"set himself right with the chiefs." There was nothing left for him but to obey, and the result of his obedience was a treaty concluded between the chiefs and the Shah under a Russian guarantee. Such a risk was not to be run again, nor was Burnes for the future to be able to plead any want of definite instructions. From this time forward his instructions were, indeed, explicit enough. Briefly they may be defined as to ask for everything and to give nothing. In vain did Dost Mahomed point out that in desiring to regain Peshawur from the Sikhs, he was doing practically no more than England was avowedly bent on doing, on guarding his frontier from danger, and that to exchange Runjeet Singh for his brother Mahomed was but to make his last state worse than his first. Burnes himself fully recognized the justice of his arguments, but Burnes's masters remained obstinately deaf. All they would promise was to restrain Runjeet Singh from attacking Dost Mahomed, provided Dost Mahomed in return bound himself to abstain from an alliance with any other state. At this, says Burnes, the Sirdars only laughed. "Such a promise," said Jubbar Khan, the Ameer's brother, and a staunch champion of the English cause, "such a promise amounts to nothing, for we are not under the apprehension of any aggressions from Lahore; they have hitherto been on the side of the Ameer, not of Runjeet Singh, and yet for such a promise you expect us to desist from all intercourse with Russia, with Persia, with Toorkistan, with every nation but England." To make matters still worse, at this crisis a new actor appeared on the scene, the Russian Vickovitch, bearing letters from Count Simonich and from the Czar himself, though the latter was unsigned, so as to be repudiated or acknowledged as events might require. The Ameer, still willing to please the British, offered to turn the Russian back from his gates, but that, Burnes pointed out, would be contrary to the rule of civilised nations, and Vickovitch was therefore allowed to enter Cabul and to present his letters, which were ostensibly, as those of Burnes had been, of a purely commercial bearing. What Burnes, however, thought of the arrival, he showed plainly enough in a letter written a few days after to a private friend. "We are in a mess here," he writes. "The Emperor of Russia has sent an envoy to Cabul with a blazing letter three feet long, offering Dost Mahomed money to fight Runjeet Singh.... It is now a neck-and-neck race between Russia and ourselves, and if his Lordship would hear reason he would forthwith send agents to Bokhara, Herat, Candahar, and Koondooz, not forgetting Sindh." His Lordship, however, would not hear such reason as Burnes had to offer, and when on March 5th, 1838, certain specific demands were presented by the Ameer, that the English should protect Cabul and Candahar from Persia, that Runjeet Singh should be compelled to restore Peshawur, and various others of the same