ies.

The city itself was choked full of military and the families of the
officers. Almost all the women and children of the garrisons lying to
the north-west of Lahore had fled here at the advance of the troops.
Mrs. Baird, too, with her two little daughters and Mrs. Irwin were also
in the city, where they were lodged in the Charing Cross Hotel. Although
the city was packed to a most alarming degree and the military situation
was decidedly critical, Heideck did not anywhere observe any particular
excitement.

The English preserved their peculiarly calm demeanour, and the natives
kept silence out of fear: upon the latter the fully unexpected and
incomprehensible change in the situation had probably had a certain
bewildering effect.

When Heideck, shortly before sunset, went from the camp to the city to
visit the ladies, he only became more firmly convinced, as he passed
through the surging crowd outside the walls, that the position of the
army had been very badly selected. Far too large a number of men and
animals had been crowded within a comparatively small space. If Russian
shrapnel were to fall among this dense mass a terrible panic was
inevitable. The proximity of the fortified city was sure to induce
the soldiers to take refuge behind its walls. Heideck had hitherto not
gained the impression that resolute courage was to be expected of the
native soldiers. In the street which led from the Shalimar Park to the
railway station in the suburb of Naulakha, Heideck had constantly to
go out of his way to allow the long columns of heavily laden camels and
ox-waggons which came towards him to pass, and he therefore took nearly
two hours to reach his goal. The Charing Cross Hotel was full up to the
attics, and the two ladies had, with the children, to be content with a
small room on the third floor which had been let to them at an enormous
price.

Mrs. Baird, a lady of small, delicate build, but of energetic spirits
and genuine English pride, appeared perfectly collected and confident.
She did not utter a single word about her own evidently very
uncomfortable position and of the privations which, under the existing
circumstances, her children had to suffer, but only about the victory of
the British arms, that she was convinced would immediately take place.
The march from Mooltan to Lahore was, in her eyes, an advance, and she
did not entertain the smallest doubt that the Russian insolence would in
a short time meet with