That 10th of May we remember vividly. We had had our usual afternoon service with the native Christians. In the evening we walked out in the garden. The moon was shining in an unclouded sky. Hot though the weather was we enjoyed our quiet walk, talked of the services of the day, and the threatening appearance of affairs. Little did we think of the terrible scenes which were then being enacted at Meerut. The outbreak at Meerut awoke as with a peal of the loudest thunder the entire English community in India, and especially in Northern India, to a sense of imminent peril. We had hitherto lived in the enjoyment of profound security. There had been uneasiness on different occasions, when our power seemed imperilled by the disasters which overtook us in Afghanistan in 1841-42, and by the life and death struggle we had afterwards with the Sikhs. Our enemies were then watching for our fall, and the reasons for uneasiness at those times were stronger than the community generally were aware of. There had been also at different times uneasiness in reference to the Sepoys, but they came to be regarded as wilful children, who might be troublesome, but who would do us no harm. In our own country, among our own people, we could not have felt safer than we ordinarily did. At the travelling season we went about, pitched our tents in solitary spots, for weeks together perhaps did not see a white face, and were treated not only with courtesy, but generally with profound deference, as if we belonged to a superior race. The people in their obsequious fashion, and with their idolatrous views, would almost have given us divine honours. All at once we realized ourselves as living in the midst of a dense alien population. Our own trusted soldiers, serving under our banners, receiving our pay, and sworn to defend us, had risen against us; and with them as declared enemies, in whom could we confide? Our obsequious servants of yesterday might become our murderers to-day. We felt ourselves at bay, surrounded by a host who might any moment fall on us and destroy us. CHAPTER XVII. THE OUTBREAK AT BENARES.