t what might
have been expected of Minghal, as indeed of any other Pathan who
happened to bear a grudge against a fellow-countryman.

Rahmut lost little time in arranging to counter this cunning move of his
enemy. He took the messenger back into Delhi, the man believing that he
would be handed over to the Kotwal for hanging. But Rahmut made the man
take him to his own house, and he set a guard over it, and swore to the
wretch that the house and all within it should be destroyed unless he
did what was bidden him. And the bidding was, to go to the British lines
and give the warning as Minghal had commanded, with one little change:
the point of attack was to be, not that which had been assigned to
Rahmut, but that which had been assigned to Minghal. Holding the
informer's house and family as hostages, Rahmut had no doubt that the
man would obey, and he went back to his serai satisfied with his
afternoon's work.

During the day the excitement in the city had risen to fever heat. News
had come in that Nana Sahib, on the approach of the British to Cawnpore,
had massacred the two hundred women and children who had remained in his
hands since that fatal day when their fathers and husbands had been shot
down on the boats. The wiser residents of Delhi were aghast: they knew
the dreadful story of that other tragedy, at Calcutta, a century before,
when a hundred of the sahibs perished in the Black Hole. They knew what
retribution had fallen on Siraj-uddaula then; what would happen now,
after this far more horrible butchery of women and children? But the
fanatics rejoiced in the tale of blood. The greater the excesses, the
more impossible to draw back. The greater the vengeance to be feared,
the more imperative to strain every nerve to crush these obstinate
Feringhis on the Ridge. The protraction of the siege was already doing
them harm. Risings were taking place in many scattered districts; and
even in the Panjab, which Jan Larrens had hitherto kept quiet, there
were ominous mutterings. If the English on the Ridge could but be
routed, all Northern India would be ablaze.

And so the sepoys at sunset marched in their thousands from the gates.
Amid the blare of bugles, the thunder of artillery from the walls, the
strident calls of the muezzins from the minarets of the mosques,
proclaiming eternal glory for all who bled in the holy cause, the rebels
flocked out, maddened with fanatical fury and with bang, aglow with the
resolve to c