they had abandoned Kabul some years before, so they would march out of the Punjab. The Maharani had not been idle at Lahore; she was mixed up with intrigues which demanded the sternest measures against the ringleaders, one of them being her confidential adviser: she was banished to India. Overtures for aid had been made by Mul Raj and the Sikh sardars to the Amir Dost Mahomed, the price being the cession of Peshawar, the province which Ranjit Singh had won from the Afghans, and for which his best had so freely shed their blood. The Amir marched there and sent his son with a contingent of Afghan troops to join the Sikh army,—an unnatural alliance between hereditary enemies, which drowned for a time creed antipathies. The Durbar troops at Peshawar now revolted and joined the rebels.
Sher Singh with his troops took up a position on the Chenab river, where the Khalsa in their thousands joined him. The Punjab was now aflame; the trumpet again
