mass of men engaged in hand-to-hand combat beneath the walls.  He made straight for one of the gates, and those within happily understood and anticipated his intentions.  Confident that the weighty blows and thrusts of the cavalry would beat off the enemy and prevent them from forcing their way in with them, the garrison opened the gate at the critical moment, and, together with his regiment, Heideck and his faithful companion managed to enter the city.  The lancers made their way into the citadel, and Heideck and Morar Gopal, who had followed him like his shadow, turned their steps towards the Charing Cross Hotel.  It was, however, far from easy to get there; for the streets were packed with an impenetrable mob of howling and gesticulating natives, who were manifestly in the greatest state of excitement.  The news that the English had lost the battle had long since reached the city, and the apprehensions which had long been entertained that such tidings could not fail to have a disastrously disquieting effect upon the Indian population, were only too soon seen to be justified.  In all the brown faces which he saw directed towards him Heideck clearly read detestation and menace.  They naturally regarded him as an Englishman, and it was only his decided manner and the naked sword in his hand that prevented the rabble from venting in a personal attack their rage against one of the hated race of their oppressors.

The door of the hotel was closed, probably because an attack was feared on the part of the natives; but as soon as a white man, who was at once regarded as an English officer, demanded admittance, it was opened.  Heideck found most of the officers’ wives and children, who were living in the hotel, assembled in the hall and the dining-room which led from it.  The foreboding of a terrible disaster and the fear of coming events, which was perpetually increased by the noise in the streets, did not allow the poor creatures to rest longer in their rooms.  Mrs. Baird and Edith Irwin were not, however, among those who thronged round Heideck and, in a hundred confused questions, hoped to obtain from the dust-begrimed man, who had evidently come from the battlefield, news as to how matters stood.  Heideck said nothing more than that the army was retreating, bravely fighting the while.  It would have been useless cruelty to increase the terror and despair of these unhappy creatures by a detailed account of the whole truth.  He had almost to tear himself away by force from this close knot of inquirers, in order to go up to Mrs. Baird’s room.  It was the first joyous feeling that he had experienced throughout this disastrous day, when in the friendly “Come in,” in answer to his knock, he recognised Edith Irwin’s voice.  The fear that something might have happened to her during his absence had unceasingly tortured him during the last few hours, and for a moment he forgot all the terrors that surrounded her in the rapture which, as he entered, her incomparable beauty awoke in him.