But these alternations of confidence and alarm gradually settled down into chronic gloom. On the return of the Queen's birthday the usual compliment was omitted, lest the natives should interpret the firing of the salute as a signal for revolt. Even military loyalty dared not do honour to our sovereign in a garrison that was still nominally her own. A sergeant's wife was making some purchases in the bazaar, when a man, whose martial gait and spruce appearance clearly proclaimed the sepoy in undress, accosted the poor woman in these words:--"Ah! you will none of you come here much oftener; you will not be alive another week." Our countrymen began to keep watch all night by turns, armed to the teeth. As on a burning ship, when the sea runs high, and the last boat has been swamped or dashed to pieces, the crew wait with clenched teeth till the fire has reached the magazine, and say, "Now it is coming;" and again, "Now;" so the Englishmen at Cawnpore, ignorant what each day might bring forth, certain only that the catastrophe was not remote, sat, pistol in hand, and expected the inevitable. Some families endeavoured to get down to Allahabad ere it was yet too late. But the roads swarmed with rebellious peasantry, and liberated jail-birds: the shallows in the river forbade all passage in this the eighth month of the annual drought; and escape was found to be impracticable. Whatever destiny might have in store was to be shared by all alike. During the closing days of May, people were writing hard to catch the Home Mail: and they did well, for it was their last. Strange, beyond conception of poet strange and sad, must have been the contents of that Cawnpore mail-bag. Imagine Colonel Ewart seated at his desk in a tent surrounded by line behind line of huts and camp-fires, in and about which are swaggering hundreds of insolent, faithless mercenaries. Picture that scene, and then read: "I do not wish to write gloomily, but there is no use in disguising the fact, that we are in the utmost danger; and, as I have said, if the troops do mutiny, my life must almost certainly be sacrificed; but I do not think they will venture to attack the intrenched position which is held by the European troops, so I hope in God that my wife and child will be saved. "And now, dear A----, farewell. If, under God's providence, this be the last time I am to write to you, I entreat you to forgive all I have ever done to trouble you, and to think kindly of me. I know you will be everything a mother can be to my boy. I cannot write to him this time, dear little fellow. Kiss him for me. Kind love to my brothers."