"Amen Oolah—who was killed there."
"Was the slaughter great?"
"Of the Faithful, mean you?"
"Yes: I ask not of the Kaffirs—may their white faces be confounded!"
"The slaughter might remind Azrael, and the angels who looked on us, of the Prophet when he fought at Bedr. It was not so great, of course, as that of the Feringhees when they left Cabul; for Ackbar's orders were then, that but one should be left alive, if even that; but the white smoke, as it rolled on the wind, along the green sides of the hills, and ascended skyward out of the deep, dark Passes, was like that which shall precede the last day, and for two moons fill all space, from the east to the west, from the rising to the setting of the sun."
"Silence!" grumbled Saleh Mohammed, who was full of earnest thought, and in no mood for religious canting just then, as the orders of Ackbar and the collateral news of his defeat perplexed, while the hints and covert threats of the Governor of Bameean alarmed and irritated him. "So this is all you know, Hadji Osman?"
"All, save that I have a letter for Pottinger Sahib."
"From whom?" asked the chief, sharply.
"Shireen Khan, of the Kuzzilbashes."
"Fool! why not speak of this before? Yet perhaps it is as well that yonder Toorkonian dog is gone," exclaimed Saleh Mohammed, as he impetuously tore the missive from the hand of the cunning Hadji, who probably knew its contents; for a most singular leer came into his repulsive face, as he watched the dark visage of the Dooranee, seeming all the darker in the twilight now; for the golden flush was dying in the west, and its fading light fell faintly on the rock-hewn edifices and wondrous colossi that towered on the hill-slope above the fort, one half of which was sunk in shadow.