hundred Sikhs, a regiment of Gurkhas, seven hundred cavalry, and six
guns.

This seemingly formidable and carefully composed body of troops proved,
however, to be entirely unreliable. Agnew and Anderson were, within a
few hours of their arrival at Mooltan, attacked and severely wounded by
fanatics, and no one raised a hand to help them. Lying helpless and
sorely wounded in the temporary asylum which their quarters afforded,
they heard with dismay that practically the whole of the escort on whom
their safety depended had gone over to the faction of Mulraj, a faction
which insisted on his remaining in power, and which was strongly
antagonistic to the claims of British political influence. Alone amid
thousands, it remained only for these brave young officers to offer up
their lives on the altar of British dominion.

Thus strongly committed to a line of action which was far from according
with his weak and vacillating nature, Mulraj raised the standard of
revolt, and sending the fiery cross through the country, called on all
to join in expelling the hated foreigner, and common enemy, from the
Land of the Five Rivers. The prospects of the cause looked bright
indeed. No organised body of British troops lay nearer than Lahore,
hundreds of miles distant; the hot season had commenced, when the
movement of regular troops encounters almost insuperable difficulties;
the whole country was smarting under the sense of recent severe but
hardly conclusive defeat; while hundreds of petty chiefs, and thousands
of soldiers, were chafing under the thinly disguised veil of foreign
sovereignty.

Yet out of the unlooked for West arose a star which in a few brief weeks
eclipsed the rising moon of national aspiration, and, shining bright and