'"Sahib, your people will never escape; it will all be as Ackbar has sworn," said she in her soft Afghani, as she drew near me and spoke in a low cooing voice, lest others might overhear, in these rooms that had only hangings and no doors. "Sixty thousand citizens in Cabul, and all the mountain tribes around it are ripe for insurrection, and wait but the voice of Ackbar." '"But our soldiers are brave, and our envoy is wise." '"Was, you mean, Sahib," '"How--is he dead?" '"Yes," replied Nourmahal, shaking her head, while all the sequins flashed and glittered among the coils of her splendid dark hair; "he was lured into a conference with Ackbar, my husband Zemaun and other Khans, by whom he was dragged away and beheaded, in the face of your whole troops, who are now hemmed up in their lines, a prey to hunger and despair, while the passes are full of snow, and all the country up in arms." 'I scarcely believed all this at the time, but she never told me aught save the strictest truth. 'Hunger, cold and peril! Poor Mabel! thought I. On how little will a lover dwell with delight! The pressure of her gloved hand at parting, her broken tearful voice, which said more than a thousand words, and the remembered signature, all seemed to make her mine, and yet I never might see her more. I must have been reported among the killed, and as such wept for by poor Mabel, and in time to come would be mourned by my dear old mother in England far away. 'Every item of intelligence that reached that lonely tower was communicated to me by Nourmahal, but, I began to perceive, only when the grim Zemaun, with his baggy breeches, black fur cap, and shawl with its armoury of daggers and pistols, was absent. I began to perceive, too, that she was enhancing her great natural grace and beauty by a costume such as she had not worn in the tent, with a white silk camise and pink silk trousers, and a thin veil of muslin embroidered with gold, the use of which she managed with great coquetry, especially when she idled over the strings of her saringa; and she made wonderful _[oe]illades_ under her long dark eyelashes, when singing the "Song of the Rose," and other ballads in her softest Afghani. '"Sahib," said she one day, coming to me with her dark eyes quite dilated, "pardon and departure in peace has been offered to your people, if they will leave all their women in the hands of the Afghan chiefs; but they have refused, and only one cry is heard in their camp." '"And that cry is?" '"'Let us fight our way down, sword in hand! A few of us at least shall reach Jellalabad.' But they will never reach it," she added sadly; "Aziz Khan and Zemaun Khan have beset their homeward path with 10,000 wild Kohistanees, and the Ghilzies--the fiercest of Afghan warriors--hold the heights that overlook it."