of the main points of the Treaty was directed against this very contingency.[1] The Amir always avoided reference to this subject, and as Sir Louis Cavagnari could not obtain direct evidence of the amnesty clauses being departed from, no redress could be obtained. Apart from palace intrigues, which are always rife in Cabul, there seemed no direct element of discord at work in the capital until the troops from Herat reached Sherpur Cantonment on August 5th. These regiments had not shared in the humiliation of the defeats suffered by the Cabul soldiery at Ali Musjid and the Peiwar Kotal; they taunted their comrades in arms with cowardice, and boasted of their own prowess; and their turbulence soon assumed a dangerous form. A ressaldar-major of one of our cavalry regiments, Nakshband Khan, an old and tried soldier, was spending his furlough at his village of Aoshahr, two miles from Cabul, and he seems first to have caught the alarm. When the Herat regiments marched, or rather swaggered, through the streets of Cabul, with bands playing, many of the soldiers abused the Kafir _elchi_ (ambassador) by name, calling out to the populace, “Why has he come here?” and showing too clearly that their passions were dangerously excited. Nakshband Khan learned from a fellow-countryman in the ranks that the soldiers had been ordered so to shout in the streets. Full of this news, he went to our Envoy and warned him of the coming storm. Sir Louis Cavagnari was a man notorious for his disregard of personal danger: he was brave to a fault, and this turbulence among the Afghan soldiery scarcely shook his composure. “Never fear,” was the answer to the Ressaldar; “keep up your heart, dogs that bark don’t bite!” “But these dogs do bite; there is real danger,” urged Nakshband Khan. The reply was characteristic of the man: he had taken up his post and nothing could break down his determination to remain at all hazards; he quietly said, “They can only kill the three or four of us here, and our death will be avenged.” ----- Footnote 1: Sirdar Sher Ali Khan Kandahari, Governor of Candahar, assured Sir Donald Stewart that Yakub Khan, from the first, never intended to pardon the chiefs who had aided us. Such a course of policy would have seemed madness in the eyes of every Afghan, said the Sirdar; not a man would have understood it. -----