night-march made by such troops as could be spared from escort-duty might have saved some valuable hours, but the force did not resume its progress until the morning of the 28th. The thunder of the cannon waxed louder as the column advanced; and note after note from Windham, delivered by panting messengers, gave ominous intimation how greatly endangered had become the situation at Cawnpore. Leaving the infantry to hurry forward with the convoy and heavy guns, Sir Colin pushed on rapidly with the cavalry and horse-artillery. Leaving those in the Mungulwar camping-ground he galloped on to Cawnpore with his staff. Near the bridge an officer reported to him that "Windham's garrison was at its last gasp." His soldierly nature chafed by the flaccid despondency which tone and expression alike disclosed, the hot old Chief spurred his horse across the bridge and rode straight for the entrenchment. As he passed, some men whom he had commanded in the Crimea recognised through the gloom the familiar face and figure; and cheer on cheer was raised as the word passed like lightning that the Commander-in-Chief had arrived. No more caitiff babble now of the garrison being "at its last gasp!" The feeling was universal that with Sir Colin's arrival disaster was no longer to be dreaded; and the situation was already retrieved in spirit. Windham had not followed the instructions given him by the Commander-in-Chief before the latter crossed into Oude. He had loyally forwarded to Sir Colin the reinforcements as they arrived, until the communications were cut off between him and his Chief. Left then to his own resources both moral and material, and aware that a rebel force of trained soldiers, fourteen thousand strong with some forty guns, was daily drawing nearer and nearer, he abandoned the defensive prescribed to him, and on the 24th of November he pushed some six miles out into the country with his mixed force of detachments, numbering all told less than fourteen hundred men with eight guns. Accepting his challenge, Tantia Topee, the rebel general, and the only real soldier the mutiny produced, threw forward his advanced guard into a strong position lining the dry bed of a nullah. That position Windham on the morning of the 26th carried at the first rush; but he found it necessary to withdraw in face of the main body of the rebels, and he fell back nearer to his base. At noon next day, skilfully withholding his infantry, the rebel general opened a heavy cannonade on Windham's front and flanks. For five hours the British troops held their ground staunchly against overwhelming odds, but at length they were forced to retreat. This movement through narrow streets and broken ground was attended by considerable disorder, and the camp-equipage had to be abandoned. Reluctant to withdraw into the entrenchment, Windham during the night between the 27th and 28th still held with his right the broken and wooded ground between the