Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/440

430 CHAPTER VIII. ROM Delhi we went on to Meerut, where we remained two months, while the troops were clearing the country of the scattered bands of Sepoys between that point and Cawnpore, and restoring order, so that mails and passengers might once more move up and down to Calcutta. More British troops had arrived, and the Commander-in-chief was directing the movements of the five columns into which the army was divided, our position at Meerut being about central to all the operations, and about forty miles from the nearest of them.

Here I had the joy of again meeting our dear friend Lieutenant (now Colonel) Gowan, who escaped from Bareilly, and had been hidden for so many months in a Hindoo house, as narrated on page 248. He had managed at last to communicate with the English authorities here, and even before a sufficient length of the roads westward was clear, his rescue was attempted. The kind Hindoos who had sheltered him, when all had been arranged, took him by night in a bylee, (a native carriage used by ladies,) with the curtains closed, under pretense of going to the Ganges to bathe. A boat was quietly procured, and they ran him across the river to the other bank, where an elephant and a band of cavalry were awaiting him, and before sunrise he was safe in Meerut. How we rejoiced together! The last time I saw this Christian officer (who used to help us occasionally in conducting our Hindustanee meeting) was in Bareilly on the evening before we left, when I was trying, in our English service, to strengthen our hands in God by preaching from the text, “As thy day, so shall thy strength be.” For nearly seven months, though in jeopardy every hour, did God fulfill to him that precious promise, till he saw fit to