called the Savada House, a large building, once a charitable institution bearing the name of Salvador, which had been softened into Savada by Asiatic pronunciation.

On board the one boat which had floated with the stream were more than a hundred persons. The boat was attacked by a constant fire from both banks as it drifted along. At length a party of some twelve men, or thereabout, landed with the bold object of attacking their assailants and driving them back. In their absence the boat was captured by some of the rebel gangs, and the women and the wounded were brought back to Cawnpore. Some sixty men, twentyfive women, and four children, were thus recaptured. The men were immediately shot. It may be said at once, that of the gallant little party that went ashore to attack the enemy, hand to hand, four finally escaped, after adventures so perilous and so extraordinary that a professional storyteller would hardly venture to make them part of a fictitious narrative.

The Nana had now a considerable number of Englishmen in his hands. They were removed, after a while, from their first prison-house to a small building north of the canal, and between the native city and the Ganges. Here they were cooped up in the closest manner, except whem some of them were taken out in the evening and set to the work of grinding corn for the use of their captors. Cholera and dysentery set in among these unhappy sufferers, and some eighteen women and seven children died. Let it be said for the credit of womanhood, that the royal widows, the relicts of the Nana's father by adoption, made many efforts to protect the captive English women, and even declared that they would throw themselves and their children from the palace windows if any harm were done to the prisoners. We have only to repeat here, that as a matter of fact no indignities, other than that of the compulsory corn-grinding, were put upon the English ladies. They were doomed,

one and all, to suffer death, but they were not, as at one time was believed in England. made to long for death as an escape from shame.

Meanwhile the prospects of the Nana and his rebellion were growing darker and darker. He must have begun to know by this time that he had no chance of establishing himself as a ruler anywhere in India. The English had not been swept out of the country with a rush. The first flood of the mutiny had broken on their defences, and already the tide was falling. The Nana well knew it never would rise again to the same height in his day. The English were coming on. Neill had recaptured Allahabad, and cleared the country all round it of any traces of rebellion. Havelock was now moving forward from Allahabad toward Cawnpore, with six cannon and about a thousand English soldiers. Very small in point of numbers was that force when compared with that which Nana Sahib could even still rally round him; but no one in India now knew better than Nana Sahib what extraordinary odds the English could afford to give with the certainty of winning. Havelock's march was a series of victories, although he was often in such difficulties that the slightest display of real generalship or even soldiership on the part of his opponents might have stopped his advance. He had one encounter with the lieutenant of the Nana, who had under his command nearly four thousand men and twelve guns, and Havelock won a complete victory in about ten minutes. He defeated in the same off-hand way various other chiefs of the mutiny. He was almost at the gates of Cawn

pore.

Then it appears to have occurred to the Nana, or to have been suggested to him, that it would be inconvenient to have his English captives recaptured by the enemy, their countrymen. It may be that in the utter failure of his plans and hopes he was anxious to Sccure some

satisfaction, to satiate his hatred in some way. It was intimated to the prisoners that they were to die. Among them were three or four men. These were called out and shot. Then some Sepoys were sent to the house where the women still were, and ordered to fire volleys through the windows. This they did, but apparently without doing much harm. Some persons are of opinion, from such evidence as can be got, that the men purposely fired high above the level of the floor, to avoid killing any of the women and children. In the evening five men, two Hindoo peasants, two Mohammedan butchers, and one Mohammedan wearing the red uniform of the Nana's body-guard, were sent up to the house, and entered it. Incessant shrieks were heard to come from that fearful house. The Mohammedan soldier came out to the door holding in his hand a sword-hilt from which the blade had been broken off, and he exchanged this now useless instrument for a weapon in proper condition. Not once but twice this performance took place. Evidently the task imposed on these men was hard work for the sword-blades. After a while the five men came out of the now quiet house and locked the door behind them. During that time they had killed nearly all the English women and children. They had slaughtered them like beasts in the shambles. In the morning it appeared indeed that the work, however zealously undertaken, had not been quite thorough. The strongest arms and sharpest sabres sometimes fail to accomplish a long piece of work to perfect satisfaction. In the morning it would seem that some of the women, and certainly some of the children, were still alive; that is to say, were not dead. For the five men came then with several attendants to clear out the house of the captives. Their task was to tumble all the bodies into a dry well beyond some trees that grew near. A large crowd of idlers assembled to watch the operation. Then it was seen by some of the spectators that

certain of the women and children were not yet quite dead. Of the children some were alive and even tried to get away. But the same well awaited them all. Some witnesses were of opinion that the Nana's officials took the trouble to kill the still living before they tossed them down in the well; others do not think they stopped for any such work of humanity, but flung them down just as they came to hand, the quick and the dead together. At all events, they were all deposited in the well. Any of the bodies that had clothes worth taking were carefully stripped before being consigned to this open grave. When Cawnpore was afterward taken by the English those who had to look down into that well saw a sight the like of which no man in modern days had ever seen elsewhere. No attempt shall be made to describe it here. When the house of the massacre itself was entered, its floors and its walls told with terrible plainness of the scene they had witnessed. The plaster of the walls were scored and seamed with sword-slashes low down and in the corners, as the poor women had some wild hope of escaping the blows. The floor was strewn with scraps of dresses, women's faded ragged finery, frilling, underclothing, broken combs, shoes and tresses of hair. There were some small and neatly severed curls of hair too which had fallen on the ground, but evidently had never been cut off by the rude weapon of a professional butcher. These doubt less were keepsakes that had been treasured to the last, parted with only when life and all were going. There was no inscription whatever on the walls when the house was first entered. Afterward a story was told of words found written there by some English women telling of hideous wrong done to them, and bequeathing to their countrymen the task of revenge. This story created a terrible sensation in England, as was but natural, and aroused a furious thirst for vengeance. It was not true. Some such inscription did appear on the walls afterward, but it is paintul to

have to say that it was a vulgar, and what would have been called in latter times, a "sensational" forgery. Our countrywomen died without leaving behind them any record of a desire on their part for vengeance. We may be sure they had other thoughts and other hopes as they died. One or two scraps of paper were found which recorded deaths and such like interruptions of the monotony of imprisonment; but nothing more. The well of horrors has been filled up, and a memorial chapel surrounded by a garden built upon the spot. It was right to banish all trace of the hideous crime, and to replace the house and the well, as Mr. Trevelyan says, by "a fair garden and a graceful shrine."

Something, however, has still to be told of the Nana and his fortunes. He made one last stand against the victorious English in front of the Cawnpore, and was completely defeated. He galloped into the city on a bleeding and exhausted horse; he fled thence to Bithoor, his residence. He had just time left, it is said, to order the murder of a separate captive, a woman who had previously been overlooked or purposely left behind. Then he took flight in the direction of the Nepaulese marches; and he soon disappears from history. Nothing of his fate was ever known. Many years afterward England and India were treated to a momentary sensation by a story of the capture of Nana Sahib. But the man who was arrested proved to be an entirely dif ferent person; and indeed from the moment of his arrest few believed him to be the long-lost murderer of the English women. In days more superstitious than our own, popular faith would have found an easy explanation of the mystery which surrounded the close of Nana Sahib's career. He had done, it would have been said, the work of a fiend; and he had disappeared as a fiend would do when his task was accomplished.