And now began to make itself felt a strong disinclination to quit for ever the place where so much had been done and suffered; a frame of mind which afterwards was remarked among the besieged at Lucknow who outlived the relief of the Residency. Death, in one of the forms with which all had lately grown so conversant, and among associations that, if not dear, were at any rate familiar, seemed preferable to novel exertions and untried perils. More than one young subaltern who, a month previously, would have been ashamed to confess to an emotion, stole ten minutes to pay a farewell visit to the loophole at which, on the morning of the great assault, he had fought till his shoulder was blue, and his rifle clogged with lead; or to stand with wet cheeks in a nook of the hospital, sacred to his first great grief. Not a few peered down the well that lay outside the breastwork, with a tacit adieu to those whom they left behind, and a wish that it had pleased God to unite them, even there. If a start was to be made before the advancing day had dispelled the freshness of dawn, there was no time to be lost. A crowd of carriages and beasts of burden had gradually assembled outside the north-western corner of the intrenchment. Some of the women and children disposed themselves in the bullock-carts, while others climbed up to an insecure seat on the padded back of an elephant. A fine animal, equipped with a state howdah, and steered by the Peishwa's own driver, had been sent for the accommodation of Sir Hugh Wheeler. The General was touched by the attention; but (unwilling, it may be, to form a conspicuous object in a _cortège_ so far from triumphal) after seeing his wife and daughters safely mounted in the place of honour, he ensconced himself in a palanquin, which he never left alive. Our soldiers bestowed their disabled comrades in the litters, without receiving the slightest assistance from the native bystanders. It was cruel work, the loading of this mournful train. The inexperienced good-will of that amateur ambulance corps occasioned grievous agony to some who ought not to have left their beds for months, and to some who should never have been moved again.