istan is now
matter of history, and may be read of, by whoso wills, in the Blue-books
and despatches of the time. Those documents, with their paragraphs and
diaries and bare records of facts, have a dry-as-dust look about them
which their contents very often belie. And the reader will not rise from
the story of this little war without carrying away an impression of wild
fury and reckless valour which will long retain its colours in his mind.
Moreover, there was more than fury to distinguish it. Shere Ali turned
against his enemies the lessons which they had taught him; and a military
skill was displayed which delayed the result and thereby endangered the
position of the British troops. For though at the first the neighbouring
tribes and states, the little village republics which abound in those
parts, waited upon the event as Phillips had foretold, nevertheless as
the days passed, and the event still hung in the balance, they took heart
of grace and gathered behind the troops to destroy their communications
and cut off their supplies.

Dick Linforth wrote three letters to his mother, who was living over
again the suspense and terror which had fallen to her lot a quarter of a
century ago. The first letter was brought to the house under the Sussex
Downs at twilight on an evening of late autumn, and as she recognized the
writing for her son's a sudden weakness overcame her, and her hand so
shook that she could hardly tear off the envelope.

"I am unhurt," he wrote at the beginning of the letter, and tears of
gratitude ran down her cheeks as she read the words. "Shere Ali," he
continued, "occupied a traditional position of defence in a narrow
valley. The Kohara river ran between steep cliffs through the bed of the
valley, and, as usual, above the cliffs on each side there were
cultivated maidans or plateaus. Over the right-hand maidan, the
road--_our_ road--ran to a fortified village. Behind the village, a deep
gorge, or nullah, as we call them in these parts, descending from a side
glacier high up at the back of the hills on our right, cut clean across
the valley, like a great gash. The sides of the nullah were
extraordinarily precipitous, and on the edge furthest from us stone
sangars were already built as a second line of defence. Shere Ali
occupied the village in front of the nullah, and we encamped six miles
down the valley, meaning to attack in the morning. But the Chiltis
abandoned their traditional method of fighti