the nearest
troops. Mr. Abelwhite was an obstinate man. He had it in his head
that the affair had been exaggerated, and that it would blow over as
suddenly as it had sprung up. There he sat on his veranda, drinking
whiskey-pegs and smoking cheroots, while the country was in a blaze
about him. Of course we stuck by him, I and Dawson, who, with his
wife, used to do the book-work and the managing. Well, one fine day
the crash came. I had been away on a distant plantation, and was
riding slowly home in the evening, when my eye fell upon something all
huddled together at the bottom of a steep nullah. I rode down to see
what it was, and the cold struck through my heart when I found it was
Dawson's wife, all cut into ribbons, and half eaten by jackals and
native dogs. A little further up the road Dawson himself was lying on
his face, quite dead, with an empty revolver in his hand and four
Sepoys lying across each other in front of him. I reined up my horse,
wondering which way I should turn, but at that moment I saw thick smoke
curling up from Abelwhite's bungalow and the flames beginning to burst
through the roof. I knew then that I could do my employer no good, but
would only throw my own life away if I meddled in the matter. From
where I stood I could see hundreds of the black fiends, with their red
coats still on their backs, dancing and howling round the burning
house. Some of them pointed at me, and a couple of bullets sang past
my head; so I broke away across the paddy-fields, and found myself late
at night safe within the walls at Agra.

"As it proved, however, there was no great safety there, either. The
whole country was up like a swarm of bees. Wherever the English could
collect in little bands they held just the ground that their guns
commanded. Everywhere else they were helpless fugitives. It was a
fight of the millions against the hundreds; and the cruellest part of
it was that these men that we fought against, foot, horse, and gunners,
were our own picked troops, whom we had taught and trained, handling
our own weapons, and blowing our own bugle-calls. At Agra there were
the 3d Bengal Fusiliers, some Sikhs, two troops of horse, and a battery
of artillery. A volunteer corps of clerks and merchants had been
formed, and this I joined, wooden leg and all. We went out to meet the
rebels at Shahgunge early in July, and we beat them back for a time,
but our powder gave out, and we had to fall back up