ng you gentlemen what came of the Indian
mutiny. After Wilson took Delhi and Sir Colin relieved Lucknow the
back of the business was broken. Fresh troops came pouring in, and
Nana Sahib made himself scarce over the frontier. A flying column under
Colonel Greathed came round to Agra and cleared the Pandies away from
it. Peace seemed to be settling upon the country, and we four were
beginning to hope that the time was at hand when we might safely go off
with our shares of the plunder. In a moment, however, our hopes were
shattered by our being arrested as the murderers of Achmet.

"It came about in this way. When the rajah put his jewels into the
hands of Achmet he did it because he knew that he was a trusty man.
They are suspicious folk in the East, however: so what does this rajah
do but take a second even more trusty servant and set him to play the
spy upon the first? This second man was ordered never to let Achmet
out of his sight, and he followed him like his shadow. He went after
him that night and saw him pass through the doorway. Of course he
thought he had taken refuge in the fort, and applied for admission
there himself next day, but could find no trace of Achmet. This seemed
to him so strange that he spoke about it to a sergeant of guides, who
brought it to the ears of the commandant. A thorough search was
quickly made, and the body was discovered. Thus at the very moment
that we thought that all was safe we were all four seized and brought
to trial on a charge of murder,--three of us because we had held the
gate that night, and the fourth because he was known to have been in
the company of the murdered man. Not a word about the jewels came out
at the trial, for the rajah had been deposed and driven out of India:
so no one had any particular interest in them. The murder, however,
was clearly made out, and it was certain that we must all have been
concerned in it. The three Sikhs got penal servitude for life, and I
was condemned to death, though my sentence was afterwards commuted into
the same as the others.

"It was rather a queer position that we found ourselves in then. There
we were all four tied by the leg and with precious little chance of
ever getting out again, while we each held a secret which might have
put each of us in a palace if we could only have made use of it. It
was enough to make a man eat his heart out to have to stand the kick
and the cuff of every petty jack-in-office, to