halting and dallying exposed them, that not a few set off -deserted, strictly speaking-to strike ahead for themselves.

At noon, the whole number of remaining troops were paraded, and then was the startling fact known, that the 44th did not muster more than ninety rank-and-file, and the native regiments barely half as many each! Desertions still continuing, a strict order was issued, and made known, that any one detected in the act of desertion would be shot on the spot. This was actually done, as a warning, a short time afterwards-the sufferer being what is called a chuprassie, or native porter.

A little while before this, Akber Khan also proposed for the officers who were married, and accompanied by their wives and children, and also the widows of officers killed, to be one and all given up to him, and he would pledge himself to protect them. This proposition being acceded to, one of the superior officers very kindly intimated to Frederick Maitland, that if he chose, his wife and the child with her might also be included in the arrangement; but that Frederick himself, not being a commissioned officer, of course could not accompany her.

With a torn and distracted mind, the young sergeant asked Chinga Zung what he advised him to do. The chieftain replied that there was very much uncertainty attending either course, but, if anything, he thought it might be the best to accept the offer; for as to the future fate of the party if they continued an independent march, he feared the worst. He counselled, however, that the matter should be explained to and decided by Mary herself. This was forthwith done. Carried away by anxiety, Frederick warmly entreated his wife to go with the officers' ladies, but was met with a decided refusal.

'No,' said the devoted wife, 'I will never part from you! We will live or die together!'

'God bless you, my own true wife,' cried the young soldier.

Chinga Zung was evidently deeply moved, and if the transient expression which flitted athwart his dark lineaments might be rightly interpreted, also pleased at Mary's decision.

It must here be said that Akber Khan was a cunning and calculating villain. Throughout the whole affair, he played a double game. Ostensibly, he tried to save the British, in order that, in event of their being successful in retaining Afghanistan, which they might do by fresh reinforcements, he might be installed as king. Secretly, he ordered their destruction, and with his own hand he assassinated officers whom he thought it advisable to put out of the way. Lady Sale and the other prisoners confided to him, got away, only after months of confinement, by means of a rival Khan. Had they trusted to the safekeeping of Akber, they would undoubtedly have been destroyed. Thus were several ladies and some officers ultimately saved. General Elphinstone, who confided himself to Akber, died in confinement.

To conclude this terrible narrative. On the fourth morning after the retreat from Cabool, all who were able, set off in the vain hope of reaching Jelalabad, which was courageously kept by General Sale-'fighting Bob,' as he was called by the troops. No minute relation of the day's progress will here be given, for it would be but a repetition of deeds of sickening slaughter and woe. At nightfall, all the survivors reached a ravine that proved a KhoordCabool Pass in miniature; and on the 13th-the seventh day of the retreat-the main body were in sight of Gundamuck. This 'main body' did not number more than thirty or forty, including officers, and nearly all of them were shortly afterwards slain by an overwhelming attack of Afghans.

Various straggling parties had previously set off without guides, and mostly without leaders, and were, with few exceptions, cut off by Afghan horsemen, who scoured the whole country around. To one of these straggling parties, Chinga Zung and his friends attached themselves, and, by singular good-fortune, they all eventually escaped the doom which befell nearly the whole of the once vast multitude. This escape was greatly owing to the consummate skill and influence of the noble-hearted Kuzzilbash chieftain. It is stated as a remarkable fact, that of all who left Cabool, only one man reached Jelalabad.

So ends my narrative of an affair, the most dreadful

perhaps in the annals of war. Innumerable comments have been made on the policy or impolicy of the measures adopted by the commanding officers of the Cabool force. They have been roundly accused of causing, by vacillating conduct, the loss of native regiments, and the destruction of several thousands of British subjects. No doubt, some fatal errors of judgment were committed-some consisting of over-confidence in the promises of treacherous barbarians. It is best, however, to speak charitably of the dead, and, where there was no absolute misconduct, to spare the feelings of the living. Our object is gained, in presenting a picture of the realities of War!

THE UNLUCKY PRESENT.

A TALE.

A LANARKSHIRE minister, who died within the present century, was one of those unhappy persons, who, to use the words of a well-known Scottish adage, 'can never see green cheese but their een reels.' He was extremely covetous, and that not only of nice articles of food, but of many other things which do not generally excite the cupidity of the human heart. The following story is in corroboration of this assertion. Being on a visit one day at the house of one of his parishioners, a poor lonely widow, living in a moorland part of the parish, he became fascinated by the charms of a little cast-iron pot, which happened at the time to be lying on the hearth, full of potatoes for the poor woman's dinner, and that of her chlidren. He had never in his life seen such a nice little pot-it was a perfect conceit of a thing-it was a gem-no pot on earth could match it in symmetry-it was an object altogether perfectly lovely.

'Dear sake! minister,' said the widow, quite overpowered by the reverend man's commendations of her pot, 'if ye like the pot sae weel as a' that, I beg ye'll let me send it to the manse. It's a kind o' orra [superfluous]

pot wi' us; for we've a bigger ane, that we use for ordinar, and that's mair convenient every way for us. Sae ye'll just tak a present o't. I'll send it o'er the morn wi' Jamie, when he gangs to the schule.'

'Oh!' said the minister, 'I can by no means permit you to be at so much trouble. Since you are so good as to give me the pot, I'll just carry it home with me in my hand. I'm so much taken with it, indeed, that I would really prefer carrying it myself.'

After much altercation between the minister and the widow on this delicate point of politeness, it was agreed that he should carry home the pot himself.

Off, then, he trudged, bearing this curious little culinary article, alternately in his hand and under his arm, as seemed most convenient to him. Unfortunately, the day was warm, the way long, and the minister fat, so that he became heartily tired of his burden before he got halfway home. Under these distressing circumstances, it struck him that, if instead of carrying the pot awkwardly at one side of his person, he were to carry it on his head, the burden would be greatly lightened: the principles of natural philosophy, which he had learned at college, informing him that when a load presses directly and immediately upon any object, it is far less onerous than when it hangs at the remote end of a lever. Accordingly, doffing his hat, which he resolved to carry home in his hand, and having applied his handkerchief to his brow, he clapped the pot in inverted fashion upon his head, where, as the reader may suppose, it figured much like Mambrino's helmet upon the crazed capital of Don Quixote, only a great deal more magnificent in shape and dimensions. There was at first much relief and much comfort in this new mode of carrying the pot; but mark the result. The unfortunate minister having taken a bypath to escape observation, found himself, when still a good way from home, under the necessity of leaping over a ditch which intercepted him in passing from one field to another. He jumped; but surely no jump was ever taken so completely in, or at least into, the dark as this. The concussion given to his person in descending, caused the helmet to become a hood; the pot slipped down over his face, and resting

with the rim upon his neck, stuck fast there, enclosing his whole head as completely as ever that of a new-born child was enclosed by the filmy bag with which nature, as an indication of future good-fortune, sometimes invests the noddles of her favorite offspring. What was worst of all, the nose, which had permitted the pot to slip down over it, withstood every desperate attempt, on the part of its proprietor, to make it slip back again; the contracted part or neck, of the patera, being of such a peculiar formation as to cling fast to the base of the nose, although it had found no difficulty in gliding along its hypotenuse. Was ever minister in a worse plight? Was there ever contretemps so unlucky? Did ever any man-did ever any minister, so effectually hoodwink himself, or so thoroughly shut his eyes to the plain light of nature? What was to be done? The place was lonely; the way difficult and dangerous; human relief was remote, almost beyond reach. It was impossible even to cry for help; or if a cry could be uttered, it might reach in deafening reverberation the ear of the utterer, but it would not travel twelve inches farther in any direction. To add to the distresses of the case, the unhappy sufferer soon found great difficulty in breathing. What with the heat occasioned by the beating of the sun on the metal, and what with the frequent return of the same heated air to his lungs, he was in the utmost danger of suffocation. Everything considered, it seemed likely that, if he did not chance to be relieved by some accidental wayfarer, there would soon be death in the pot.

The instinctive love of life, however, is omni-prevalent; and even very stupid people have been found, when put to the push by strong and imminent peril, to exhibit a degree of presence of mind, and exert a degree of energy, far above what might have been expected from them, or what they were ever known to exhibit or exert under ordinary circumstances. So it was with the pot-ensconced minister. Pressed by the urgency of his distresses, he fortunately recollected that there was a smith's shop at the distance of about a mile across the fields, where, if he could reach it before the period of suffocation, he might possibly find relief. Deprived of his eyesight, he acted only as a man of feeling, and went on as cautiously as he could, with his