despatched the following message to the seat of Government: "All well at Cawnpore. Quiet, but excitement continues among the people. The final advance on Delhi will soon be made. The insurgents can only be about 3,000 in number, and are said to cling to the walls of Delhi, where they have put up a puppet-king. I grudge the escape of one of them. Calm and expert policy will soon reassure the public mind. The plague is, in truth, stayed." The reader need not be alarmed at the length of the telegraphic news from Cawnpore. There is but little more to come. For in truth the plague was very far from stayed. The soldiery knew their own strength, and were well inclined to turn the knowledge to profit. There were schoolmasters who might have taught them a lesson of quite another description: but it was a far cry to Barrackpore, and there was no Hearsay at hand. It happens that a native lawyer, Nanukchund by name, took the precaution to keep a full and faithful journal, from the fifteenth of May onwards. This man was bound to our interest by the indissoluble tie of a common fear. A personal enemy of the Nana, he was actually engaged in conducting the suit instituted by the nephew of Bajee Rao to establish his claim to the half of his uncle's estate. With genuine Hindoo sagacity, he foresaw the approaching struggle, and the ultimate triumph of the English power; and conjectured that a record of events compiled with accuracy, slightly tinged by a somewhat ostentatious loyalty, would certainly procure him credit, and, possibly, a comfortable official income. Two days before Sir Hugh made his cheerful report to the Governor-General, Nanukchund looked in on a friend employed at the Treasury, and there heard the native officers of the guard uttering traitorous language, while their men amused themselves by quarrelling with the townsfolk who went to the Treasury on business. They detained people who came out with money or stamp-papers, and would not release them till ordered to do so by the Soubahdar. "It began to be evident," says this shrewd observer, "that nobody had any authority but the Soubahdars and the sepoys."