Next morning began a three day's battle. Perhaps there was never an action so spectacular, so thrilling, so amazingly in earnest, as the continuous fight which brought about the Second Relief of Lucknow. At the Alumbagh, at the Dilkusha and La Martinière school, at the Secunder Bagh and the Shah Nujeef, were fought fiercely-contested combats that in other campaigns would have figured as independent battles, each highly important in the history of the time. The taking of the Shah Nujeef alone was worthy of Homeric praise. It was a mosque that stood in a garden, bounded by a high and stout wall and protected by jungle and mud hovels. Its peculiar position, joined to the number of guns mounted on its walls and the thousands of sepoys who held it, made it impossible for a devoted artillery to create an effective breach. Yet, if the relieving force failed here, they failed altogether. So Sir Colin asked his men for a supreme effort. Riding forward himself, accompanied by his staff and Sir Adrian Hope, Colonel of the 93d, he cheered on his loved Highlanders. Cannot one hear the skirl of the pipes amid that din of cannon and musketry? Cannot one see the shot-torn colors fluttering in the breeze, the plaids of the gallant Highland gentlemen who led the 93d, vanishing in the smoke and dust? Middleton's battery of the Royal Artillery came dashing up, "the drivers waving their whips, the gunners their caps," unlimbered within forty yards of the wall, and opened fire with grape. Men and horses fell in scores, but somehow, anyhow, an entrance was gained and the Shah Nujeef was taken. Feeble must be the pulse that does not beat faster, dim the eye that does not kindle, as one hears how those Britons fought and died, but did not die in vain. Next day Captain Garnet Wolseley led a storming party against the Motee Mahal, and the self-sacrificing heroism of the Shah Nujeef was displayed again here and with the same result. And so the wild fight went on, till Outram and Havelock, Napier, Eyre, Havelock's son and four other officers ran from the Residency through a tempest of lead showered on them from the Kaiser Bagh, and Hope Grant, dashing forward from the van of Colin Campbell's force, shook hands with the hero of the First Relief. Half an hour later Malcolm entered the Residency. At first sight it was an abode of sorrow. Death and ruin seemed to have combined there to wreak their spite on mankind and his belongings. Even the men and women whom he met were tear-laden, and it was not till he heard their happy voices that he knew they were weeping because of the overwhelming joy in their souls.