aide-de-camp to report this fact to the general, he had replied, "Thank
God!" appearing glad that Raja Nirput Singh and his force had slipped
through his fingers after beating back the best-equipped movable column
in India. These reports gaining currency in the camp made the general
still more unpopular, because, in addition to his incapability as an
officer, the men put him down as a coward.

During the day the mutilated bodies of our men were recovered from the
ditch. The Sikhs burnt theirs, while a large fatigue party of the
Forty-Second and Ninety-Third was employed digging one long grave in a
_tope_ of trees not far from the camp. About four o'clock in the
afternoon the funeral took place, Brigadier Hope and the officers on
the right, wrapped in their tartan plaids, the non-commissioned officers
and the privates on their left, each sewn up in a blanket. The Rev. Mr.
Cowie, whom we of the Ninety-Third had nicknamed "the Fighting Padre,"
afterwards Bishop of Auckland, New Zealand, and the Rev. Mr. Ross,
chaplain of the Forty-Second, conducted the service, Mr. Ross reading
the ninetieth Psalm and Mr. Cowie the rest of the service. The pipers of
the Forty-Second and Ninety-Third, with muffled drums, played _The
Flowers of the Forest_ as a dead march. In all my experience in the army
or out of it I never witnessed such intense grief, both among officers
and men, as was expressed at this funeral. Many of all ranks sobbed like
tender-hearted women. I especially remember our surgeon, "kind-hearted
Billy Munro" as the men called him; also Lieutenants Archie Butter and
Dick Cunningham, who were aides-de-camp to Adrian Hope. Cunningham had
rejoined the regiment after recovery from his wounds at Kudjwa in
October, 1857, but they had left him too lame to march, and he was a
supernumerary aide-de-camp to Brigadier Hope; he and Butter were both
alongside the brigadier, I believe, when he was struck down by the
renegade ruffian.

We halted during the 17th, and strong fatigue-parties were employed with
the engineers destroying the fort by blowing up the gateways. The place
was ever after known in the Ninety-Third as "Walpole's Castle." On the
18th we marched, and on the 22nd we came upon the retreating rebels at
a place called Sirsa, on the Ramgunga. The Ninth Lancers and
Horse-Artillery and two companies of the Ninety-Third (I forget their
numbers) crossed the Ramgunga by a ford and intercepted the retreat of a
large number of