'My adventures after this were so numerous that they would crowd a three volume novel.
'The ball in my ankle I contrived to snip out myself, nearly fainting as I did so. I then bound up the wound, which grew well rapidly; while that in my head was bathed and bandaged tenderly by the deft little hand of the wife of Zemaun Khan, who was full of pity for, me, with much of gratitude for the service I had done her, and thus I had perhaps more of her society than the Khan might have relished; but he had much wild work to do among the mountains, and it was from her that I heard of what was doing at Cabul.
'"Sahib, your people will never escape; it will all be as Ackbar has sworn," said she in her soft Afghani, as she drew near me and spoke in a low cooing voice, lest others might overhear, in these rooms that had only hangings and no doors. "Sixty thousand citizens in Cabul, and all the mountain tribes around it are ripe for insurrection, and wait but the voice of Ackbar."
'"But our soldiers are brave, and our envoy is wise."
'"Was, you mean, Sahib,"
'"How—is he dead?"
'"Yes," replied Nourmahal, shaking her head, while all the sequins flashed and glittered among the coils of her splendid dark hair; "he was lured into a conference with Ackbar, my husband Zemaun and other Khans, by whom he was dragged away and beheaded, in the face of your whole troops, who are now hemmed up in their lines, a prey to hunger and despair, while the passes are full of snow, and all the country up in arms."
'I scarcely believed all this at the time, but she never told me aught save the strictest truth.
'Hunger, cold and peril! Poor Mabel! thought I. On how little will a lover dwell with delight! The pressure of her gloved hand at parting, her broken tearful voice, which said more than a thousand words, and the remembered signature, all seemed to make her mine, and yet I never might see her more. I must have been reported among the killed, and as such wept for by poor Mabel, and in time to come would be mourned by my dear old mother in England far away.
'Every item of intelligence that reached that lonely tower was communicated to me by Nourmahal, but, I began to perceive, only when the grim Zemaun, with his baggy breeches, black fur cap, and shawl with its armoury of daggers and pistols, was absent. I began to perceive, too, that she was enhancing her great natural grace and beauty by a costume such as she had not worn in the tent, with a white silk camise and pink silk trousers, and a thin veil of muslin embroidered with gold, the use of which she managed with great coquetry, especially when she idled over the strings of her saringa; and she made wonderful œillades under her long dark eyelashes, when singing the "Song of the Rose," and other ballads in her softest Afghani.