with honour to their own country in the following spring.
The bait was tempting, and Macnaghten swallowed it without a scruple. His mind unhinged by all that he had suffered in the past six weeks, he cared little for the danger or the discredit of playing off one treacherous Afghán against another, so long as there remained a chance of saving from utter ruin the interests committed to his charge. He put his signature to a paper written by himself in Persian, expressing his general consent to Akbar's project. With this in their safe keeping the messengers sped back to Kábul.
In signing that paper he had signed his own death-warrant. Akbar's suspicions became a certainty. At noon of the next day, the 23rd, Macnaghten, accompanied by his faithful squires, Lawrence, Trevor, and Mackenzie, rode forth to confer with the Bárakzái leader on the snow-crusted plain between cantonments and the Siyá Sang hills. On first learning the nature of his Chief's errand, Mackenzie had pronounced the whole thing a plot. 'A plot!' cried the Envoy; 'Trust me for that!' To Elphinstone's dissuasions he had replied by offering to bear his part in one bold onset of all the garrison against their foes. 'I am sure we shall beat them; but as for these negotiations, I have no faith in them.' The General could only shake his head, declaring that his troops were no longer to be trusted, but promising to hold some of them in readiness for an advance at need on
