The following day, that the absurd might not be wanting amid their misery, to the surprise of all, Saleh Mohammed appeared mounted on his camel, not in his usual amplitude of turban, with his flowing chogah and Cashmere shawls, but with his lean, shrunken, and bony figure buttoned up in a tight regimental blue surtout, with gold shoulder-scales, and crimson sash, frog-belt, and sword, all of which had whilom belonged to Jack Polwhele, of the Cornish Light Infantry, a tiny forage cap (which Jack used to wear very much over his right ear) being perched on the back of his bald head, while the chin-strap came uncomfortably only below the tip of his high hooked nose; and thus arrayed he prepared to meet and, as he hoped, duly to impress Zoolficar Khan, the governor of the town of Bameean, where the first halt was to be made for further and final orders from Ackbar, as to whether the hostages should be sold or slain; for now their custodian began to have some strange doubts upon the subject, and now his victims were fairly out of Afghanistan and in the land of the Tartars, nine days of monotonous and arduous journey distant from Cabul. We have lately seen the kind of mercy meted out to helpless hostages by Communal savages in the boasted city of Paris--the self-styled centre of civilization--and so may fairly tremble for the fate of those who were in the hands of Asiatic fanatics on the western slopes of the Hindoo-Kush. CHAPTER XVII. MABEL'S PRESENTIMENT. Mabel Trecarrel seemed to see or to feel the image of Waller become more vividly impressed upon her mind, now, as every day's journey, as every hour, and every mile towards the deserts of Great Tartary, increased the perils of her own situation, and seemed to add to the difficulties, if not entirely to close all the chances, of their ever meeting again on this earth; and as Bameean, a rock-hewn city, the Thebes of the East, and geographically situated in Persia, began to rise before the caravan, when it wound down from the Akrobat Pass, a deeper chill fell on her heart, for she had a solemn presentiment creeping over her that there all her sorrows, if not those of her companions too, should be ended. A laborious progress of several miles, during which her now weary dhooley-wallahs staggered and reeled with fatigue, brought them from the mountain slopes into a plain, damp, muddy, and marshy, where from the plashy soil there rose a mist through which the city seemed to shimmer and loom, shadowy and ghost-like. A great portion of this plain was waste, and hence believed to be the abode of ghouls, afreets, and demons, who, in the dark and twilight, sought to lure the children of Adam to unknown but terrible doom.