squadron of cavalry, and they are to be kept always ready to move out at short notice, apart from the regular garrison of Jellalabad and Gundamak.[37] ----- Footnote 37: I may here state that both these expeditions were afterwards carried out, and their object attained. ----- Another prisoner of some importance has been deported to India: Daoud Shah, the ex-Commander-in-Chief of the Amir’s army, was sent down the line a few days ago. His honesty, which for a long time many of us believed in, seems to have been tried, and found wanting. The story that a letter was intercepted, incriminating him in the rising, is untrue; but that communications of some kind passed between him and the hostile chiefs is said to have been pretty conclusively established. The exact relations between him and Mahomed Jan may never be known; but they were probably on the basis that, if Daoud Shah would desert the British, a high command should be his under the new Amir, Musa Jan. His military experience would also have been invaluable in directing such an army as that within Cabul, and his knowledge of our cantonment and its weak points would have made him a leader whom the tribesmen would have confidently followed. The Military Commission has had before it many of the prisoners taken after December 23rd, and five men condemned to death were hanged yesterday. Four of these were villagers of Baghwana, near which place the four Horse Artillery guns were lost on December 11th. Captain Guinness, of the 72nd Highlanders, has taken the place of Major Morgan, 9th foot, on the Commission, which, it will be remembered, originally consisted at Siah Sung Camp of General Massy, Major Moriarty, and Captain Guinness. Very few prisoners are now left for trial. ------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXI. An Amnesty issued—Influences affecting the People during the _Jehad_—Invitation to the Chiefs to visit Sherpur—Leaders exempted from the Amnesty—The Malcontent Chiefs at Ghazni—Durbar of January 9th—Principal Chiefs present—Padshah Khan—Address by Sir Frederick Roberts—Loyal Chiefs rewarded—Arrangements for governing Kohistan—Migration of Hindu Merchants to India—Reasons for the Movement—Mahomed Jan’s Plans—Proposal to Recall Yakub Khan—Reasons for such a Course being impossible—Improvement in the Intelligence Department—News of Abdur Rahman Khan—Additional Fortifications about Cabul and Sherpur. _7th January, 1880._