ing nine guns from
the enemy.

A striking tribute to Nicholson's personality, and the valour he
displayed on these occasions, is the well-vouched-for story that for
many years afterwards, when visitors came to view these battlefields,
the country people would begin their accounts by saying, "Nikalseyn
stood just _there_!"

After the conclusion of the campaign, which saw him a brevet-major,
Nicholson decided to take a two years' holiday and return home. What
influenced him to this most was the desire to comfort his mother, who,
he knew, was grieving over the loss of her two sons, William and
Alexander. But it was not easy for him to leave. India, as he wrote,
was "like a rat-trap," more difficult to get out of than into, and it
was not until January 1850 that he was at last free to depart. His old
friend and colleague, Herbert Edwardes, as it happened, was also of a
mind to see "the old country" again, so the two journeyed together down
to Bombay, whence they took ship for England.

But before Nicholson was to see his widowed mother again he was to pass
through a romantic experience which deserves a chapter to itself.

[1] _An Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny_.

CHAPTER V.

ON FURLOUGH.

Nicholson's plan, which he proceeded to carry out, was to pay a visit
to Egypt, where he was desirous to see Thebes, Cairo, and the Pyramids,
and thence journey home by way of Constantinople and Vienna. He did
not intend to stay long in any of these places, but circumstances were
against him. At both the Turkish and Austrian capitals he was detained
by adventures which appealed strongly to his chivalrous nature. The
account of these comes to us through Sir John Kaye, to whom Nicholson's
mother told the story.

At the time that Nicholson arrived in Constantinople, early in the New
Year of 1850, the city held a notable prisoner. This was Louis
Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, whom the Austrians had driven into
exile. Owing to British influence, the revolutionary leader's asylum
in Turkey was rendered safe for the time, but a movement was set on
foot by his friends to smuggle him out of the country and convey him to
America. Such a project received all Nicholson's sympathies, and when
a friend of his--an Englishman who had married a Hungarian lady and
served in the Magyar army--enlisted his help, he readily placed himself
at the other's service.

The scheme was a simple one. Every day Kossuth took a ri