Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/451

Rh twelve months of its Mohammedan misrule and cruelty closed amid the dying groans of its emissaries at the foot of our hills, and almost within sight of our place of refuge.

Our impatience now to go down to our work in the plains was sorely tried by the refusal of the Commander-in-chief to permit us to do so for some weeks longer—the ladies he would not allow to do so till October, not only because the country needed to be cleared and quieted, but also because houses had first to be built for them. At length the permission came for gentlemen to go down, and taking the road to Moradabad, lest that through the Terai, on the Huldwanee side, might have straggling Sepoys in it, we reached Bareilly on the 28th of August. We found every thing, of course, much changed. The burned houses and bare walls had a look of fearful desolation about them.

On entering Bareilly I went, first of all, to my own residence, (which was so, fifteen months before.) Nothing was standing but the bare walls; the floors were all grown over with deep grass. I called a coolie, and dug up the rubbish in my once comfortable study, and we soon came on the charred remains of my precious books. All had been destroyed by fire! I took up a handful of the burnt paper, and of the melted glass of the book-cases, as a memento, and walked away to the spot where Maria lay buried beside the rose hedge, and then on to where Joel's house stood. What a change from the day I last stood there! But no murmuring thought arose. It was all well: “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” We were to begin again, and that, too, under brighter prospects than India ever knew before. I wandered all over Bareilly. The people were very civil. I knew that I loved them then better than I had ever done, and felt sure that God would yet have mercy upon them, and that we should soon see days of grace in Bareilly.

I then wandered off toward the encampment of the English troops, and one of the first gentlemen whom I met was our dear, good friend Dr. Bowhill, safe from Delhi, and the rest of his campaigns. The warm-hearted Scotchman hugged me up to his heart, and wept for joy that we should meet again, after all we had gone through,