Native evidence, collected afterwards, reports that a few children and nearly a dozen women had contrived to escape death by hiding under the bodies of the slain. They had lain in that dreadful concealment all night, but when the five returned they crept out with pitiful cries. Some of these were slain without parley; some ran like hunted animals round the courtyard, and then threw themselves down the well. One by one the victims were dragged out, stripped, and, many of them yet living, were flung into that dreadful grave. One native witness, quoted by Trevelyan, says, “There was a great crowd looking on; they were standing along the walls of the compound. They were principally city people and villagers. Yes, there were also Sepoys. Three boys were alive. They were fair children. The eldest, I think, must have been six or seven, and the youngest five years. They were running round the well (where else could they go to?), and there was none to save them. No, none said a word, or tried to save them.” The youngest of these children, a tender little fellow, lunatic with terror, broke loose and ran like a hare across the courtyard. He was captured by an unsympathetic spectator, brought back, and flung down the well. It was two days after this, on July 17, that three men of the 78th entered the court, for Havelock was now in possession of Cawnpore, and the Nana was a fugitive. The whispers and gestures of the natives drew their attention to the shut door of the bungalow. One of the Highlanders pushed open the door and stepped inside. “The next moment,” to quote Archibald Forbes, “he came rushing out, his face ghastly, his hands working convulsively, his whole aspect, as he strove in vain to gasp out some articulate sounds, showing that he had seen some dreadful sight.” No living thing was in the place; but the matting that covered the floor was one great sponge of blood, and he who had crossed it found himself, to borrow Burns’s phrase, “red wat shod.” Little pools of blood filled up each inequality in the rough floor. It was strewn with pitiful relics, broken combs, pinafores, children’s shoes, little hats, the leaves of books, fragments of letters. The plastered wall was hacked with sword-cuts, “not high up, as where men had fought, but low down and about the corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid a blow.” Long locks of hair were strewn about, severed, but not with scissors. There were no inscriptions on the walls, but many a pitiful record upon the scattered papers on the floor. A few childish curls marked “Ned’s hair, with love;” the fly-leaf of a Bible, with a loving inscription—giver and recipient now both dead; a prayer-book, pages splashed red where once praying eyes had lingered. The pages of one grimly appropriate book—Drelincourt’s “Preparation for Death”—were scattered over the whole floor. * * * * *