Some months subsequently two of our spies, who had been commissioned to obtain information about Miss Wheeler, passed six days in the train of the fugitive Nana in the depths of an Oude wilderness. In the vicinity of his encampment they overtook a sepoy, with whom they got into conversation. He asked why they had come into the desert. They represented themselves as desirous of taking service with one of the Peishwa's eunuchs, and reminded the soldiers that they were old acquaintances of his own. He seems to have been a good-natured fellow: for he told them that it was a dangerous neighbourhood for strangers, but promised, since they had ventured that far, to introduce them as his fellow-villagers. They found from twelve to fifteen thousand people collected in the jungles. Everything betokened distress, disorder, and discontent. Food was scarce and dear. The Maharaja had appropriated the single pair of tents; so that his followers were fain to bivouack under the foliage, starving on rice bought at twelvepence a pound; wringing out their tattered garments, wet with the eternal rain; and sighing for the curry-pots and tight roofs of the Cawnpore cantonments. It is interesting to learn that the most poverty-stricken and dejected of all the mutineers were the troopers of the Second Cavalry. The horses had been reduced to less than a hundred, and the artillery to a couple of field-pieces. The Nana, attended by a servant with an umbrella, went daily to bathe in a river which flowed at the foot of the hill whereon his pavilion stood. A crowd regularly assembled to pay their respects as he passed. The two men especially noticed certain officers of his household: the treasurer and paymaster; the driver of his bullock-carriage; his chief baker, and chief gardener; his shampooer, his sweeper, his boatman, and his wrestlers, both Hindoo and Mahomedan. Bala was there, with the scar of an English bullet on his shoulder, which he has probably by this time carried to an obscure grave. The royal brothers were said to be very anxious to get back to ease and civilization. Their wives were disposed upon an adjoining range of heights, in company with the widows of Bajee Rao, who deserved better than to be transported about against their will in the suite of that unromantic Pretender. The ladies of the court travelled in six palanquins, and the gentlemen on as many elephants.