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 CHAPTER V

are periods in history, it has been said, which resemble the moments before the rising of the curtain on a stage where some thrilling drama is about to be enacted. We seem to hear the muttered voices, the hurried steps, the bustle of preparation on the still hidden scene. There is a nervous excitement—a sense of impending catastrophe: the common acts of life gain a strange, terrifying significance: common words mean more than meets the ear. The heroes, the victims, the villains of the piece, have not begun their parts: but the thrill of expectation is strong; tragedy already fills the air.

It is with some such feeling as this that we watch the close of Lord Canning's first year in India, and the fateful 1857, with its store of troubles, opening upon a world where all things still promised to run their common course.

And now the first whiff of the coming tempest broke upon an untroubled atmosphere. It had been decided that the old-fashioned musket should be superseded by the Enfield rifle. Depôts for instruction in the use of the new weapon had been