While the majority pulled in one way there was an active minority that wished the Nana to set up an independent kingdom. His nephew and his Mohammedan friend, Azim-ullah, were convinced that their faction would lose all influence as soon as their chief was swallowed up in the maelstrom of the imperial court. If Winifred supplied the spell that kept the Nana at Bithoor, they were quite content that it should be allowed to exercise its power. Hence, Malcolm's arrival gave the Begum a chance that her quick wit seized upon. Why not, she argued, connive at the Englishwoman's escape, and let it become known that she had fled back to Meerut? When the Nana returned from Cawnpore, flushed with wine and conquest, this should be the first news that greeted him, and his amorous rage would go hand in hand with the other considerations that urged his immediate departure for the Mogul capital. That was not the device of a woman who loved--it savored rather of the cool state-craft of a Lucrezia Borgia. No more curious mixture of plot and counterplot than this minor chapter of the Bithoor romance came to light during that disastrous upheaval in India. Never did events of the utmost magnitude hinge on incidents so trivial to the community at large. A truculent thief like Abdul Huq was able to defeat the intent of a king's daughter, and a couple of alert troopers, riding to a bluff overlooking the river, could report that they saw the budgerow on which the sahib-log escaped drifting down stream towards Cawnpore! Thus the intrigue miscarried twice. Winifred was free; the clear inference to be drawn from the boat's course was that her uncle and Malcolm would bring her straight to the protection of their friends in the cantonment. There was a scene of violence, nearly culminating in murder, when Nana Sahib came to Bithoor at dawn. He met the scorn of Roshinara with a furious insolence that stopped short of bloodshed only on account of the prudence still governing most of his actions. Not yet was he drunk with power. That madness was soon to obsess him. But he lent a willing ear to the counsels of Rao Sahib and Azim-ullah. Soon after daybreak he galloped to Kulianpur, on the road to Delhi, whither some thousands of sepoys had already gone, and harangued them eloquently on the glory, not to speak of the loot, they would acquire by attacking the accursed English at Cawnpore. They were easily swayed. Acclaiming the Nana as a prince worthy of obedience they marched after him, and thus sealed the doom of many hundreds of unhappy beings who thought until that moment they would be spared the dreadful fate that had befallen other stations.