Colville devoutly hoped they would never meet again; yet he had not seen quite the last of Mahmoud Shah.
He now rode joyfully on towards the two parties of British cavalry which were then in sight, and who were—though he knew it not—about to inaugurate those operations which brought on the battle of Charasiah—or 'The Four Water Mills,' a spot about twelve British miles from Cabul.
The troops of Roberts had encamped there for the night, after passing through the picturesque defile called the Sung-i-Navishta. All the vicinity had been scoured by our cavalry patrols, and, little aware that they were on the eve of a bloody engagement, the soldiers, weary with a long day's march, had turned in early.
Daybreak on this eventful day saw two cavalry patrols pushing along the roads that lead from Charasiah to Cabul. Captain Neville, of the 14th Bengal Lancers, with twenty men of that corps, took that one which, after crossing the Chardeh Valley, enters the south-western suburbs of the city, while the southern road, leading through the Sung-i-Navishta, was taken by Captain Apperley, with twenty of the 9th Lancers, and Robert Wodrow, as he had so recently trod the ways there on foot, now rode with him as a guide.
At nine a.m., a puff of smoke came suddenly from the loopholed-wall of a village, and Wodrow's horse fell under him, killed by a musket ball. Apperley reported that he had occupied another village, and was now hard pressed by the enemy, on which a field-officer and twenty more Lancers came on to his succour, while some native infantry went at the double in the direction of Captain Neville's party.
Robert Wodrow was in the act of getting his carbine unstrapped from his dead horse when a mounted man suddenly came upon him clad in a sorely frayed and tattered blue patrol jacket, and wearing on his head a scarlet Afghan loonghee, and great was his astonishment and noisy and genuine his joy on discovering that this solitary and unarmed rider was Leslie Colville, whom he had long since numbered with the slain among the ashes of the Residency.
They shook hands again and again warmly. Each had a hundred questions to ask the other, but both had little information to give, as Colville had been mewed up in Mahmoud's fort since the day of the massacre, and no tidings from home in any way or of any kind had reached Robert Wodrow.
'And now, without a moment's delay, I must report myself at headquarters,' said Colville.
'The General and staff are as yet some miles in the rear, sir,' replied Wodrow, recalled by the remark to their relative positions, 'and I shall guide you. By the carbine and musketry fire in front our two cavalry patrols seem, to be catching it, and I must somehow get another horse. We have plenty of time. The infantry have yet some miles to come!'
Wodrow seemed now alternately in very sad or in the wildest spirits. With Colville's presence, his voice and kindly face, the young fellow's thoughts and memories went keenly and vividly back to the past time at Birkwoodbrae, to the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler, and all the old associations of Ellinor Wellwood and his home.