postponement reached the Town-Major, Major Cavenagh. That ever vigilant officer had quitted the fort to cross the river; but, on arriving at the ghât, he learned for the first time that no fête would take place that day, so he retraced his steps. His sudden return, and the rumour to which that return gave weight, that the fête had been postponed, roused in the guilty minds of the conspirators the suspicion that their plot had been discovered. Some of them, outside the fort, had indeed begun the part assigned to them in the general programme, but, under the mysterious circumstances of the return of Cavenagh and the postponement of the garden party, the more astute members of the conspiracy declined to move. They even assisted in the capture of their misled comrades, who were brought at once to trial, and suffered fourteen years of penal servitude for their premature temerity.
A week later the 84th entered the Húglí, and landing on the 20th, marched to the quarters assigned them at Chinsurah, twenty miles north of Calcutta. The Government immediately transmitted orders to Colonel Mitchell to march his regiment, the 19th N. I., from Barhámpur to Barrackpur.
In the interval the Court of Inquiry, referred to in the last chapter, had, as already stated, taken evidence, and on its report the Governor-General in Council had resolved to punish the sipáhís by disbanding the regiment. Previous experience of that punishment had proved that it was at best but a clumsy device. It was especially ill-adapted to the actual circumstances, for it would distribute over areas already partially infected a thousand men who regarded themselves, and who would be regarded by others, as martyrs for their religion. But in the Council of Lord Canning there was not one man upon whom had been bestowed the divine gift of imagina-
