ench again. During the
interval, some of the houses had been made bomb-proof, and in these
the women and children were lodged, but St. Mary's Church was used as
a barrack, and its steeple as a watch-tower. Lally, the French
commander, failing to capture Madras, had to march away with his hopes
baffled; but, notwithstanding its bomb-proof roof, the church, as also
its steeple, had been badly damaged during the destructive siege, and
the necessary repairs were considerable.

A few years later the English had their revenge. They captured
Pondicherry, and they destroyed its fortifications. They recovered,
with other things, the organ that had been looted from St. Mary's;
but, as a new one had in the meanwhile been obtained for St. Mary's,
the recovered instrument was sent to a church up-country. According
to accounts, moreover, they took toll for the Frenchmen's loot by
sending to St. Mary's from one of the churches in Pondicherry the
large and well-executed painting of the 'Last Supper,' which is still
to be seen in the church. The origin of the picture is not known for
certain; but it is believed with reason to be a fact that it was a
spoil of war from Pondicherry on one or another of the three occasions
on which that town was captured by the British.

The stray visitor who wanders round St. Mary's without a guide is apt
to be astonished at what he sees in the churchyard. A multitude of old
tomb-stones, of various ages and with inscriptions in various tongues,
lie flat on the ground, as close to one another as paving-stones, in
such fashion that the visitor must wonder how there can be sufficient
room for coffins below. As a matter of fact, the coffins and their
contents are not there, and the inscriptions of 'Here lyeth' and 'Hic
jacet' are not statements of facts. The explanation is an interesting
story, which is worth the telling.

In the Company's early days, the 'English Burying Place,' (_vide_ Map,
p. 10) lay a little way outside the walls of White Town, in an area
which is now occupied by the Madras Law College with its immediate
precincts. Later, when a wall was built round old Black Town, the
Burial Ground was included within the enclosure of the wall. An
English cemetery in a corner of an Indian town was not likely to be
treated with any particular respect; and on various counts the
'English Burying Place' was a sadly neglected spot. Nearly every
Englishman that died in Madras was an employee of the Company,