"Better have it bathed, though.---- By Jove, look there! Roberts is a dead man--no, he's cut the sepoy down!" The troop of native cavalry with which the future hero of Kandahar and Pretoria was riding had come across a body of mutineers, who, unable to escape, had turned and fired, mortally wounding Younghusband, the commandant. Roberts was hurrying to his friend's aid, when he noticed a pandy in the act of slaying one of his troopers. He instantly engaged the rebel, and, cutting him down, saved the life of the Punjabi. Turning round Lieutenant Roberts perceived a couple of sepoys hurrying off with a standard, so he pursued and overtook them, and, seizing the standard with his left hand, he killed the bearer. As he did so the other sepoy let fly, his musket barely a foot away. Luckily for England it missed fire, and the second opponent was speedily disposed of, and Lieutenant Roberts bore away the standard and thereby gained the V.C. "Well done, Roberts!" exclaimed Ted as they watched him ride away. "Didn't you shiver when you saw the pandy pull the trigger?" "I went cold all over. I thought he was done for. But come along and bathe your cut if you don't want to be laid up." "I don't want that, thanks--not until we've driven the beggars out of Lucknow. "I like that nag of yours better every time I see him," observed Boldre, as his own horse stumbled towards camp, winded by the long gallop. "Yes, he was a bargain. I should like to know who owned him originally. By the way, I wonder what Sir Colin will do to the 53rd. The chief can be a peppery old gentleman when he likes, and I expect there'll be a row." "Yes, I shouldn't care to be in their shoes." They were not present to witness the scene, but for once in his life Sir Colin was vanquished. Whenever he attempted to "dress down" the regiment, the "bhoys" of the 53rd, highly elated by the success of their trick, would interrupt with shouts of "Three cheers for the commander-in-chief, boys!" And so rapturously did they applaud and with such hearty good-temper that the old general was forced to laugh in spite of himself; and after that it was no use to pretend to be angry. He rode away amid a storm of cheers. The 53rd had won. After a prolonged stay at Fatehghar, Boldre's Horse returned to Cawnpore. Now for the first time Ted had leisure to look round this town, so sorrowfully interesting to the English race. Alec knew the place well, having stayed there before Ted came down from Lahore; so he took his chum to the ghaut where the massacre had begun, and then to that last sad scene of the murder. There were gruesome sights still to be witnessed in Cawnpore, and, partially inured as the lads now were to the horrors of war, there was that in Cawnpore to make them shudder--bones bleaching on the many sand-banks of the broad river, and corpses floating down its sacred stream.