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Rh where we can take our stand.' The difficulty in the future would be only increased by delay. The new drill, accordingly, was ordered to proceed. The Sepoys submitted; but nightly fires in the cantonments indicated the prevalence of disturbing influences and an agitated mood in the soldiery. Night after night some military building was found to have been mysteriously fired. All attempts to discover the origin of the conflagration were unsuccessful.

The tide of trouble continued to rise. One alarming rumour followed another. At Cawnpur, where grain prices happened to be ruling high, some consignments of flour, forwarded in Government boats, were offered to the troops. The proffered boon was refused, and the sale was at once arrested by the report that the grain had been ground in European mills, and that the dust of cow bones had been mixed with it for the purpose of polluting it. Not a Sepoy would touch the suspected supply. In the surrounding country the general uneasiness was enhanced by the mysterious transmission, from village to village, of chupattis — flat cakes of flour — the meaning of which has never been elucidated, but which were admitted on all hands to herald the advent of stirring times. At Meerut, a religious mendicant, mounted on an elephant and followed by a long retinue, riding through the streets of the city, stimulated the public excitement. Náná Sáhib, the adopted son of the ex-Peshwá, whose estate of Bithúr was but a few miles from Lucknow, was travelling from city to city, and early in 1857 paid