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194 He conceived that honour and duty alike compelled him to adhere to his policy. He judged, rightly, that in May and June there was no urgent cause for apprehension; and he carried his purpose to the end. Such success as attended it was afterwards claimed by others for themselves; on him centred the burden of every mishap. But it was his business to set to all an example of restraint and self-control. It was not a time for responsible Englishmen in India to be putting one another 'under a file of soldiers.' He never, even in his private letters, so much as mentioned the dissensions around him. As fortune would have it, men who could have helped him in his anxieties were not with him. His private Secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Carmichael, of H.M.'s 32nd Regiment, was on leave in the Hills; and like Mr. Campbell, who was on his way from the Punjab in May to join him as Secretary to his Government, he could not reach him through the intervening anarchy. Among those around him were but few with whom he was on terms of any intimacy.

As early as May 14 Colonel Glasford, R.E., had been appointed Commandant of the Fort, and directions had been issued to lay in supplies and to organize its defence. The task of seeing to the necessary accommodation for refugees, should it become necessary at a later hour, was confided to Captain Nicholls. A month later, on June 14, Colonel Eraser, the Chief Engineer, reported (in a paper before the present writer) that the defences were 'sufficiently respectable.' The