There are many still living who will remember the horror and sickening dismay which flew from station to station as the story, discredited at first, pressed itself home to the minds of the conquering race. We had heard unpleasant rumours before, here and there a mutinous regiment, bungalows set on fire, outrages committed, muttered insults in the public highways; some of us, indeed, had been visited with vague apprehensions. But there was always some one of experience at hand to point out how foolish it was to be afraid either of the people or the soldiers, and we were only too glad to be reassured. So much the greater was the shock of this terrible intelligence. It is true that it was nothing like so dreadful as what we were to hear later. The mutineers were young in crime and fearful of punishment. As a fact, it was rather a herd of frightened wild creatures that rushed madly out of the burning station on that awful Sunday night than a victorious army triumphing in its first success. But this we did not know. All we saw and understood was the extraordinary audacity of this first definite move. Through the breathless days that followed we were momentarily expecting to hear of the mutineers being pursued and punished. Our servants looked at us strangely. Native officers and soldiers, who, in the first flush of surprise, had passionately sworn to be faithful, began to lift up their heads. Old English commanders, of the type of General Elton, who was away from home on a tour of inspection in the outlying districts, gnashed their teeth with impotent fury, and wondered what the people at Meerut were about. For the news we expected never came. The next distinct intelligence was that flashed from the telegraph station at Delhi by the young signaller, who, with the messengers of death yelling in his ears, was working his instrument quietly: 'The Sepoys have come in from Meerut, and are burning everything; we must shut up.' Not till then did the full magnitude of the disaster that had come to us break upon our minds. Ah! what a change it was! Few of us can have any conception of its horror. From a life that is quiet, simple, and secure, to be plunged all in a moment into the dark, strenuous world of tragedy, nerves strung up, senses on the alert, affection made lurid by passion, heart-consuming anxiety the companion of our solitude. Can we imagine it? If so, we shall have a faint picture of the experiences of many of us in that terrible May and June.