act against the sipáhís if they should rise, Hillersdon considered that the proposal was one to be accepted. To a certain extent it was acted upon.
I have said that Wheeler, feeling that the storm might burst any moment, pushed on with all his energy the preparation of the barracks. His spies told him that every night meetings of an insurrectionary character were taking place in the lines of the 2d N. L. C and of the 1st N. I. In ordinary times these meetings would have been stopped with a high hand; but the example of Mírath had shown that, even with a strong force at the disposal of the General, high-handed dealing was sure to precipitate mutinous action, and Wheeler had but sixty-one men to depend upon. On the 21st he received information that the 2d N. L. C. would rise that night. He accordingly moved all the women and children into the intrenchment, and attempted to have the contents of the treasury conveyed thither; but the sipáhís would not part with the money. Then it was that the General, much against the grain, availed himself of the offer made by the Náná to Mr Hillersdon, and agreed that 200 of the Bíthor chiefs men should be posted at Nuwábganj, guarding the treasury and the magazine.
The next day Wheeler was cheered by the arrival of eighty-four men and two officers of the 32d, sent to him in his dire strait by Sir Henry Lawrence. The week that followed was a particularly trying one. The officers of the native regiments, to show their sipáhís that they still trusted them, slept every night in the lines of their men. The non-combatants meanwhile, that is, the trading Europeans, the Eurasians, and their families, had removed, on the 22d, to the intrenchment. Towards the end of the month the General had pitched his tent within the position. Still, time went on and no move was made
