The mill-wheels of God, it has been said, grind slowly if surely; but rarely had they turned round so slowly as they now seemed to be doing after the terrible news from Delhi reached Meerut and the chief places in the Punjab. The mutiny had broken out so suddenly that the authorities were at first quite unable to cope with it, and precious time had to elapse before the army of retribution could be got to take the road. But meanwhile a cheerful and plucky spirit prevailed both amongst officers and men, notwithstanding all their fatigues, privation, and sickness; and if there was one man more than another, as his brother afterwards wrote of him, who helped to inspire and keep up this spirit--if there was one more than another who merited that which a Roman would have considered the highest praise, that he never despaired of his country--it was Lieutenant Hodson, of the 1st Bengal Fusiliers, formerly of the Guides. “I can but rejoice,” he wrote, “that I am employed again; certain, too, as I am, that the star of Old England will shine brighter in the end, and we shall hold a prouder position than ever. The crisis is an awful one, but with God and our Saxon arms to aid us, I have firm faith in the result.” “Hodson is at Umballa, I know,” wrote an officer at Meerut; “and I’ll bet he will force his way through, and open up communication between the Commander-in-Chief and ourselves. At about 3 o’clock that night I heard my advanced sentries firing. I rode off to see what was the matter, and they told me that a part of the enemy’s cavalry was approaching their post. When day broke in galloped Hodson! He had left Kurnal (seventy-five miles off) at 9 o’clock the night before, with one led horse and an escort of Sikh cavalry, and, as I anticipated, here he was with despatches for Wilson! How I quizzed him for approaching an armed post at night without knowing the parole! Hodson rode straight to Wilson, had his interview, a bath, breakfast, and two hours’ sleep, and then rode back the seventy-five miles, having to fight his way for about thirty miles of the distance.” It was no wonder that another officer, writing to his wife at this time, said: “Hodson’s gallant deeds more resemble a chapter from the life of Bayard or Amadis de Gaul than the doings of a subaltern of the nineteenth century. The only feeling mixed with admiration for him is envy.” “The pace pleased him” (the Commander-in-Chief, General Anson), wrote Hodson himself, “for he ordered me to raise a Corps of Irregular Horse, and appointed me its commandant.”