the forest of his Carmel.” (2 Kings xviii, 19.) He would, we knew, if God allowed him, but not otherwise. Yet this haughty spirit was the precursor of his own destruction.
Of course he kept us in distress and excitement, and this was intensified by the cutting off of our mails, so that we could get no information. For a few days we could but fear the worst. How we longed for the news of the fall of Delhi, and for the relief that would come when that was accomplished! But God was working out our salvation in his own way, and in the height of this very emergency one of his most manifest interpositions was developed. A few days after their arrival this powerful force, by some unaccountable influence, suddenly decamped, without doing us the smallest injury. Our spies brought us word that every one of them had fled, and, on some of us going down, we found that they had evidently left, not merely in a hurry, but in a panic, for the heel ropes of the cavalry horses, instead of being untied and taken with them, were all found cut and left fast to the stakes! The only way we could account for it was a report which was said to have reached them that we were going down to surprise them with immensely augmented numbers. Be this as it may, they left suddenly and went back to Bareilly.
The old Nawab was outrageous at their return, and insisted upon a renewal of the effort; but a terror from God seemed to have fallen upon them, and this was immediately followed by the news, so dreadful to them, of the capture of Delhi by the English troops, spreading consternation through their ranks. They received that information some days before we did; but at length it came to us at the close of September.
I was sitting that afternoon, writing in a very pensive mood, when the sudden roar of a cannon, from the little fort near our cottage, brought me to my feet, and a brilliant hope flashed across my heart. I snatched my hat and ran up the hill, while peal after peal thundered out, making the grand Himalayas reverberate. At last I gained the summit, and stood till I counted the “royal” twenty-one. I needed no one to tell me what it meant. Our
