Fortune, certainly, did not always smile upon them, notwithstanding her proverbial partiality for the brave. Two gangs having united one day in May, 1819, attacked the house of Sah Beharee Lall, a rich banker, residing in the heart of Lucknow, the capital city of Oude. At first all went well with them, and they carried off upwards of £4,000 into a jungle not far from Khyrabad. A dispute then arose among the leaders respecting the division of the plunder, and one of them, thinking himself unjustly treated, rode off to Lucknow and gave information that led to the apprehension of two hundred men, women, and children. A long and tedious imprisonment awaited them, until in despair they rose upon their guard, in 1834, and seventy of them effected their escape, leaving five of their comrades on the ground, two of them being killed upon the spot. The others were released in 1839. The boldness and suddenness of their onset usually assured their success. One evening in the month of February, 1822, a party of men, carrying canes in their hands, and about forty in number, were observed hurrying along in a loose straggling manner towards the military station of Nursingpore. On reaching the rivulet that separates the town from the cantonments they were challenged by the sentry--for a picket of soldiers was always posted on the bank, under a native officer. Carelessly answering that they were cowherds and that their cattle were coming on after them, they proceeded without molestation up the principal street, but suddenly halted in front of a shop of some pretensions. Striking their torches against pots containing combustible matter, with which they had previously provided themselves, they were instantly surrounded with a blaze of light. Already bewildered, the bystanders were terrified into silence by a few rapid thrusts of the spears, into which the canes had been instantaneously transformed. The house was rifled as if by magic, ten or a dozen persons were killed or wounded, and in a quarter of an hour from their entrance into the town, the Dacoits were on their way to the jungles. Within twenty paces on one side of the house was a police station, and not a hundred paces on the other side was the picket of sepoys already alluded to. But as marriage processions were just then of frequent occurrence, it was supposed that the noise and the glare of the torches belonged to those very uproarious festivities, until a little boy creeping along a ditch whispered to the native officer that they had killed his father. The alarm was immediately given, but before the troops could turn out, the Dacoits had got a fair start, which carried them beyond the reach of both horse and foot.