As he reached this point in the story his voice choked, and the tears stood in his eyes. His listeners were likewise moist in the eyelids, and did not venture to speak. Doctor Bronson kept counting the links of his watch-chain, but could not make them out twice alike, and the boys were looking vacantly at the ground, as though they were not expecting to find anything there. There was a silence of several minutes, and then the music of a military band sounded in the distance, and all raised their heads. Nearer and nearer came the band, and louder grew the sounds. At length an English regiment appeared, crossed the iron bridge over the Goomtee River, and came on and on till it passed close to the Residency. "Let us go and see it," said Kavanagh, and the party rose and walked down the lawn to the roadside.
As the soldiers marched past where they stood, the veteran's eye grew bright and the blood rose to his face; he was ten years younger in a few minutes, and his thoughts evidently carried him back to the days when the sound of the Scottish bagpipes was borne on the Indian breeze, and Havelock's army came to the relief of the beleaguered garrison. And while they silently gazed on the moving column, with its flashing rifles and waving banners, Frank was conning over in his memory the lines of Whittier, wherein is narrated the story of the Scotch girl at Lucknow, whose ears heard the music of her childhood long before it was distinguished by her companions:
"Dinna ye hear it? Dinna ye hear it?
The pipes o' Havelock sound?"
Then they strolled back to the Residency, where Kavanagh told the story of the relief; of the capture of the various rebel positions; the meeting of General Campbell with Generals Havelock and Outram; of the retirement in the night, the march to Cawnpore, the terrible revenge of the British troops on the rebels, and the return of the army in the following spring. And then, with a hearty hand-shake and farewell, he said good-bye, mounted his horse, which a native groom was holding close by, and galloped off toward the city. This was the man who ventured through the closely-drawn lines of 50,000 rebel sepoys, where discovery would have been certain death, and most probably death by torture.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
LUCKNOW TO CAWNPORE AND AGRA.—TAJ MAHAL AND FUTTEHPOOR SIKRA.
From Lucknow to Cawnpore our friends had a ride of a little over two hours, through a fertile country, which was quite flat and uninteresting—a repetition of the journey from Benares to Lucknow. Cawnpore stands on a level plain, on the right bank of the Ganges, and covers a large area of ground; it would be almost without interest were it not for the terrible atrocities of Nena Sahib and his followers during the Mutiny. A sad prominence was given to Cawnpore in 1857, so that few travellers will care to pass it without looking at the memorials of the events which at one time agitated the whole civilized world.