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Rh unbeliever. Men's minds were failing them for fear. In the village, the bazár, the great man's reception-rooms, there was a pleasurable expectation that some novel excitement was about to be felt. It gave evidence of the eagerness with which events beyond the frontier were followed by natives. To Lord Auckland it was an argument in favour of a vigorous policy.

McNeill had hurried off on March 8 to Herát, in the hope of staying hostilities. Before leaving Teherán he was careful to point out, in a letter received about the time when Captain Burnes left Kábul, that the Sháh had been able for four months to feed 48,000 men in his camp before Herát, notwithstanding the efforts made by the Herát Government to carry off or destroy the supplies which the country afforded. This was proof that a hostile army might move throughout the valley without suffering from want. It gave in his eyes additional importance to the position of Herát, and to the influence which the Power that holds it may exercise over the security of India. From London came also the voice of apprehension and warning; 'We have made an effort, in which we cannot fail,' wrote Sir John Hobhouse in a letter received on May 4, 'without compromising the dignity of the British Crown and diminishing the national influence, not only in Persia but in all the countries towards the western frontier of India.'

Throughout the preceding months Lord Auckland had been in close and constant communication with