In the tent where the Eltons lived there was deep distress and sorrow, for the General was dangerously ill. Fatigue, exposure, and mental anguish, aggravated by the pain of his wound, which proved more serious than they had at first imagined, had done their work. So long as the strain was upon him he kept up. When it was relaxed he fell. But for the perfection of his health and the iron strength of his will, he must have died that night. For himself, it may have been fortunate that his senses soon deserted him; but piteous it was to the poor women who loved and honoured him to hear the wild ravings of those awful days and nights. It was all about his soldiers. They were his children, his little ones. He believed in them, as he believed in himself. Springing up in bed, he would call the bystanders to witness how brave and true they were. He would challenge an imaginary adversary to question their faithfulness, asserting his own intimate knowledge of their character. Again and again he would recite the brilliant deeds of arms to which he had led them, and relate how they had delivered him from a cruel death. His gentle wife, waiting patiently by his bedside, wept bitterly as she listened. With all her dread of the future, and passionate sorrow and pity, she feared his returning to himself. If he was to be taken away, would it not be better for his sake that he should go now, before his heart was pierced by the dread knowledge of the truth? And as day after day went by, bringing little or no change in his condition, they began to fear that so it would be. There was another anxiety pressing upon them. Through all these days no word had been heard of Grace. Whether the troops at Nowgong had been faithful, or whether they had risen, no one at Meerut knew. To poor Lady Elton, watching by her husband, and looking at the pale faces of her girls, as they came and went sorrowfully, doing what they could to help her, it would seem sometimes as if Grace was the dearest of all. She was her first-born. It was her little plaintive voice, and the touch of her baby-hands, that had awakened in her heart the rapturous joys of motherhood. From beautiful girlhood she had blossomed under her eyes into a womanhood that was no less lovely. Always gentle, always good--too good, the mother said to herself now, with a contraction of heart that almost made her swoon. And it was not only the dread of losing her. If she had lain where her father lay, if they had known that in a short time she would breathe her sweet life away, bitter as the pang would have been, she might have borne it. It was this horror worse than death--this uncertainty--that slew her. It numbed her senses, till she wondered at her own indifference. It shattered her faith, so that, forgetting the others--the young creatures who depended upon her--she cried out piteously to a cruel God to slay her, and then wept and bemoaned herself over her own wickedness and hardness of heart.