He reached Bombay on the 28th of May, and his resignation was received and accepted on the night of the 2nd June. What had happened in that brief interval of a few days to make him precipitate matters? There is absolutely no doubt, quite apart from the personal explanation given by General Gordon, both verbally and in writing, to myself, that the determining cause was the incident relating to Yakoob Khan. That Afghan chief had been proclaimed and accepted as Ameer after the death of his father, the Ameer Shere Ali. In that capacity he had signed the Treaty of Gandamak, and received Sir Louis Cavagnari as British agent at his capital. When the outbreak occurred at Cabul, on 1st September, and Cavagnari and the whole of the mission were murdered, it was generally believed that the most guilty person was Yakoob Khan. On the advance of General Roberts, Yakoob Khan took the first opportunity of making his escape from his compatriots and joining the English camp. This voluntary act seemed to justify a doubt as to his guilt, but a Court of Inquiry was appointed to ascertain the facts. The bias of the leading members of that Court was unquestionably hostile to Yakoob, or rather it would be more accurate to say that they were bent on finding the highest possible personage guilty. They were appointed to inquire, not to sentence. Yet they found Yakoob guilty, and they sent a vast mass of evidence to the Foreign Department then at Calcutta. The experts of the Foreign Department examined that evidence. They pronounced it "rubbish," and Lord Lytton was obliged to send Mr (afterwards Sir) Lepel Griffin, an able member of the Indian Civil Service, specially versed in frontier politics, to act as Political Officer with the force in Afghanistan, so that no blunders of this kind might be re-enacted.