So it was. Prompted by a genuine sentiment of chivalry, Sir Hugh not only sent back the Lucknow reinforcement that had arrived during the previous week, but increased it by a detachment from his own scanty command. He doubtless considered that, at such a time, a loan of English bayonets should bear high interest. And it was well for these men that they were removed from the doomed garrison to a field where they might fight not without some prospect of life, some hope of victory. Those who were marked to remain and die were enough to do their country loss. As in a frame predisposed to disease the slightest irregularity is productive of fatal results, so now at Cawnpore the smouldering fires of discontent and distrust were inflamed by an incident which at ordinary times would have passed almost without remark. There was resident at the station a cashiered subaltern whom it would be cruel to name; one of those miserable men who had sought relief from the mental vacuity and physical prostration of an Indian military life in the deadly solace of excess. This officer, whether in the wantonness of drink, or the horror of shattered nerves, fired a shot at a cavalry patrol who challenged him as he reeled out of his bungalow into the darkness. He missed his aim, as was natural under the circumstances; but the trooper lodged a complaint in the morning, and a court-martial was assembled which acquitted the Englishman, on the ground that he was intoxicated at the time, and that his musket had gone off under a mistake. The sepoys, familiar as they were with the brutality of low Europeans and the vagaries of military justice, would at a less critical season have expressed small surprise either at the outrage or the decision. But now their blood was up, and their pride awake, and they were not inclined to overrate the privileges of an Anglo-Saxon, or the sagacity of a military tribunal. The men of the Second Cavalry muttered angrily that possibly their own muskets might go off by mistake before very long, and this significant expression became proverbial throughout the whole native force. Additional point was given to the grim humour of the soldiery by the unwonted sight of the corpses of an English lady and gentleman, which, floating down the river from some distant scene of death, had turned aside into the canal that traversed the city of Cawnpore. Ganges was yet to bear many such dire burdens. Though wires had been cut, and mails burnt, and every road blockaded, these silent but unimpeachable messengers, in virtue of the safe-conduct granted to them alone, were long destined to carry from station to station the tidings of woe and dismay.