und with the bodies of
those who laid down their lives for the women and children. There was
another well, a little distance off, now marked by an Iona cross, and to
this, under cover of night, the British conveyed their dead for burial.

[Illustration: AN INDIAN OFFICER OF THE CAMEL CORPS.]

Read the inscription that circles round the wall of the well now in
front of us:--

"Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great company of Christian
people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were
cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel, Nana Dhundu
Pant of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the
well below, on the fifteenth day of July 1857."

Yes, we have not come to the end yet!

When the bloodthirsty tyrant, better known as Nana Sahib, found he could
not crack this nut, when he realised that his whole army was held at bay
by a few hundreds of determined spirits--there were only three hundred
fighting men to begin with, and they were daily killed--he made terms
with them, promising to send the survivors safely in boats down the
river if they would give in. Desperate as they were, without food or
water, without shade from the killing glare of the Indian summer sun,
the brave men held their heads high and only accepted on condition they
marched out under arms with so many rounds of ammunition to each man.

This was granted.

Now leave the well and follow that heroic band who went down to the
river on that blazing day some sixty years ago. It is about a mile away.
The little garrison now numbered some four hundred and fifty all told,
the half of what they had been three weeks before. Blackened with the
sun and smoke and gunpowder, so as to rival the Sepoys in complexion,
tattered and worn and wounded, but yet with courage undaunted, they went
down to the river.

[Illustration: NANA SAHIB.]

There is another building here, an arcade on the banks facing the placid
stream; it has a tower behind and a broad flight of stairs, a ghaut, as
it is called, flanked by walls running down to the margin. But on that
day long ago there was nothing of this, nothing but a number of clumsy
boats with thatched roofs to keep the sun off, native fashion. As the
English took their places in them, suddenly a bugle rang out, and at
that signal the native boatmen sprang from their places and splashed
ashore; up rose an army of Sepoys from the scrub on the banks, and death
was rained on the v