At dawn on the morning of the sixth of June, Sir Hugh Wheeler received a letter, in which the Nana announced his intention of at once commencing the attack. Our officers were summoned within the intrenchment, where, for a fortnight past, the women and children had already been in sanctuary. The order was obeyed with soldier-like promptitude, intensified by the consciousness of imminent peril. It fared ill with those who had indulged in a fond anticipation that their next change of lodging would be to Allahabad and Calcutta. With no notice of quarter, or month, or week; with no valuation for fixtures, or inventory of furniture, they were called upon to shift to a residence held on short and uncertain tenure, and at a fearful rent. There was no time for packing, or even for selection. There was not leisure to snatch a parting cup of coffee, or a handful of cigars, or an armful of favourite books, or a pith-helmet that had been tested by many a long day's tiger-shooting under the blazing Indian sun. All possessions, however hardly earned and highly prized,--all dear memorials of home and love,--were to be alike abandoned to the coming foe. He who, in that close and burning night of the mid summer, had on his house-top courted a little air and sleep, might not stay to take anything out of his house. He who had been on some early service in the field might not return back to take his clothes. Few and happy were they who had secured a single change of raiment; and those who, in the hurry of the moment, had stayed to dress themselves from head to foot, were by comparison not unfortunate. Half-clad, unbreakfasted, confused, and breathless, our countrymen huddled like shipwrecked sea-farers into the precincts of the fatal earthwork, which they entered only to suffer, and left only to die.