On the following day, June 10th, he wrote in the same strain to Lord Canning, but adding that he would not give up Peshawur so long as he saw a chance of success. He asked that a telegram might be sent to him by the circuitous route of Bombay (the only route then open) containing one of two alternative replies--“Hold on to Peshawur to the last,”--or, “You may act as may appear expedient in regard to Peshawur.” Very soon he received Edwardes’s reply that, “With God’s help we can and will hold Peshawur, let the worst come to the worst.” On June 18th after a conversation with Nicholson, who was utterly opposed to retiring from Peshawur, he wrote to Edwardes repeating that in the event of a great disaster such retirement might be necessary. No reply being received from Lord Canning, he prepared to act upon this view as the extremity of the crisis seemed to loom nearer and nearer during June and July. He reiterated his views in two despatches to the Governor-General, one at the end of June, the other at the end of July. But by August 1st public intelligence from India and England reached him, modifying favourably, though it did not remove, the crisis. On the 7th of that month he received Lord Canning’s reply, “Hold on to Peshawur to the last.” He immediately writes to Edwardes: “The Governor-General bids me hold on to the last at Peshawur. I do not, however, now think that we shall be driven to any extremity. The tide is turning very decidedly against the mutineers at Delhi.” This episode evinces his moral courage and single-mindedness in all that concerned the public safety, for he must have well known that proposals for retirement were invidious, and might prove unpopular with many of his supporters. When he spoke about the turning of the tide he alluded partly to the news, which was slowly travelling to the Punjab from England, regarding the despatch to India of mighty reinforcements of European troops. These would not indeed reach him in time, but the knowledge nerved him to hold out, as every day gained was a step towards victory. On August 6th he heard at last the tidings of his brother’s death at Lucknow, from a mortal wound while in bed from the bursting of a shell which had penetrated the chamber. Immediately he telegraphed to Edwardes, “My brother Henry was wounded on July 2nd, and died two days afterwards.” The same day he wrote to Edwardes, “Henry died like a good soldier in discharge of his duty; he has not left an abler or better soldier behind him; his loss just now will be a national calamity.”