umber of men who had been shown to have taken part
in the riot, and most of these had secured barristers and pleaders
for their defence; consequently, there was a formidable array of
advocates on the side of the defence, each one of whom thought it
his duty to cross-examine each member of the team at tedious length,
and regardless of some of the questions having been asked us time
after time by his brothers of the law.

The brow-beating and cross-examining which we had to undergo could
not have been worse had we been the aggressors instead of the victims,
while the irrelevancy of the questions and the needless waste of time,
entailing constant postponement from day to day, was exceedingly
trying to us in our wounded and feeble condition, only anxious to
get back to our homes on the frontier. The barristers and pleaders
of the defence professed notwithstanding to be very sympathetic
with us in our troubles, and one and another would come up and say
something like this: "We people of Calcutta are most sorry for this
very unfortunate occurrence. No doubt most of the men in the dock
are guilty, and should be punished for so unwarranted an attack on
innocent travellers, but there is one man who has been arrested by
some mistake of the police. He had nothing to do with it, and should
be released, because he is quite innocent." As in each case the man
"arrested by mistake" proved to be the one for which the barrister
was holding a brief, their protestations lost something of their force.

A more pleasant feature was the genuine sympathy shown by a
certain section of the Bengalis, a sympathy which was voiced by the
Hon. Surendra Nath Bannerji, who convened a public meeting, in which
he expressed the regrets of the Calcutta citizens in an address which
was presented to us in a silver casket.

At last the court, taking pity on our uncomfortable condition,
consented to take our examination and cross-examination previous to
that of the hundred and more witnesses which the defence were going
to bring, and which would have entailed some months' stay in Calcutta,
had we been kept back to the end of the trial.

When we reached Bannu we were honoured with a civic reception, which
went far to make up to the members of the team for the discomforts that
they had undergone. The Civil Officer of the district, the Municipal
Commissioners, and a great number of the citizens, met us with a band
some few miles before reaching Bannu, and we w