh Mohammed, who knew by sure intelligence from his scouts that Ackbar was to proceed, with the relics of his army, through the Akrobat Pass into the Balkh, advised that all should take a circuitous route towards Cabul; and this suggestion was at once adopted by the now-happy hostages and the escort. Two days afterwards, as they were traversing the summit of a little mountain pass, their long and winding train of horse and foot guarded by Kuzzilbash Lancers and the wilder-looking Dooranees, they came suddenly in sight of those whom General Pollock had sent to meet and, if necessary, to succour them. These were Her Majesty's 3rd Light Dragoons, the 1st Bengal Cavalry, and Captain Backhouse's train of mountain guns, all led by Sir Robert Sale in person; and who might describe the joy of that meeting, when the rescued hostages cast their eager eyes and hands towards them in joy, and when they saw the old familiar uniforms covering all the green slope, while the cavalry came galloping and the infantry rushing tumultuously towards them!