Dost Muhammad would not listen to. He would rather even that it remained in Sikh hands. Of Ranjít Singh's power to invade him in Kábul he had little fear, he said to Captain Burnes; 'Of his power to injure me if he reinstate Sultán Muhammad Khán in the government of Pesháwar, I have great apprehension; for in it I see a Muhammadan ruler instead of a Sikh.' It may be that Lord Auckland was not averse from having a considerable Sikh garrison locked up in Pesháwar. But he remembered also that he had very recently frustrated the designs of Ranjít Singh on Sind. He could not again give him check without risk of serious rupture. The value of the Sikh alliance, seeing that its powerful army lay upon our frontier, was unquestionable. He had little faith in the loyalty of Dost Muhammad; believing that, if installed at Pesháwar, he would allow himself to be bound by obligation neither to Sikh nor to British. For his part, Dost Muhammad Khán hungered for Pesháwar with a desire which nothing but possession could appease. When war broke out a few years later between the Sikhs and the British, Dost Muhammad and his horsemen descended into the Pesháwar valley. When in 1857 the Government of India was locked in deadly struggle with its rebel army, Sir John Lawrence, searching with all his great knowledge of men and matters in the Punjab for means of securing his North-West frontier from attack in the last resort, and of withdrawing its British garrison to the trenches before Delhi, knew
