At another station there is a young officer under arrest, awaiting the decision of the Commander-in-Chief upon his court-martial. He has been tried on a charge of having forgotten the respect due to his captain on a certain delicate occasion. The proofs were painfully clear; the young man had been convicted and sentenced to be cashiered. But there were many mitigating circumstances in the case; the officer was very young, and there was ample reason for supposing that the fruit he had stolen had not required much shaking. The Commander-in-Chief read the case carefully. "Sentence quashed," he wrote on the margin. "History records but one Joseph; this officer will return to his duty." These things, however, were but the play-moments of his progress; very serious matters soon claimed attention. In July, 1849, symptoms of mutiny began to manifest themselves in at least two regiments of Bengal Native Infantry stationed in the Punjaub. In November certain corps ordered to proceed to the Punjaub from Delhi openly showed insubordination. In December still graver signs of revolt occurred. The Thirty-Second Bengal Native Infantry refused to accept their pay, and mutinously demanded increased rates. The presence of a veteran general officer quelled this outbreak at Wuzzerabad, but a still more serious instance of insubordination was soon to manifest itself. In February, 1850, the Sixty-Sixth Regiment of Bengal Infantry broke into open mutiny at Govind Ghur, a suburb of Umritsur the sacred city of the Sikhs. The mutineers endeavoured to seize the fort, containing vast stores of arms and a large amount of treasure and ammunition. Again the vigorous action of an officer saved the gates, and a European regiment arriving in the nick of time overawed the rebellious Bengalees. All these signs and portents of trouble were not lost upon the Commander-in-Chief; his resolution was quickly taken. By a stroke of the pen he disbanded the mutinous regiment, and put in its place a battalion of Ghoorka troops. The Governor-General was absent on a sea-voyage for the benefit of his health when this last alarming outbreak occurred at Umritsur. The case was urgent, the danger pressing. Twenty-four other Bengal regiments stationed in the Punjaub were known to be in close sympathy with the Sixty-Sixth; if the insubordination spread, the Sikh fires of resistance so lately quenched at Goojerat would again burst into flame. Gholab Singh was ready in Cashmere with a well-filled treasury and a large army to join the conflagration. The very existence of our Indian rule stood in peril. Napier was not the man to waste precious moments at such a crisis in seeking for precedents or covering his actions with the sanction of higher authority obtained by delay. He took three important steps.