ineers, who were engaged in blowing up the temples of Siva and
Kalee overlooking the _ghats_ at Cawnpore; not, as some have asserted,
out of revenge, but for military considerations connected with the
safety of the bridge of boats across the Ganges.

During one of these days of comparative inaction, I was lying in my tent
reading some home papers which had just arrived by the mail, when I
heard a man passing through the camp, calling out, "Plum-cakes!
plum-cakes! Very good plum-cakes! Taste and try before you buy!" The
advent of a plum-cake _wallah_ was an agreeable change from ration-beef
and biscuit, and he was soon called into the tent, and his own maxim of
"taste and try before you buy" freely put into practice. This plum-cake
vendor was a very good-looking, light-coloured native in the prime of
life, dressed in scrupulously clean white clothes, with dark, curly
whiskers and mustachios, carefully trimmed after the fashion of the
Mahommedan native officers of John Company's army. He had a
well-developed forehead, a slightly aquiline nose, and intelligent eyes.
Altogether his appearance was something quite different from that of the
usual camp-follower. But his companion, or rather the man employed as
_coolie_ to carry his basket, was one of the most villainous-looking
specimens of humanity I ever set eyes on. As was the custom in those
days, seeing that he did not belong to our own bazaar, and being the
non-commissioned officer in charge of the tent, I asked the plum-cake
man if he was provided with a pass for visiting the camp? "Oh yes,
Sergeant _sahib_," he replied, "there's my pass all in order, not from
the Brigade-Major, but from the Brigadier himself, the Honourable Adrian
Hope. I'm Jamie Green, mess-_khansama_[37] of the late (I forget the
regiment he mentioned), and I have just come to Oonao with a letter of
introduction to General Hope from Sherer _sahib_, the magistrate and
collector of Cawnpore. You will doubtless know General Hope's
handwriting." And there it was, all in order, authorising the bearer, by
name Jamie Green, etc. etc., to visit both the camp and outpost for the
sale of his plum-cakes, in the handwriting of the brigadier, which was
well known to all the non-commissioned officers of the Ninety-Third,
Hope having been colonel of the regiment.

Next to his appearance what struck me as the most remarkable thing about
Jamie Green was the purity and easy flow of his English, for he at once
sat dow