command; and shouted to the adjutant, who was a general favourite, to ride and begone, if he desired to spare them the pain of taking his life. At one large station the men were in open mutiny, and the officers had grouped themselves in front of the battalion, expecting every moment the fatal volley. They agreed, however, not to abandon hope until they had witnessed the effect produced by the presence of a captain of old standing in the service, who was apparently loved and trusted by the whole regiment, and especially by the grenadier company, to which he had been attached for many years. When his approach was announced, every eye turned towards his bungalow, which stood on the parade-ground, close to that flank where the grenadiers were stationed. He had not gone ten paces down the line before he fell dead, pierced by a bullet from the ranks of his own command. In every regiment there was a Soubahdar major, or native colonel; and in every company a Soubahdar, who answered to a European captain, and a Jemmadar, who answered to a European subaltern. These were the commissioned officers, who wore swords and sashes, sat on a court-martial, and were saluted by the rank and file. They had one and all carried the musket, and there was no approach to friendship or even to familiar intercourse between them and their Saxon brethren in arms, who considered that, if they offered their soubahdar a chair during an interview on regimental business, quite enough had been done to mark the difference between a commissioned and a non-commissioned sepoy. The sergeant and the corporal were represented by the havildar and the naick; titles which make the list of killed and wounded in Indian battles so bewildering to an English reader. Thus the Brahmin battalion had a complete outfit of Brahmin officers; and this it was that rendered the rebellious army so terribly efficient for evil. When every Englishman in a corps had been murdered or scared away, the organization none the less remained intact. The regiment was still a military machine finished in every part, compact, flexible, and capable as ever of a great and sustained exertion of strength and courage. This imperfect, but, it is to be feared, tedious sketch of the composition of our native force, as it existed before the mutiny, may well be closed with the oracular words of Sir Charles Napier, the Cassandra of the old Bengal army: "Your young, independent, wild cadet, will some day find the Indian army taken out of his hands by the soubahdars. They are steady, respectful, thoughtful, stern-looking men; very zealous and military: the sole instructors of all our soldiers."