room, she heard the baby boy
choking, and rushed in to find, to her horror, blood on his lips, and
that he was struggling violently, as if to get rid of something in his
throat! She pushed down her finger and pulled out a sharp piece of
cane about two inches long; but other pieces had evidently gone down,
for the poor little fellow was in terrible agony for many days. It
turned out that the wretched woman hated the unwonted confinement of
her new life, and was determined to get away, but was too much afraid
of her husband to say so. He wanted her to remain for the sake of the
high pay this class of servant receives, so it appeared to the woman
that her only chance of freedom was to get rid of the child, and to
carry out her purpose she first attempted to set fire to the cradle,
and finding this did not succeed, she pulled some pieces of cane off
the chair upon which she was sitting, and shoved them down the child's
throat. She was, as my wife described her, a pretty, innocent,
timid-looking creature, to whom no one would ever have dreamt of
attributing such an atrocity. The boy was made extremely delicate for
several months by this misadventure, as his digestion had been ruined
for the time being, but eventually he completely recovered from its
effects.

In September the C.B. was conferred upon me for the Lushai Expedition.
Lord Napier informed me of the fact in a particularly kind little
note. I was very proud of being a member of the Bath, although at the
time a brevet would have been a more useful reward, as want of rank
was the reason Lord Napier had given for not allowing me to act as
Quartermaster-General, on Lumsden being temporarily appointed Resident
at Hyderabad.

We began our usual winter tour in the middle of October. At Mian Mir I
made the acquaintance of the Adjutant of the 37th Foot, the late Sir
Herbert Stewart, who was then a smart, good-looking subaltern, and I
recollect his bemoaning bitterly his bad luck in never having had a
chance of seeing service. How little at that time could it have been
anticipated that within twelve years he would see hard fighting in
Africa, and be killed as a Major-General in command of a column!

We visited several of the stations in the Punjab, and spent a few days
at Jamu as guest of the Maharaja of Kashmir, who treated us royally,
and gave us some excellent pig-sticking; and on the 21st December we
joined Head-Quarters at Lawrencepur for a large Camp of Exercise, to