“You or I might do it easily enough, Doctor, but for women it seems to me out of the question; still, that is a matter for each married man to decide for himself. The prospect is dark enough anyway, but, as before, it seems to me that everything really depends upon the Zemindars. If we hold the courthouse it is possible the Sepoys may be beaten off in their first attack, and in their impatience to join the mutineers, who are all apparently marching for Delhi, they may go off without throwing away their lives by attacking us, for they must see they will not be able to take the place without cannon. But if the Zemindars join them with cannon, we may defend ourselves till the last, but there can be but one end to it.” The Doctor nodded. “That is the situation exactly, Bathurst.” “I am glad we know the danger, and shall be able to face it openly,” Wilson said. “For the last month Richards and I have been keeping watch alternately, and it has been beastly funky work sitting with one’s pistols on the table before one, listening, and knowing any moment there might be a yell, and these brown devils come pouring in. Now, at least, we are likely to have a fight for it, and to know that some of them will go down before we do.” Richards cordially agreed with his companion. “Well, now, what are the orders, Bathurst?” said the Doctor. “There are no orders as yet, Doctor. The Major says you will go round to the others, Doolan, Rintoul, and Forster, and tell them. I am to go round to Hunter and the other civilians. Then, this evening we are to meet at nine o’clock, as usual, at the Major’s. If the others decide that the only plan is for all to stop here and fight it out, there will be no occasion for anything like a council; it will only have to be arranged at what time we all move into the fort, and the best means for keeping the news from spreading to the Sepoys. Not that it will make much difference after they have once fairly turned in. If there is one thing a Hindoo hates more than another, it is getting from under his blankets when he has once got himself warm at night. Even if they heard at one or two o’clock in the morning that we were moving into the fort I don’t think they would turn out till morning.” “No, I am sure they would not,” the Doctor agreed. “If there were a few more of us,” Richards said, “I should vote for our beginning it. If we were to fall suddenly upon them we might kill a lot and scare the rest off.” “We are too few for that,” the Doctor said. “Besides, although Bathurst answers for the good faith of the sender of the warning, there has as yet been no act of mutiny that would justify our taking such a step as that. It would come to the same thing. We might kill a good many, but in the long run three hundred men would be more than a match for a dozen, and then the women would be at their mercy. Well, we had better be moving, or we shall not have time to go round to the bungalows before the people set out for the Major’s.”