in the almshouse of their native parishes, and several in the
almshouse of the Calcutta District Charitable Society! But enough of
moralising; I must get back to 1858.

Many camp-followers and others managed to evade the guards, and
cavalry-patrols were put on duty along the different routes on both
banks of the Goomtee and in the wider thoroughfares of Lucknow.

In my last chapter I gave it as my opinion that the provost-marshal's
cat is the only general which can put a stop to plundering and restore
order in times like those I describe, or rather I should say, _which I
cannot_ describe, because it is impossible to find words to depict the
scenes which met one's eyes at every turn in the streets of Lucknow. In
and around Huzrutgunge, the Imambara, and Kaiserbagh mad riot and chaos
reigned,--sights fit only for the Inferno. I had heard the phrase "drunk
with plunder"; I then saw it illustrated in real earnest. Soldiers mad
with pillage and wild with excitement, followed by crowds of
camp-followers too cowardly to go to the front, but as ravenous as the
vultures which followed the army and preyed on the carcases of the
slain. I have already said that many of the enemy had to be dislodged
from close rooms by throwing in bags of gunpowder with slow matches
fixed to them. "When these exploded they set fire to clothing,
cotton-padded quilts, and other furniture in the rooms; and the
consequence was that in the inner apartments of the palaces there were
hundreds of dead bodies half burnt; many wounded were burnt alive with
the dead, and the stench from such rooms was horrible! Historians tell
us that Charles the Ninth of France asserted that the smell of a dead
enemy was always sweet. If he had experienced the streets of Lucknow in
March, 1858, he might have had cause to modify his opinion."

FOOTNOTES:

[42] L10,000.

CHAPTER XIV

AN UNGRATEFUL DUTY--CAPTAIN BURROUGHS--THE DILKOOSHA AGAIN--GENERAL
WALPOLE AT ROOYAH--THE RAMGUNGA.

After the Mutiny some meddling philanthropists in England tried to get
up an agitation about such stories as wounded sepoys being burnt alive;
but owing to the nature of the war it was morally impossible to have
prevented such accidents. As to cases of real wanton cruelty or outrage
committed by European soldiers, none came under my own notice, and I may
be permitted to relate here a story which goes far to disprove any
accusations of the sort.

My company had been posted in a la