es once more towards
C[=a]bul and encamped near Kara-bagh. While here, a scene occurred
which will doubtless be still in the recollection of many officers
with the force, and which I relate as illustrative of the barbarous
customs of the people. Many of the stories which I have introduced
must of course be received by the impartial or incredulous reader "cum
grano salis." I have given them as they were repeated to me, but I can
personally vouch for the following fact.

Our bugles had just sounded the first call to dinner, when a few
officers who were strolling in front of the camp observed a woman with
a black veil walking hurriedly from some dark-looking object, and
proceed in the direction of that part of the camp occupied by the
Affghan force under Prince Timour Shah, the Shah Zada, heir apparent
to the throne of C[=a]bul. On approaching the object, it was
discovered to be a man lying on the ground with his hands tied behind
him, his throat half severed, with three stabs in his breast, and two
gashes across the stomach. The mangled wretch was still breathing,
and a medical man being at hand, measures were instantly taken most
calculated to save his life, but without success, and in a quarter of
an hour he was a corpse. Familiar as we were with scenes which in our
own happy land would have excited the horror and disgust of every man
possessed of the common feelings of humanity, there was something in
this strange murder which caused us to make enquiries, and the reader
will hardly believe me when I tell him that the victim met his fate
with the knowledge and consent of Timour Shah. The woman whom we first
observed was the legal murderess. She had that morning been to the
Shah Zada and sworn on the Kor[=a]n that the deceased many years back
had murdered her husband and ran away with his other wife; she had
demanded redress according to the Mahommedan law--blood for blood. The
Shah Zada offered the woman a considerable sum of money if she would
waive her claim to right of personally inflicting the punishment on
the delinquent, and allow the man to be delivered over to his officers
of justice, promising a punishment commensurate with the crime he had
committed. But the woman persisted in her demand for the law of the
Kor[=a]n. Her victim was bound and delivered into her hands; she had
him conducted in front of the prince's camp about three hundred yards
off, and effected her inhuman revenge with an Affgh[=a]n knife, a fi