In the same cantonments with us was a regiment of Punjaubees, who had as yet remained quiet; but more could not be said of them, and we of the Queen's Own watched them closely, for we were only one to ten of them, and as no order for disarming them had come, we pretended to trust them, and affected a frankness and faith in our bearing with them we were far from feeling. Thus, cantonment life went on pretty much the same as usual--the parade after gunfire, the officers and ladies riding or driving on the course, or the former idling in the verandas of the bungalows, sipping iced drinks or brandy-pawnee, studying the last Bengal _Hurkaru_ or the thermometer; and the pandies cooking their food--rice and chillies, chupatties and ghee, under the glaring sun, in their own lines, and careful that the baleful shadow of no European passer should, during the process, fall across it. Our chief fear was that the approach of some thousand natives and deserters, led by Koer Sing, steeped in slaughter and flushed with conquest and crime, might in an hour change the face of things, and find us fighting for bare existence with the very men who shared the garrison duty of the cantonment with us. Captain Basil Heron, who commanded us--a handsome man, in the prime of life, a great favourite with us all, and the leader in all manly sports and schemes for our welfare--with Captain Dalton, who commanded the Punjaubees, began to take quietly some measures to render the Residency, the only brick edifice there, more defensible than it was, a place wherein to place the European women and children in case of emergency. Captain Heron had a wife--a fair and delicate English girl--and one little child, on whom they both doted; and when I saw the expression of haggard anxiety their faces wore, and the faces of others who had such charges to love and protect, I thanked Heaven that then and there I had neither wife nor child to care for, nor aught to look after but my old 'Brown Bess.' Rumours that precautions were being taken spread like lightning through the native lines, and Buktawur Sing, the Subadar-Major of the Punjaubees, a grotesquely ferocious-looking fellow, with a large hook nose, and black mustachios of such enormous length that they floated over his shoulders, went to Captain Heron, and, with his base eyes full of tears, besought him not to send the ladies and children out of the cantonments, as the whole of his regiment had sworn on the waters of the Ganges 'to be true to their salt.' Captain Heron heard this promise doubtfully; but Mrs. Heron, who sat there with her baby crowing in her lap, its fat fingers clutching at the golden curls that clustered round her forehead, besought her husband to believe him.