These brave men standing there under the very shadow of death knew this, and not a figure stirred! Had there been the least sign of agitation or fear, perhaps the Sepoys would have fired. But the cool, steadfast bearing of that group of Englishmen put a strange spell on the Sepoys. Another moment of intensest strain, and the native officer gave a sharp word of command. The magic of discipline prevailed: the men swung round and marched off into the darkness. But the fate of Lucknow and a thousand British lives hung on those few critical moments. It was the haughty, ice-cold courage of that heroic group on the Residency steps which, for the moment, averted a great disaster. Sir Henry Lawrence is the hero of the earlier stages of the siege of Lucknow, and it is difficult to imagine a loftier or more gallant character. He came of that sturdy, strong-brained North of Ireland stock, which has given to the British Empire so many gallant soldiers and famous administrators, so many great engineers and captains of labour. Lawrence’s face, with its long features, thin-flowing beard, deep-set, meditative, not to say dreamy eyes, and high cheek bones, was an odd compound of, say, Don Quixote and Abraham Lincoln. His valour was “a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper”; but he had better qualities than even valour of that fine edge. He was an administrator of the first order. His intellect had in it a curious penetrating quality, and perhaps his brain alone forecast, in its true scale, the great Mutiny which shook almost to its fall the British rule in India. His courtesy, his unselfishness, his passionate scorn of injustice, his generous pity for the oppressed, gave a strange charm to Lawrence’s character, while his meditative piety added gravity and depth to it. The whole interval between the tragedy of Cawnpore and the glory of Lucknow is to be measured by the single personality of Henry Lawrence. That he was of a different type from Wheeler, explains how Lucknow escaped while Cawnpore perished. The two cities are about forty-five miles distant from each other. Wheeler and Lawrence had each to face, practically, the same situation, and with resources not very unequal. Wheeler’s credulous faith in his Sepoys flung away the last chance of the ill-fated British in Cawnpore. It was this which made him gather them within those thin lines of earth, shelterless from shot or sunstroke, and without supplies, where no fate except death or surrender was possible. Lawrence, with surer insight, measured the problem before him. He chose wisely the spot where the British must make their stand for existence. He gathered within the lines he selected all the treasure and warlike resources of the city, with supplies that a siege of five months did not exhaust. And his splendid foresight and energy saved Lucknow.