But a month before this, and Downie, at his club in Pall Mall, had read with exultation, that, of all General Elphinstone's army, his own son, Audley, and Doctor Brydone, of the Shah's 6th Regiment, had alone reached Jellalabad. Little cared he who perished on that disastrous retreat, so that his son was safe, for, selfish though he was, he loved well and dearly that son, his successor--the holder of a young life that was to stretch, perhaps, for half a century beyond his own shorter span. Now it had chanced that on the very morning of this remarkable visit, he had seen, with disgust, in the _Times_, that, among those alleged to be safe in the hands of an Afghan chief "was Ensign Denzil Devereaux, of the Cornish Light Infantry, an officer, who, according to a letter received from Taj Mohammed Khan the Wuzeer, had succeeded in saving a colour of Her Majesty's 44th Regiment." The daughter, whose artful plans upon his son's affections he had, as he conceived, so cleverly thwarted--the daughter Sybil gone no one knew whither; the son, a captive in a barbarous land beyond the Indian frontier, and their mother dead, the little family of Richard Trevelyan seemed on the verge of being quietly blotted out altogether; and now here was this ill-omened Derrick Braddon, this Old Man of the Sea, come suddenly on the tapis, with his confounded papers! General Elphinstone had died in the hands of the Afghans; so might Denzil; or he and the other survivors or hostages might yet be slain or--unless rescued by the troops from Candahar or Jellalabad--be sold by Ackbar Khan (as Downie had heard in his place in the House) to the chiefs in Toorkistan, after which they would never be heard of more. Oh, thought Downie, that I could but correspond with this Shireen Khan of the Kuzzilbashes; doubtless such a worthy would "not be above taking a retaining fee." By the dreadful slaughter in the Khyber Pass, and the capture of all the ladies and children, the sympathies, indignation, and passions of the people were keenly roused at home; thus if Denzil returned at this crisis, with the slightest military _éclat_, it would greatly favour any claims he might advance. If the documents were genuine and could be proved so in a court of Law--or Justice (these being distinctly separate), were his title, his own honour (as Downie thought it), the honour, wealth, and position, privileges and prospects of his wife and children, to be at the mercy of a mercenary wretch like Schotten Sharkley; or of a broken-down, wandering, and obscure Chelsea pensioner, who possessed the papers in question?