The palace was humming with excitement. Its numerous buildings housed a multitude of court nobles and other hangers-on to the court, and each of these had his special coterie of attendants who helped to advance their own fortunes by clinging to their master's skirts. The jealousies and intrigues that surround a throne were never more in evidence than at Delhi during the last hours of the Great Mogul. Already men were preparing for the final catastrophe. While the ignorant mob was firm in its belief that the rule of the sahib had passed forever, those few clearer-headed persons who possessed any claim to the title of statesmen were convinced that the Mutiny had failed. Nearly four months were sped since that fatal Sunday when the rebellion broke out at Meerut. And what had been achieved? Delhi, the pivot of Mohammedan hopes, was crowded with a licentious soldiery, who obeyed only those leaders that pandered to them, who fought only when some perfervid moullah aroused their worst passions by his eloquence, and who were terrible only to peaceful citizens. All public credit was destroyed. The rule of the King, nominal within the walls of his own palace, was laughed at in the city and ignored beyond its walls. The provincial satraps and feudatory princes who should be striving to help their sovereign were wholly devoted to the more congenial task of carving out kingdoms for themselves. Nana Sahib, rehabilitated in Oudh, was opposing Havelock's advance; Khan Bahadur Khan, an ex-pensioner of the Company, had set up a barbarous despotism at Bareilly; the Moulvie of Fyzabad, intent on the destruction of the Residency, meant to establish himself there as "King of Hindustan" if only that stubborn entrenchment could be carried; Mahudi Husain, Gaffur Beg, Kunwer Singh, the Ranee of Jhansi, and a host of other prominent rebels scattered throughout Oudh, Bengal, the Northwest Provinces and Central India, cared less for Delhi than for their own private affairs, and were consequently permitting the British to gather forces by which they could be destroyed piecemeal. From Nepaul, the great border state, lying behind the pestilential jungle of the Terai, came an army of nine thousand Ghoorkahs to help the British. At Hyderabad, the most powerful Mohammedan principality in India, the Nizam and his famous minister, Sir Salar Jung, crushed a Jehad with cannon and grape-shot. In a word, the orgy had ended, and the day of reckoning was near. Malcolm, therefore, was confronted with two separate and hostile sets of conditions. On the one hand, he was threading his way through a maze of conflicting interests, and this was a circumstance most favorable to his chances of escape; on the other, every man regarded his neighbor with distrust and a stranger with positive suspicion, while Malcolm's distinguished appearance could not fail to draw many inquiring eyes.