looked after the safety of their youthful commander, during the
campaigns of 1857; and my pen falters and my eyes grow dim with tears as
memory brings before me my gallant comrades in the ranks who fell before
Delhi, or lost their lives through disease and exposure.

I had been absent from my regiment during the whole of 1856, doing duty
at the Murree Convalescent Depot, and rejoined in March of the following
year. Nothing occurred for the next two months to break the monotony of
life in an Indian cantonment. Parade in the early morning, rackets and
billiards during the day, a drive or ride along the Mall in the cool of
the evening, and the usual mess dinner--these constituted the routine of
our uneventful existence.

Many of the officers lamented the hard fate which had doomed them to
service in the East, while the more fortunate regiments had been earning
fame and quick promotion in the Crimea and in the recent Persian
campaign. We little thought of what was in store for us, or of the
volcano which was smouldering under our feet.

The signs of incipient mutiny in the native army had been confined, up
to this time, to the Presidency of Bengal and to the regiments quartered
there. With us at Ferozepore there was little, if any, indication of the
coming outbreak. True it was that some of us noticed sullen looks and
strange demeanour among the sepoys of the two battalions. They, on
occasions, passed our officers without the customary salute, and, if
my memory serves, a complaint of this want of respect was forwarded to
their Colonels. Our billiard-marker, too, a high-caste Brahmin who had
served on our side in the Afghan campaigns of 1839-42 in the capacity
of a spy, a man of cunning and intelligence, warned us in unmistakable
terms of the increasing disaffection among the sepoys of Ferozepore, and