We left Mamur and encamped at Gond, intending to proceed to Sonamurg, but I did not feel at all well, so we had to give it up. The scenery had become wilder and grander at every turn round each rugged cliff, and then the mountains seemed to close entirely, so that there was apparently no possibility of getting further on, till a turn of the path led us to where the valley widened into a green enclosure. On our way we got lots of apricots, the trees being fairly weighed down with their yellow load. Gond is a very wild place. Our tents were pitched close to a brawling stream that clamoured so loudly as it hurried past to join the Scind that we could hardly hear ourselves speak. My wife, accompanied by the dogs, proceeded alone for about five miles up the valley. She brought back a glowing account of glorious combinations of mountain, wood, and river. The intense stillness of the place imparted a feeling of solemnity to the scene. While my wife was on her way a figure appeared, at first wholly unrecognisable, face burned red, and hair a perfect thatch, dress indescribable. This was an officer of the Connaught Rangers. How amazed I was when my wife returned to our camp with this singular-looking being. He had been to Leh, and was full of stories of his adventures. He had walked thirty miles that day. As he had left his servants behind, we made an impromptu bed for him in our spare tent. He told us he had seen a state prisoner at a fort called Tillet, a man tall in height, cramped up in an iron cage where he could not sit upright. My friend measured this cruel prison, and, as far as I remember, his conclusion was that it was only four feet high, and narrow in proportion. The poor man had been immured there for years. At the time of the death of Gholab Sing (the father of the present Maharajah) the prisoner plotted to raise another branch of the family to the throne, his intention being that the prince who now reigns was to have been slain. The plot was discovered, and the unhappy author of it was condemned to a life-long incarceration in an iron cage. It is so long ago since the story was told on the valley of the Scind river by this wandering Ranger, that now my written description of the event seems quite tame; but at the time his portrait of the unfortunate wretch he had seen, and the measurement of the cage which he had marked on his stick, made us all thrill with horror, and we made a fresh inroad on the fluids in my wife’s stores. I hope my friend had no difficulty in getting off his boots, as I might have chaffed him as I was once chaffed myself. In the Crimea, during the last winter there, my old friend and comrade, Nat Steevens, and I built, with the aid of one of the Rangers, named Hopkins, a very good man, ‘a moighty foin house,’ consisting of two rooms, divided by a very thin partition. Nat resided in one room, while I was possessor of the other. Nat said to me one morning: ‘I always can tell when you have been dining out.’