outposts intent upon serving his master's dinner before it had time to cool. An ayah, while dandling an infant, lost both her legs by the blow of a cannon-ball. That was in truth a dismal nursery. Want of water was a constant and growing evil. At the best, a single well would have furnished a pitiably insufficient supply for a thousand mouths during an Indian June: and that well was from the first the favourite target of the hostile artillerymen. Guns were trained on to the exact spot; so that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day, and by night the creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape. The framework of beam and brick which protected the drawers was soon shot away. The machinery went next, and the buckets were thenceforward hauled up hand over hand from a depth of more than sixty feet. The Hindoo water-carriers were slain early in the siege, and their place was supplied by English soldiers, who nominally were paid at the rate of five rupees for every pail: though the brave fellows knew that, when a few days had gone by, it would matter little in whose hands the silver might happen to lie. That water was purchased with blood and not with money. John Mackillop, of the Civil Service, veiling devotion under a jocose pretence of self-depreciation, told his friends that, though no fighting man, he was willing to make himself useful where he could, and accordingly claimed to be appointed Captain of the Well. His tenure of the office was prolonged beyond his own expectation. It was not till a week had passed that he was laid dying on a bed in the hospital with a grape-shot in the groin. His last words expressed a desire that the lady to whom he had promised a drink should not be disappointed. For some days a few gallons were procured at a frightful hazard from a tank situated on the south-east of the intrenchment. Those who were conscious how dear a price was paid for every draught, thirsted in silence; but the babies kept up a perpetual moan more terrible to some stout souls than a ten minutes' hobble across the plain, a heavy skinful of water round the loins, and an ounce of lead in the ankle. Captain Thomson saw the children of his brother officers "sucking the pieces of old water-bags, putting scraps of canvass and leather straps into the mouth to try and get a single drop of moisture upon their parched lips." The distress of our countrymen was enhanced by the plague of dust to which Cawnpore is subject on account of the character of the soil. A traveller who visited the station ten or twelve years before the mutiny, complains that he got no gratification out of a grand review from which he had promised himself much pleasure, because the show was throughout enveloped in clouds which totally concealed it from his eyes.