as there shot by Ajeet. The
assassin, riding quietly back to the city, met on the way the carriage
of Dhyan Singh, dismounted, and, seating himself beside his accomplice
in guilt, stabbed him to the heart. Now came confusion worse confounded.
The nobles were divided; while the troops, as their inclinations or
their hopes of pillage prompted them, flocked to the conflicting
standards. Ajeet, after murdering the whole of the late Maharajah's
family, including an infant one day old, fortified himself in the
citadel of Lahore, from which he was dislodged to be immediately
beheaded by Heera Singh, the son of the Rajah Dhyan Singh.

Then it was, that, under the auspices of Heera Singh, the present
Maharajah, Dhuleep Singh, a mere boy, and the alleged offspring of old
Runjeet Singh, was raised to the throne of the Sikhs. The army again
renewed the formidable pretensions which had formerly distracted and
wasted the Punjaub, and with which Heera Singh was now forced to comply.
But the powers of the throne were prostrate. The infant Maharajah, a
puppet in the hands of intriguing kinsmen, or of the ungovernable army,
passively witnessed the slaughter of a succession of his principal
rajahs who aspired to be his ministers, and each of whom raised himself
a step nearer the summit of his desire upon the butchered body of his
predecessor. A glow, perhaps, of undefinable pleasure may have warmed
the heart of the child, who wore

"upon his baby brow the round
And top of sovereignty,"

when he saw the horrible drama apparently closed by his mother taking
upon herself the responsibility and duties of the administration of
affairs. She was a more helpless slave than himself. There was but one
man in the Punjaub who could have aided her in her extremity. Neither of
them could trust the other. Goolab Singh, a brother of Dhyan Singh, had
been playing a safe game throughout the complicated troubles in which so
many were overwhelmed. Bad as the worst, unscrupulously villanous,
profoundly treacherous, detestably profligate and exciting behind the
scenes discontent, mutiny, tumult, and massacre, he appeared
occasionally on the stage to check or perplex the plot, as it suited his
purposes. His arm never visibly reached to any point from which it could
not be safely drawn back; but his hand was stirring every mischief. He
was well aware of the insane and unappeasable passion for a war with the
British which had long infected the whole