Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/425

Rh on condition of apostasy; and where also the murdered and mutilated bodies of Christian men and women lay exposed and insulted, till at length, when no longer endurable, they were dragged away out of the city and flung to the jackals and the birds of prey; and here I was, standing alone at midnight amid the darkness which my lantern only made visible, in the very center of Delhi, with no sound to be heard save the sighing of the wind in the great, dark peepul trees above my head, till my excited fancy almost imagined that I heard them moan out, “How long, O Lord, how long!” The reminiscences of that moment were enough to chill the blood of the strongest man. They recur to me now like a dream of terror that can never be forgotten.

I walked on to the Emperor's gate, but it was shut; the walls frowned darkly down upon me, and all was silent as death. I turned back by the other side of the street to my lodging, a walk of more than a mile, without meeting a single human being.

As I stood that night in the midst of this stern desolation, I was forcibly reminded of the Lesson in the calendar for the 14th of September, which attracted our attention so much when reading it, and all the more when we heard afterward that it was the Lesson for the day on which the assault was given. It was in Nahum iii, and begins, “Woe to the bloody city!” etc.; as applicable to Delhi as ever it was to Nineveh—and here was her “woe.” She was “naked,” “a gazing stock,” and “laid waste;” her “nobles in the dust,” her “people scattered;” so that with equal truth it might then be said of her, “There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous; all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap their hands over thee, for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?” (Verse 19.)

I picked up an Hindustanee account book lying at a merchant's door, and returned and went to bed absorbed in the thoughts of a retributive Providence, and the sad miseries of war among which I lay.

Early the next morning I was out again rambling through the streets. The people who had passes were admitted for trade and