The local clans would have felt that, if a powerful combination, such as that which had gathered about the Ghazni priest, had failed to drive back the British army, they themselves were powerless to do so. But once the vast host of 50,000 men had occupied Cabul and the Bala Hissar, and had made it impossible for the garrison of Sherpur to move beyond its defences, the Ghilzais felt that the appeal to their fanaticism was a safe lead to follow, and they began to muster in strength. The messengers from Mahomed Jan were welcomed, and our evacuation of Butkhak proved that his promise to surround and cut to pieces the small army which had captured Cabul was not widely removed from the possible, as our leaders were concentrating their force to resist an attack. If we had not needed every man at Sherpur, why should we hurry away from our first outpost under cover of darkness? This was the argument which went home to the hearts of the men in the hills about Khurd Cabul and Tezin; and all the local chiefs, with one exception, turned out their fighting men, and thought of the slaughter of our army in the terrible defile of 1842. Padshah Khan, in his villages nearer the Shutargardan, was carried away by the same reasoning; and, with customary treachery, he hastened to Cabul to fight against the men he had pledged himself to support. His contingent was more needed there than that of the chiefs along our line of communications, who had a similar mission to perform to that so successfully carried out nearly forty years ago—to block all outlets of escape; and in addition, to drive back our reinforcements to Jellalabad. In the first flush of success it may have occurred to Mahomed Jan that he was destined to become a second Akhbar Khan, and that a siege of Jellalabad would follow the annihilation of the force at Cabul. To carry out the programme with success, it was needful that all posts west of Jellalabad should be swept away; and this work he entrusted to Asmatullah Khan, of Lughman, a chief, perhaps, more powerful than any other single tribal leader in North-Eastern Afghanistan. Asmatullah accepted the part assigned to him, and the Lughmanis were soon actively at work: the telegraph line west of Gundamak was destroyed, and then, in full confidence, the troops at Jugdulluck were attacked. But though it was easy enough in theory to lay down plans on the old lines, the Lughmanis found that, with superior weapons, our soldiers were able without difficulty to hold their own against twentyfold odds. The road might be made unsafe, and all convoys stopped; but when it came to turning out enemies snugly entrenched, and armed with breech-loaders, it was a very different story. While Mahomed Jan fondly imagined that for two or three months the Ghilzais would hold the Passes, and check the movement of a relieving force, Asmatullah Khan was not equal to keeping back the stream of men which set westwards from Gundamak, and could not