prisoner, Private John O'Brien, regimental
number 2841, of the 4th, or Captain Smith's,
company, of the 114th Regiment, was to
undergo corporal punishment of three hundred
lashes in the usual manner." As a rider to this
sentence, the commander-in-chief had added
that it was to be inflicted in the presence of all
the European troops in Meerut, who were to
be assembled for that purpose.

When O'Brien heard the sentence read,
followed with the stern "Strip, sir!" of the
commanding officer, he made but one remark as he
began to take off his clothes: "I would far
rather they shot me. I am now a disgraced
man for ever." In a moment he was naked to
the waist, tied firmly to the triangles, and here
began the brutally disgusting scene which so
many of us have witnessed in the olden time,
and the bad remnant of which so many honourable
members of parliament, and so many gallant
but thick-headed officers of the army, are doing
their utmost to retain. I will not describe what
a punishment parade was, in the days when
three hundred lashes could be administered.
Standing by the triangles, as is the invariable
rule, was the surgeon of the regiment, in order
to see that beyond what the culprit could
bear, without material injury to his health, not
a single lash was inflicted. Four or five times
the man asked for water, on the ground that he
felt faint; and the drum-major had always the
tin pot, ready to give him. He took his whole
punishment—three hundred lashes laid on with
the regulation "cat of nine tails"—the flogger
being changed at every twenty-five strokes. He
was then untied, and, a great-coat being thrown
over his bleeding back, he was taken to the
regimental hospital to undergo medical treatment.
In three weeks or so he was clear of the
doctor's hands, and rejoined his company.
Previous to his punishment he had been one of the
smartest and soberest men in the regiment,
but he now became the very reverse. The colour-
sergeant of his company told me that before he
was flogged he hardly ever tasted a glass of spirits,
but that afterwards he was hardly ever sober.
He always declared that he had been condemned
on false evidence, but he never was heard to
say who was the real culprit. From being
often drunk when off duty, he gradually got such
a mania for liquor, that he was reported more
than once drunk for guard, and, being insolent
on one occasion to the corporal who reported
him, was tried by a regimental court-martial,
and sentenced to receive a hundred and fifty
lashes, which were duly administered. To make
a long story short, I watched the man for some
time, and more than once attempted to give
him a little advice, though, unfortunately, in
the English service the most ordinary
intercourse or conversation between officer and
soldier is strictly against the spirit, if not the
letter, of the law. But whenever I remonstrated
with him, I got the same reply: "I am a
disgraced man now, sir. I never can hold up my
head again, and the sooner I drink myseff
dead, the better." For some time, having been
on leave of absence at Simla, and not belonging
to the same company as O'Brien, I lost sight of
him, until, as orderly officer, going my rounds
in the hospital, I recognised him in one of the
sick beds. I stopped and spoke to him. He
told me he had been sent to hospital for delirium
tremens, brought on by hard drinking, to which
was added a bad attack of brain fever, caused
by exposure to the sun for several hours when
helplessly drunk in a native village whither he
had gone to buy the cheap spirits which are
sold by the Hindoos in the neighbourhood of all
English stations—"bazaar liquor"—as it is
called in India. The man seemed very weak
indeed, as well as dreadfully emaciated in
appearance, and the hospital sergeant told me that
the surgeon did not believe he would ever
leave the ward alive. The prophecy was
too true. In less than a week after I had seen
him, an order appeared in the regimental order-
book intimating that he was dead. Two days
later, the Roman Catholic priest of the station
called upon me, and told me that he had attended
O'Brien upon his death-bed, and that the latter
had begged him to call on me after he was
gone, and to assure me that, as a dying man, he
solemnly declared he had not thrown the
loaf of bread at me two years before; that he
had been unjustly condemned, unjustly flogged,
and that his death was caused by hard drinking,
occasioned by his utter despair at feeling
degraded for life, and being utterly unable ever
to rise in the regiment, as "a flogged man."

The soldier who had sworn against O'Brien,
himself confessed on his death-bed at Calcutta—
en route for England, with the invalid soldiers
of the season—that he was the culprit, and that
O'Brien had not even seen who it was that had
committed the act of mutiny. It would seem that
when the discontent about the quality of the
bread was at its height, some ten or a dozen
men of the barrack-room in which O'Brien and
his accuser lived, had sworn that they would do
something to bring matters to a crisis, and that
they would accuse some one else of whatever
was done, in order, by an unjust punishment,
to increase the bad feeling in the regiment.
O'Brien and a few others would not join the
conspiracy, but they promised solemnly that
they would not "peach" upon the others,
happen what might. O'Brien was as fine a
young soldier as I ever saw. He had been
well educated by his father, who was a wealthy
shopkeeper in Cork, but who failed in business;
and the son had enlisted, hoping—with
a hope that grew fainter every day, after he
fully understood how promotion in our army
comes not from the north, nor yet from the
south, nor from the east or west, but from
the balance at your banker's—that he would
some day go home with a commission in his
pocket. At the time he was sentenced to be
flogged, the captain of his company had
promised to recommend him to the colonel for
corporal's stripes, and he fully expected that
ere long he would have attained that rank.
But a flogged man is a lost man. Even