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130 ever before. And yet he knew that many Afgháns were leaving the city to join the insurgents, and he declared that Hamza Khán, the Governor of Kábul, whom the Sháh sent off at his suggestion to pacify the Ghilzai chiefs, was himself 'at the bottom of the whole conspiracy .' Pottinger warned him of mischief brewing in the Kohistán. The story of Captain Gray's perilous mountain-ride from Kábul to Laghmán, in the care of a friendly chief who warned him that the Afgháns were 'determined to murder or drive out every Farangí in the country,' would have furnished most men with food for anxious thought. But nothing seemed to shake his belief in the trivial and transient character of the Ghilzai revolt. On the 9th of October one native regiment of Sale's brigade, under Colonel Monteath, marched off from Kábul on its return to India, as if the road was perfectly clear. On that very night Monteath's camp at Butkhák was attacked by a body of Ghilzais. Next day Monteath was joined by the rest of Sale's brigade, whose leader had just been ordered to clear the passes beyond Butkhák.

After fighting his way on the 12th through the rocks and boulders of the Khúrd Kábul, Sale left Monteath to watch that pass from the valley beyond, while he himself returned with his main body to Butkhák. During his absence Monteath's brave Sepoys of the 35th encountered and repelled a murderous night-attack from a host of Afgháns, many of whom had just been allowed by Macgregor, the political