Through the gates of that city have all the great conquerors of India come—Alexander and Timor, Genghis Khan and Nadir Shah; it bars the approach to India from the north and west, and the power that holds it—as one day Russia will—commands both Cabul and Herat.
The facilities for attacking India from it are innumerable, and, as Sir Edward Hamley has it, 'I believe the concurrent testimony of all Indians is that there is no territory on which it would be more perilous to give our enemy the chance of winning a battle than our Indian Empire.'
General Roberts, in a minute to the Government, 29th May, 1880, urged 'that our grasp on Candahar should never be loosened,' and that its military retention was of vital importance to us in all wars connected with the Afghans or Russians in Central Asia. Lord Napier of Magdala, Sir George Lawrence, Sir Henry Rawlinson, and all other high authorities on Indian military affairs, have spoken or written in the same tone on this all-important subject; yet, in defiance of their opinions, Candahar was handed over to the Ameer, and since then the Russian eagle has laid its talons on Merv!
CHAPTER XVII.
AMONG THE BIRKS OF INVERMAY.
'Home at last!' exclaimed Leslie Colville, aloud but to himself in the excess of his joy, as his train from Dover went clanking in to crowded and busy Charing-Cross Station. 'Home at last! How jolly it is to see the English faces, the familiar sights and hear the familiar sounds again—and to be once more in mufti!'
'Globe—Graphic—'Lustrated News—Punch!' He listened to the calls of the newsboys as if they sang sweet music; and for days past he had thought of, whistled, and hummed the burden of an old Scottish song he had heard his nurse sing long ago—
'Hame, hame, hame, oh, fain wad I be;
Hame, hame, hame, in my ain countrie!'
And the desire had become a realization—a fact.
'And now to meet my darling!' he thought, as he plunged into a well-horsed hansom, and, leaving his luggage to follow, was driven at a tearing pace towards Grosvenor Square, for which the residence at Altona had been gladly quitted by Mrs. Deroubigne and her two charges,