o be had. No help appeared to be coming from
Meerut, in the direction of which place many a longing and expectant
glance had been cast during the anxious hours of that miserable 11th
May. Constant and heavy firing was heard from the city and suburbs,
and the Cavalry were reported to be advancing on the cantonment.

Before evening the weary watchers realized that their position was
untenable, and that their only possible chance of escaping the fate
which had befallen the officers within the city (whose dead bodies had
been inhumanly sent in a cart to the Tower) lay in flight. Shortly
before dark the move was made, the women and children were crowded
into the few vehicles available, and accompanied by the men, some on
foot and some on horseback, they got away by the road leading towards
Umballa. They were only just in time, for before the last of the party
were out of sight of the cantonment, crowds of Natives poured into it,
burning, plundering, and destroying everything they could find.

Amongst the fugitives from Delhi was Captain Tytler, of the 38th
Native Infantry, who, after a variety of vicissitudes, reached Umballa
safely with his wife and children. When Anson's force was being formed
for the advance on Delhi, Tytler was placed in charge of the military
treasure chest, and through some unaccountable negligence Mrs. Tytler
was allowed to accompany him. I believe that, when Mrs. Tytler's
presence became known to the authorities, she would have been sent
out of camp to some safe place, but at that time she was not in a fit
state to travel, and on the 21st June, a few days after the force took
up its position under a heavy cannonade, she gave birth to a son
in the waggon in which she was accommodated. The infant, who was
christened Stanley Delhi Force, seems to have been looked upon by the
soldiery with quite a superstitious feeling, for the father tells us
that soon after its birth he overheard a soldier say; 'Now we shall
get our reinforcements; this camp was formed to avenge the blood
of innocents, and the first reinforcement sent to us is a new-born
infant.' Reinforcements did actually arrive the next day.

It was on the afternoon of the 8th June that the British force was
placed in position on the Ridge. The main piquet was established at
Hindu Rao's house, a large stone building, in former days the country
residence of some Mahratta Chief. About one hundred and eighty yards
further to the left was the observat