The oldest soldier on active service of all the army in India, so strong was Lord Clyde's constitution that from the day he first took the field until the accident which befell him on the Nepaul frontier a few days before the termination of the final campaign, he had never suffered a day's illness. His vigour and energy had been extraordinary; the heat which prostrated so many of his followers was borne lightly by the tough and seasoned veteran, who despised all luxury, lived in a small tent, was content with the rations of the soldiers, and cheerfully bivouacked with them under the stars. But now that the stress of campaigning was over, and when he had reached Lucknow from the Nepaul frontier, the irritation of the broken rib, which was among the injuries he received in the accident that befell him before Burgidiah, resulted in a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs. For some days he was very ill, and his surgeon Mackinnon found him the reverse of a docile patient, for he hated medicine and could scarce be induced to remain quietly in bed. He gradually, however, recovered; and then, urged by Lord Canning to betake himself for rest to the hills, he left Lucknow with the headquarters on March 1st and proceeded by way of Agra and Delhi to Simla. At Delhi he spent several days investigating with the keenest interest the scenes of the memorable struggle there, and everything connected with the operations before that fortress. At Umbala he reviewed the troops quartered in that station, and reached Simla in the last week of April. His great work accomplished, he had a right to believe that there had now come an end to the cares which the rebellion entailed on him. In the bracing atmosphere of the hills he looked forward to a perfect restoration to health, and to the early realisation of his cherished hope of spending his last years with friends at home. But scarcely had he settled himself at Simla when tidings reached him of a grave danger confronting the Government of India. When in November, 1858, the assumption of the Government of India by the Crown was announced, some of the soldiers of the Company's European troops had set up an alternative claim for a free discharge or a bounty on re-enlistment into the service of the Crown. The law-officers of the Crown decided that the claim was inadmissible; and therefore a not unnatural discontent was engendered which finally culminated in the regrettable disturbance familiarly known as the "White Mutiny." It was well for the Government that in Lord Clyde there was available to meet the crisis a man who understood and sympathised with the nature and prejudices of the soldier. An actual collision was imminent, and as Lord Clyde informed the Viceroy, "no one could tell what would be the effect of a collision on the remainder of the local army, and on the native mind throughout India." A proclamation of a temporising character issued to the local European troops at Meerut produced a