Another resident of Ooghoo thus tells his story: "The truth is that, shortly after the Nana fled, I was sitting under a tamarind tree, where all the men of the village assemble to talk, and was conversing with a few others about the massacre of the Europeans at Cawnpore. We were saying that the Nana ought not to have murdered the women and children: when Souracun, Brahmin, of Ooghoo, who is thirty-five years old, and has a defect in his eye, stated that the officials sent him to kill the ladies; that he struck one with his sword, which bent, and he then felt pity, and did not again strike. He showed us the bent sword." On this occasion Souracun seems to have sunk the twenty-one rupees: which, however, must have lasted him a good while if he made all his purchases at the same rate as he bought betel-leaf. "All the village heard that he was one of the murderers: but, since the British rule has been re-established, no one speaks of it for fear he would be hung, and his death be laid on their head." There is good reason to believe that Souracun and his fellow met with their deserts. Mr. Batten, now in high office at Agra, was the first representative of settled government in the district of Cawnpore after the troubles began to subside. He had the honour of removing the gibbet from the ladies' well, and so tempered ferocity with common sense that those who once railed at him as squeamish have at length come to approve his conduct in spite of themselves. But he did not bear the sword in vain. There were brought before him two Hindoos, one advanced in years, and the other much his junior. These men were found guilty of having compassed the death of an Eurasian, and doomed to the gallows. No sooner had their sentence been pronounced than they poured forth a torrent of foul abuse, and were dragged from the dock shouting, and kicking, and cursing their judge and all his relatives on the maternal side. Now, the Oriental, always polite, becomes doubly courteous when death is in immediate prospect. Then, more than ever, is he anxious to set the company at their ease, and to make away with any disagreeable sense of the false position in which the hangman stands towards the felon. A civilian at Lucknow was superintending an execution when the rope, which had doubtless borne more than one such strain, gave way, and the convict fell to the ground. As he rose, he turned to the Englishman, and said in the tone wherein men utter social conventionalities: "Sahib, the rope's broke." He felt that it was incumbent on him to do what he could towards relieving the general embarrassment arising from a pause in the proceedings, awkward for all parties, but especially for the commissioner, who was endowed with sensibility and genuine refinement.