tried to induce the Mahomedan sowar told off to execute him to let him go. “You are a Mahomedan,” he said, “and I am one of your holy men. You cannot shoot me! Let me get past the sentry, and I can escape.” The sowar’s answer was characteristic of our men: “You have been fighting against the _Sircar_, and it is your _kismut_ now to be shot. You must fulfil your _kismut_.” The _moollah_ saw that his prayers were of no avail, and as he was walking out, he added half-apologetically:—“I tried to persuade these others not to fight, but they would come down to Cabul, and they brought me with them.” This was admission enough, even if it were not the whole truth. It is the _moollah_ usually who persuades the tribes to turn out, not the tribesmen who have to persuade the priest to come with them. The four other prisoners were servants of the three men named: as they were all bearing arms they also were shot. _17th December._ To-day the enemy seem to have awakened to a sense of their responsibility as an investing force. Having made their permanent (?) political arrangements for the good government of Cabul and Afghanistan, they have begun to turn their attention to the stranger within their gates. They fondly imagine that a parade of their strength may overawe us, and strike terror to our souls: quite forgetting that it can only be for a short time that we shall be the attacked, and not the attackers. About ten o’clock this morning they poured out of the eastern and western gates of Cabul, with banners flying and _tom-toms_ beating, and drew up in dense masses upon the Siah Sung Heights on the one side and the slopes of the Asmai hill above Deh-i-Afghan on the other. Horsemen were seen galloping about in their midst, and trying to keep them together in military order; but their efforts were, as a rule, of no avail, only the men of the Ardal Pultun marching at all like soldiers. The men in that regiment (Guards) still carry their Sniders, and dress in a soldierlike manner, their cross-belts and pouches giving them the appearance of regular sepoys. At eleven o’clock the Afghans assembled must have numbered fully 20,000, and it was believed that they meditated an attack on the eastern and western walls of Sherpur. The alarm was accordingly sounded in cantonments, all work at the trenches was stopped, the Reserve formed up at its appointed place below the Bemaru gorge, and every man went to his post. It was a bleak December day; the sun was obscured, a cold wind sweeping down from the Pughman hills, and heavy clouds louring as if threatening snow. Our men in the trenches and on the walls were all clad in their over-coats, and dreary work they found it waiting for an enemy who never came. The hundreds of scaling-ladders we had heard so much about were not visible, and the thousands of men who crowded upon Siah Sung were only valorous enough to