rd. My wife returned to her palankeen
as soon as we had crossed, but our little boy came on with me on the
elephant, to meet the grand procession which I knew was approaching
to greet us from the city. The Raja of Jhansi, Ram Chandar Rao, died
a few months ago, leaving a young widow and a mother, but no
child.[3]

He was a young man of about twenty-eight years of age, timid, but of
good capacity, and most amiable disposition. My duties brought us
much into communication; and, though we never met, we had conceived a
mutual esteem for each other. He had been long suffering from an
affection of the liver, and had latterly persuaded himself that his
mother was practising upon his life, with a view to secure the
government to the eldest son of her daughter, which would, she
thought, ensure the real power to her for life. That she wished him
dead with this view, I had no doubt; for she had ruled the state for
several years up to 1831, during what she was pleased to consider his
minority; and she surrendered the power into his hands with great
reluctance, since it enabled her to employ her _paramour_ as
minister, and enjoy his society as much as she pleased, under the
pretence of holding _privy councils_ upon affairs of great public
interest.[4] He used to communicate his fears to me; and I was not
without apprehension that his mother might some day attempt to hasten
his death by poison. About a month before his death he wrote to me to
say that spears had been found stuck in the ground, under the water
where he was accustomed to swim, with their sharp points upwards;
and, had he not, contrary to his usual practice, walked into the
water, and struck his foot against one of them, he must have been
killed. This was, no doubt, a thing got up by some designing person
who wanted to ingratiate himself with the young man; for the mother
was too shrewd a woman ever to attempt her son's life by such awkward
means. About four months before I reached the capital, this amiable
young prince died, leaving two paternal uncles, a mother, a widow,
and one sister, the wife of one of our Sagar pensioners, Morisar Rao.
The mother claimed the inheritance for her grandson by this daughter,
a very handsome young lad, then at Jhansi, on the pretence that her
son had adopted him on his death-bed. She had his head shaved, and
made him go through all the other ceremonies of mourning, as for the
death of his real father. The eldest of his uncles, Raghuna