'It is all over! Not for me, for my task is not done; yet, sad and hopeless as I feel, there is in my soul a certain wild springing up of exultation which prevents me from being utterly cast down. It is for them--for the torturers of women and the slaughterers of unarmed men and helpless children--that the end has come. Fifty rebel sepoys with their leader lie slain in the narrow streets of this quiet village. Their prisoners--two young English officers, fearfully attenuated, who had been walking under the sun of this August day with chains on their limbs, and a lady in a cart whose face I have not seen, though I know to my sorrow that she is not Grace--are under the care of my excellent Hoosanee in the house of the headman of the village. 'How did it all come about? This I must try to remember and put down. That we--the assailants of this valiant fifty--were only about twelve men all told I know, for Hoosanee counted them out before me. It was a fortunate circumstance for us that we had anyone at all to help us, for the villagers, though sympathetic and willing to earn the large reward I offered, had no wish to put their skins in jeopardy by trying conclusions with armed and disciplined soldiers. But, as it happened, a little band of Bheels, on their way to fill up the gaps made daily by sword and pestilence in one of the newly formed native regiments, were halting in the village, and some of these were ready to flesh their swords on the persons of the hated Poorbeahs to whom, as Hoosanee had represented, the English prisoners' escort belonged.