Is it not so, Waller?"
"By this road I smoked a last cigar with Jack Polwhele, of ours, and Harry Burgoyne, of the 37th," resumed Waller. He remembered, but he did not care to add, how broadly they had bantered him about Mabel Trecarrel on the evening in question. "And all round here," he resumed, pursuing his own thoughts aloud, "are the scenes of many a pleasant ride and happy drive. Here I betted and lost a box of gloves with the Trecarrels."
"You seem to have always been betting on something with those ladies, and with a gentleman's privilege of losing."
"It was on the Envoy's blood mare against Jack Polwhele's bay filly, in the race when Daly, of the 4th Dragoons, won the sword given by Shah Sujah," said Waller, colouring a little. "There, by those cypresses, I once met the sisters half fainting, one day, with heat, their palanquin placed in the shade by the gasping dhooley-wallahs; so, at the risk of a brain fever, I galloped to the Char-chowk for a flask of Persian rose-water, fans, and so forth."
"The Trecarrels again! By the way, it seems to me," said the other, "that of all the friends you have lost, those two young ladies—one especially——"
What the military secretary of General Pollock was about to say, with a somewhat meaning smile, we know not, save that he was heightening the colour of Waller's face by his pause; but a change was given to the conversation by the opportune arrival of Shireen Khan, of the Kuzzilbashes, mounted, as usual, on his tall camel, and accompanied by a few well-appointed horsemen. He had ascertained that "Shakespere Sahib" was the katib, or secretary, to the victorious Feringhee general, and had come to tender, through him, his services to the family of the fallen Shah, to the conquerors, to the Queen they served, and, generally, to the powers that were uppermost.
Many of the Afghan chiefs, who, with their people, had acted most savagely against us, were now extremely anxious to make their peace with General Pollock; and though it can scarcely be said that towards the end (after his own jealousy of Ackbar's influence, fear of his growing power that curbed all private ambition, caused a coolness in the Sirdir's cause) Shireen and his Kuzzilbashes had been our most bitter enemies, yet he and they were among the first now to meet and welcome the conquerors of Ackbar, against whom they had turned, not as we have seen Saleh Mohammed meanly do, in the time of his undoubted humiliation and defeat, but when in the zenith of his power; and now this wary old fellow, who played the game of life as carefully and coolly as ever he played that of chess, knew that the protection he had afforded to Rose Trecarrel and to Denzil—the supposed Nawab—must prove his best moves on the board—his trump cards, in fact; and as a conclusive offer of friendship, he now offered six hundred chosen Kuzzilbash horsemen to follow on the track of Saleh Mohammed, and rescue the whole of the prisoners, a duty on which Shakespere and Waller at once joyfully volunteered to accompany them.
"Shabash!" he exclaimed, stroking his beard in token of faith and promise, "punah-be-Kodah!—it is as good as done; and the head of the Dooranee dog shall replace that of the Envoy in the Char-chowk!"
Waller soon divined that the lady now residing in Shireen's fort must be no other than the younger daughter of "the Sirdir Trecarrel," who was spirited away on the retreat through the Passes, on that night when the Shah's 6th Regiment deserted; but of who "the Nawab" could be he had not the faintest idea, until he and Shakespere galloped there, saw the living and the dead, and heard all their sad story unravelled.
With her head, sick and aching, nestling on the broad shoulder of Bob Waller, as if he was her only and dearest brother, Rose told all her story without reserve, and it moved Waller and his companion deeply, to see a handsome and once-bright English girl so crushed and reduced by grief and long-suffering; yet her case was only one of many in the history of that disastrous war. She ended by imploring them to lose no time in following the track of those who had borne off her sister and the other hostages.