even dispossess the solitary native regiment which held Jugdulluck when the small brigade under General Charles Gough had started for Sherpur. The Ghilzais of Tezin had also found themselves non-plussed by the abandonment of the old route of the Khurd Cabul, which was no longer followed either to or from Sherpur. Although Maizullah Khan and every local chief, with the exception of Mahomed Shah Khan, of Hisarak, were in arms, their tactics were so faulty that, beyond menacing Luttabund, they did nothing to harass our reinforcements. The mere fact of our being able to hold the Luttabund Kotal was so strong an evidence that the end had not yet come, that they hesitated to occupy the road between that post and the Jugdulluck defile, fearing that they might be caught between two fires. Then was demonstrated the full value of the decision arrived at by Sir F. Roberts—to hold Luttabund at all hazards until its garrison could be picked up by the column moving to his relief. The flash of the heliograph from Sherpur to the _kotal_ where Colonel Hudson, with less than 1,000 men, was watching for the reinforcements from our eastern posts, told the tribes that the force in Sherpur, though beleaguered by an army larger than Cabul had ever seen, was still linked to its supports, and was by no means in the straits Mahomed Jan had promised. Sitting on the hills about Luttabund, the Ghilzais were too faint-hearted to attack in earnest, and Mahomed Jan was not General enough to detach one-fifth of his force to sweep away the handful of men forming our solitary outpost. Forty Sikhs of the 23rd Pioneers were enough to scatter the bands which gathered about Luttabund; and so little did the followers of Maizullah Khan prove worthy of the trust confided to them by Mahomed Jan, that from Jugdulluck to Butkhak scarcely a shot was fired upon General Charles Gough’s brigade. Mahomed Jan, holding Cabul and the Bala Hissar in his grasp, must have felt that his plans were falling to pieces when the Ghilzais were unequal to breaking up the force passing through their midst; and once our reinforcements had entered upon the Cabul plain, those plans ceased to exist. In desperation the assault upon Sherpur was decided upon, and its failure was the signal for the collapse of the _jehad_. Twenty-four hours after the signal light blazed upon the summit of the Asmai hill, not 1,000 men of the 50,000 who had held Cabul could be found within ten miles of the city.