"That is impossible. At dusk, when the sun is set, I shall be here again on this spot, and take you to her. Till then, be silent, and confide in none: to talk may ruin all!" said Zubberdust, whose active mind had already conceived a plan for outwitting Saleh Mohammed and his guard of Dooranees, who watched the walls of the fort from the four round towers which terminated each angle, and on each of which was mounted a nine-pounder gun taken from our old cantonments. Too wary to remain needlessly in her company, with all her allurements, now that his pretended mission was partly performed, and thereby draw the eyes of the observant or suspicious upon them, and more particularly upon himself, he at once withdrew, leaving poor Mabel, who naturally was intensely anxious to question him further, overwhelmed by emotions which she longed eagerly to share by confidence with her friends; for news of any European, especially of one who belonged to the little circle of English society at Cabul, must prove dear and of deepest interest to them all. Yet had not this mysterious messenger impressed upon her, that if she was to see her sister, to rejoin her, and hear the story of her wonderful disappearance at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, if she would soothe, console, it might be protect her, she must be silent? Slowly passed the day in the fort of Saleh Mohammed. The tall and leafy poplars, the slender white minars, the four towers of the fort, which was a perfect parallelogram, and the wooded and rocky hills that overlooked them all, cast their shadows across the plain (through which the Cabul winds towards the Indus) gradually in a circle, and then, when stretching far due westward, they gradually faded away; the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu-Kush, the mighty Indian Caucasus, rose cold and pale against the clear blue sky, where the stars were twinkling out in succession; and with a nervous anxiety, which she found it almost impossible to control, Mabel Trecarrel stole away, with mingled emotions, from the apartments assigned to the lady hostages--emotions of sorrow, half of shame for her silence concerning the project she had in hand, and her enforced reticence to those who loved her, and had ever been so kind to her amid their own heavy afflictions--compunction for the honest alarm her absence would certainty occasion them on the morrow; but hope and joy in the anticipated reunion with her sister soon swept all such minor thoughts away, and she longed and thirsted for the embrace and companionship of Rose, to whom, though the difference in their years was but small, she had ever been a species of mother and monitress--never so much as when in their happy English home in Cornwall, far away!