I dismounted to see if I could be of any use to the occupant, when I found, to my grief and consternation, that it was John Nicholson, with death written on his face. He told me that the bearers had put the doolie down and had gone off to plunder; that he was in great pain, and wished to be taken to the hospital. He was lying on his back, no wound was visible, and but for the pallor of his face, always colourless, there was no sign of the agony he must have been enduring. On my expressing a hope that he was not seriously wounded, he said, “I am dying; there is no chance for me.” The sight of that great man lying helpless and on the point of death was almost more than I could bear. Other men had daily died around me, friends and comrades had been killed beside me, but I never felt as I felt then—to lose Nicholson seemed to me at that moment to lose everything. Nicholson’s fall, it is striking to note, impressed every one in that tiny and heroic army at Delhi exactly as it impressed Roberts. He lingered through all the days of slow, stubborn, resolute fighting, which won Delhi; but day by day the news about Nicholson’s fluctuating life was almost more important than the tidings that this position or that had been carried. Nicholson was a man with Clive’s genius for battle and mastery over men, while in the qualities of chivalry and honour he deserved to be classed with Outram or Havelock. He was only thirty-seven when he died; what fame he might have won, had he lived, no man can tell. He was certainly one of the greatest soldiers the English-speaking race has produced. Many monuments have been erected to Nicholson; one over his actual grave, another—with an unfortunately elaborate inscription—in the parish church at Lisburn. But the fittest and most impressive monument is a plain obelisk erected on the crest of the Margalla Pass, the scene, in 1848, of one of his most daring exploits. There in the wild border pass stands the great stone pillar, and round it still gathers many a native tradition of the daring and might of the great sahib. Sir Donald Macnab says that when the worshippers of “Nikkul-Seyn” in Hazara heard of his death, “they came together to lament, and one of them stood forth and said there was no gain from living in a world that no longer held Nikalsain. So he cut his throat deliberately and died.” The others, however, reflected that this was not the way to serve their great guru; they must learn to worship “Nikalsain’s God”; and the entire sect actually accepted Christianity on the evidence of Nicholson’s personality!