How I envied my husband and the others, who, as I then thought, were at any rate in comparative safety, able to eat and sleep, even though they were prisoners! Not that anxiety on my husband’s account did not trouble me. I longed to know how he was being treated, and whether they would tell him of my escape, and spare him the torture of not knowing my fate, for I knew how he would fret over it if he did not know. It seemed so terrible to be obliged to march away leaving them all behind, and at times I longed to hurry back and see for myself what was happening, while, again, I would have given anything to have reached Cachar, and been able to send up help to those in captivity. We thought that Mr. Melville had been made prisoner and brought back to Manipur, as a rumour to that effect had reached us on the 24th, and in that case we supposed he would be with the Chief and his party, a prisoner in the palace. Perhaps the utter weariness of body and mind which threatened to overcome me at this time prevented my brooding too much on the possible fate of those we had been forced to leave in the hands of their enemies, and it may have been well that it was so. All that terrible night we tramped on, I with bare feet, as my thin shoes had given out long since. At length, about one o’clock in the morning, we halted in a small grove of trees, lying in a hollow between two hills. We had marched more than twenty miles, and rest was absolutely essential. Here we lay down and slept. The officers gave me their great-coats and bore the intense cold themselves, and I slept as I have seldom slept in a comfortable bed at home, never waking once until someone aroused me about half-past three in the morning, and told me the weary tale again—we were to move on. The first glimmer of dawn was appearing as we commenced marching again—hungry, tired, and dispirited. No one knew the way, and we only had rough paths here and there to guide us through the jungle; but the actual walking was not so difficult, as we were travelling along the top of a ridge of hills, and had no very steep ascent or descent. Every now and then we were able to see the Leimatak peak, still some distance off, which I had recognised and pointed out to the others, and I knew that the road to Cachar passed right through a small grove of trees on its summit, so we made it our landmark. The chances of meeting Captain Cowley’s party seemed growing less every hour. Had he been obliged to turn back? we wondered. Would he have gone on towards Manipur, and have passed the place where we hoped to strike the road? We knew nothing. We were all utterly weary, and dispirited from want of food and rest. It was now the morning of the 26th, and we had none of us tasted food since the 24th. I was so tired that I wished I were dead more than once, and everything seemed quite hopeless, when we came upon the road suddenly.