He turned towards her with a sigh. “Why do you sigh?” she asked. “I scarcely know.” “Is it for one who is absent?” “Perhaps so.” _She_ sighed now, inaudibly, and she pressed her hand on her heart; but he did not notice the movement. “Cawnpore is distant,” she said, in a low tone, “and the night is already far spent. Let us go.” And so they went on, side by side, into the darkness, on to the unknown future. And the wind moaned around them like a warning voice, and beat in their faces as if it would drive them back. CHAPTER XIV. THE TIGER OF CAWNPORE.[3] For many years, up to eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, Cawnpore had been one of the greatest Indian military stations. In the palmy days of the Honourable East India Company all the officers invariably spent some period of their service there. As a consequence, there were wealth and beauty and fashion to be found in the British quarters; there were luxury and ease, and their concomitants, profligacy and vice--and yet withal it was perhaps neither better nor worse than all great military centres--while for rollicking gaiety and “life” it stood at the head, even Calcutta being behind it in this respect. But when the mutiny broke out, Cawnpore’s sun was declining,--not but what it was still a station of importance, but the coming end of the “Company’s” power had brought about many changes in this as well as in most other Indian cities. It was an irregularly built place, some eight miles in extent. Squalor and wealth seemed to fraternise; for in many parts the lordly mansion raised its head beside some tumble-down, reeking native den. There was no pretension to anything like mathematical precision in the streets. They had been laid out in the most promiscuous manner. In fact, it might not inaptly be said that if you wanted to construct a Cawnpore such as it was at the time of our story, you must take a big plain with lots of cocoa-palms about, and a broad river running through it. Then get many hundreds of bamboo and mud huts; a few marble palaces, some temples with gilded minarets, a few big public buildings, a hospital or two, a gaol, and a quantity of miscellaneous structures, such as an arsenal, barracks, etc., shake them all up together, and toss them out on the plain, and there you have your Cawnpore.