The man was a highlander from beyond our North-Western Frontier, who had taken service in the Punjab Mounted Police, and had been condemned at Peshawar for slaying his blood-feud enemy on British soil. The Court took a merciful view of the case and sentenced him to transportation for life at the Andamans. In his dying confession, years afterwards, he stated that although he had not struck the blow, he had conspired to do the murder. But the slaying of a hereditary foe in cold blood was no crime in his eyes, and ever since his conviction in 1869, he said he had made up his mind to revenge himself by killing 'some European of high rank.' He therefore established his character as a silent, doggedly well-behaved man; and in due time was set at large as a barber among the ticket-of-leave convicts at Hopetown. During three years he waited sullenly for some worthy prey. On the morning of the 8th February, when he heard the royal salute, he felt that his time had come, and sharpened a knife. He resolved to kill both the Superintendent and the Viceroy. All through the day the close surveillance gave him no chance of getting to the islands which Lord Mayo visited. Evening came, and his victim landed unexpectedly at his very door. He slipped into the woods, crept up Mount Harriet through the jungle side by side with the Viceroy; then dogged the party down {200} again in the dark: but still got no chance. At the foot he almost gave up hope, and resolved to wait for the morrow. But as the Viceroy stepped quickly forward on the jetty, his grey-suited shoulders towering conspicuous in the torch-light, an impulse of despair thrilled through the assassin. He gave up all idea of life, rushed round the guards, and in a moment was on his victim's back. He was a hillman of great size and strength. When heavily fettered in the condemned cell, he overturned the lamp with his chained ankle, bore down the English sentry by brute strength of body, and wrenched away his bayonet with his manacled hands. He made no pretence of penitence, and was childishly vain of being photographed (for police inquiries in Northern India) as the murderer of a Viceroy. Indeed, some of the above details were only got out of him by a native officer who cunningly begged him for materials for an ode on his deed, to be sung by his countrymen. Neither his name, nor that of his village or tribe, will find record in this book. The passionate outburst of grief and wrath which then shook India, the slow military pomp of the slain Viceroy's re-entry into his capital, the uncontrollable fits of weeping in the chamber where he lay in state, the long voyage of the mourning ship, and the solemn ceremonial with which Ireland received home her dead son--all these were fitting at the time, and are past.