Malcolm was with them, and he saw a sergeant enter the blood-stained dwelling, while the men lined up in front of the Well in an awed silence. The sergeant returned. His brick-red face had paled to an ashen tint. In his hand he carried the long, rich strands of a woman's hair, strands that had been hacked off some unhappy Englishwoman's head by Nana Sahib's butchers. He removed his bonnet with the solemnity of a man who is in the presence of God and death. Passing down the ranks he gave a lock of the hair to each soldier. "One life for every hair before the sun sets," he said quietly. And that was all, but there are old men yet alive in Cawnpore who remember how the Highlanders raged through the streets that evening like the wrath of Heaven. General Neill, who came later and assumed the rôle of magistrate, showed neither pity nor mercy. Every man who fell into his hands, and who was connected in the slightest degree with the infamy of the Well, was hanged on a gallows erected in the compound, but not until he had cleaned with his tongue the allotted square of blood-stained cement that formed the floor of the house. Cawnpore, on the 17th, was indeed a city of dreadful night. The fierce exultation of successful warfare was gone. The streets were empty save for prowling dogs, pigs, and venturesome wild beasts. No sound was heard in the British encampment except the melancholy plaint of the pipes mourning for the dead, during the interment of those who had fallen. Even the unconquerable Havelock said to his son, as they and the officers of the staff sat at dinner: "If the worst comes to the worst we can but die with our swords in our hands." Next morning his splendid vitality reasserted itself. He advanced towards Bithoor and took up a strong position in case Nana Sahib might attempt to recover the city. But that arch-fiend had been deserted by the majority of his followers, and he was babbling of suicide to his fellow Brahmins. Meanwhile Neill brought a few more troops from Allahabad, and Havelock threw the greater portion of his army across the Ganges. Owing to the difficulty of obtaining boats and skilled boatmen, this was a slow and dangerous undertaking. It took five days to ferry nine hundred men to the Oudh side, but Lawrence had said that the Residency could only hold out fourteen days, and come what might the effort must be made to relieve him. On the 20th while Malcolm was occupied with some details of transport, Chumru came to him. The bearer was no longer "Ali Khan," the swashbuckler, but a white-robed domestic, though no change of attire could rob him of the truculent aspect that was the gift of nature. Beside Chumru stood another Mohammedan, an elderly man, who straightened himself under the sahib's eye and brought up his right hand in a smart military salute. "Huzoor," said Chumru, "this is Ungud, Kumpani pinsin (a pensioner of the Company), and he would have speech with the Presence."