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 fit instrument for such a purpose.

Before returning to C[=a]bul it was deemed requisite to punish the rebellious owner of the fort of Babboo-koosh-Ghur.  On the approach of our force he decamped with all his vassals, and as it was advisable to leave some permanent mark of our displeasure, the bastions were blown down with gunpowder.  It seems that the enemy imagined we were very negligent in camp, for they honored us the same evening with one of their night attacks, for which they are famous, the object in general being rather to harass their adversary by keeping him on the alert than to penetrate to his tents.