'And now for the march towards Cabul—nearly eighty miles from the village of Balabagh. As I have a spare horse, you shall ride him, Wodrow,' said Colville.
'I shall never forget your kindness, sir.'
This was all Robert Wodrow said, but his heart was very full, for Colville's manner and bearing to him were kind and considerate in the extreme; and he knew that—the latter's generosity of nature apart—much of this sprang from their mutual regard for Mary and Ellinor Wellwood.
CHAPTER XX.
AT CABUL.
For Robert Wodrow to attempt to make his way alone to where his regiment was now quartered far in the rear, through passes filled by savage tribes, was not to be thought of; thus nothing was left for him but to proceed with the ambassadors' escort to Cabul.
He was safe now, and had escaped from that terrible catastrophe at the Ford of Isaac; but poor Robert was only a corporal, and the public papers barely recorded the circumstance. Now he was once more with Europeans; his whole bearing rapidly changed; his weakness and illness seemed to leave him, his step resumed its buoyancy, his eyes their fire and, if sad, old devil-may-care expression.
Though Robert Wodrow, by enlisting in the hussars, had opened a considerable social gulf between himself and Captain Leslie Colville of the Guards, it was impossible for them both not to have many sympathies in common; thus oblivious of that gulf the two rode frequently together, talking of the Wellwoods and the Birks of Invermay, on the route by Gundamuck, Suffaidh Sang, and Hazardaracht.
On service the bonds of rank and even of discipline, so to say, are often loosened, for the experience of fighting side by side makes the finest qualities of the soldier, forming the true and loving link between the officer and his men. It fires the sense of esprit-de-corps, and blots out all the ignobler phases of garrison and barrack life, teaches self-reliance, inspires cameraderie and patriotism, and makes men less coarse in speech and kindlier to each other in spirit, and more grave and earnest with the work in hand.
After halting for the night near Hazardaracht, or the 'Place of the Thousand Trees,' Sir Louis Cavagnari and his party pushed upwards to the famous Shutargardan Pass, which is eleven thousand five hundred feet in height, and from thence the road to Cabul lies through narrow and rock-bound denies.