. The Mussulman was
to be eternally lost by defiling his lips with the fat of swine, and
the Hindu, by the indignity offered to the venerated Cow. These
English had tried to ruin them not alone in this world, but in the next.

Thrilled with horror, terror-stricken, the dusky soldiers were
converted into demons. Mutinies arose simultaneously at twenty-two
stations; not only officers, but Europeans, were slaughtered without
mercy. At Cawnpore was the crowning horror. After a siege of many
days the garrison capitulated to Nana Sahib and his Sepoys. The
officers were shot, and their wives, daughters, sisters and babes, 206
in number, were shut up in a large apartment which had been used by the
ladies for a ballroom.

After eighteen days of captivity, the horrors of which will never be
known, five men with sabres, in the twilight, were seen to enter the
room and close the door. There {167} were wild cries and shrieks and
groans. Three times a hacked and a blunted sabre was passed out of a
window in exchange for a sharper one. Finally the groans and moans
gradually ceased and all was still. The next morning a mass of
mutilated remains was thrown into an empty well.

Two days later the avenger came in the person of General Havelock. The
Sepoys were conquered and a policy of merciless retribution followed.

In that well at Cawnpore was forever buried sympathy for the mutinous
Indian. When we recall that, we can even hear with calmness of Sepoys
fired from the cannon's mouth. From that moment it was the cause of
men in conflict with demons, civilization in deadly struggle with
cruel, treacherous barbarism. We cannot advocate meeting atrocity with
atrocity, nor can we forget that it was a Christian nation fighting
with one debased and infidel. But terrible surgery is sometimes needed
to extirpate disease.

Greed for territory, and wrong, and injustice may have mingled with the
{168} acquisition of an Indian Empire, but posterity will see only a
majestic uplifting of almost a quarter of the human family from debased
barbarism, to a Christian civilization; and all through the
instrumentality of a little band of trading settlers from a small
far-off island in the northwest of Europe.

But there were other things besides famine and wars taking place in the
Kingdom of the young Queen. A greater and a subtler force than steam
had entered into the life of the people. A miracle had happened in
1858, when an electr