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Rh agent, to encamp beside our troops as friends. With fresh reinforcements from Kábul, Sale hurried back on the 20th to rejoin Monteath. Two days later the whole brigade threaded its way through the steep defiles of the Haft Kotal, with very little fighting, into the valley of Tazín. At that moment Sales strong force might have dealt a crushing blow at the mass of insurgents within easy reach of it. But the fatal error of divided authority was to nip Sale's purpose in the bud. The gallant Dennie was on the point of leading his guns and infantry to the attack, when a messenger from the enemy came in to treat for terms with the political agent. Sale was induced to countermand the attack, while Macgregor and the Ghilzai chiefs settled the terms of an arrangement which satisfied Macgregor's conscience and saved the chiefs from imminent disaster at Dennie's hands. In return for their promises which meant nothing, and for a few hostages of no particular value, their former stipends were to be restored, nor was any chief to be held accountable for robberies committed outside his own bounds.

In spite of these concessions, Sale's onward march to Gandamak was harassed by several attacks from the mountaineers whose chiefs had just been renewing their allegiance; and his rearguard sustained heavy losses in men and baggage before they issued from the gloomy gorges of Jagdalak. Sale's brigade reached Gandamak on the 30th of October. His last brush