He hurried on, scanning each excited group for one face that he thought he would recognize were it fifty years instead of five months since their last meeting. He, of course, was even a finer-looking and better set-up soldier now than when he galloped along the flame-lit roads of Meerut on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday night in May, and it is not to be wondered at if he failed to allow for the effect on Winifred of the ordeal she had gone through. Perhaps his keen eyes were covered with a mist, perhaps the growing fear in his heart forbade his tongue to ask a question, because he dreaded the answer. Perhaps sheer agitation may have rendered him incapable of distinguishing one among so many. Howsoever that may be, he knew nothing, saw no one, until a wan, slim-figured woman, a woman clothed in tattered rags, down whose pallid cheeks streamed the divine tears of happiness, touched his arm and sobbed: "Are you looking for me--dear?" * * * * * The Mutiny was by no means ended with the fall of Delhi and the Second Relief of Lucknow. North and south and east and west the rebels were hunted with untiring zeal. Sometimes in scattered bands, less often in formidable armies, they were pursued, encountered and annihilated. Quickly degenerating into mere robber hordes, they became a pest to the unhappy villagers in the remoter parts of the different provinces, and it was long ere the last embers of the fire that had raged so fiercely were stamped out. Nana Sahib perished miserably under the claws of a tiger in the Nepaul jungle, the Moulvie of Fyzabad and the Ranei of Jhansi fell in action, while Tantia Topi was hanged. But the end came, and on November 1, 1858, amid salvoes of artillery and to the accompaniment of festivities innumerable, Queen Victoria proclaimed the abolition of the East India Company, and assumed the sovereignty of the country. Her Majesty took no territory, confirmed all treaties, promised religious toleration and civil equality to all her Indian subjects, and gave full and complete pardon to every rebel who was not a murderer. The Queen's gracious and peace-bringing words supplied a fitting close to India's Red Year. Europeans and natives alike tried to forget both the crime and its punishment. And that was a good thing in itself. The great land of Hindustan has doubled its teeming population and increased its prosperity out of all comparable reckoning during the fifty years that have passed since the Mutiny. Many of the descendants of men who fought against the British Raj are now its trusted servants, and there is not in India to-day a native gentleman of any importance who would not assist the Government with his life and fortune to save his country from the lawless horrors of any similar outbreak.