district was in revolt, its magistrate had
fought his way out, and was bound for
Bareilly to seek military aid. But, the
sepoys of the Bareilly garrison mutinied on
Sunday the last day of May, massacred the
Europeans, fired the station, and set loose
four thousand of the most desperate
criminals in India, by breaking open the great
central gaol. By this time, the tumult rose as
a flood, the roads round about Budaon were
inundated with armed mutineers, and a strong
body of them was reported to be in full march
to Budaon itself, to join the Treasury guard
and to plunder and burn the station. On
the arrival of this news the magistrate from
Etah galloped off to his own post of duty,
and the magistrate in Budaon, single man as
he was in front the storm, thought it his duty
not to desert his post, and stuck to the ship
as long as she floated.

The few Europeans in the district—Mr.
Donald and his son, indigo planters, Mr.
Gibson, a patrol in the Customs' department,
who then happened to be in service on the
spot, and Mr. Stewart, a clerk, with his wife
and family—came to the lonely representative
of government for shelter and assistance.
Mr. Edwards had made friends enough
among the natives to be well assured of help
in securing his escape if he went singly; but .
here was a little band to care for. He himself,
meaning to abide by his duty to the last
moment, entreated his companions, while it
was yet possible, to escape singly to the
hills. They preferred holding by the torn
skirts of authority, and would risk all the
perils of escape in a body through roads
swarming with a hostile population.

In the afternoon of Monday the first of
June, the native officer of the sepoy guard of
the Treasury came to report that all was right.
The men of the guard had received a message
from the mutineers at Bareilly on the previous
night, and were prepared to join the
sepoys, who were to advance that very evening
on Budaon. But, the native officer, when
questioned, quieted the English magistrate
by solemn oaths and by false statements that
almost decoyed him into the power of the
guard, then waiting to destroy him. The
buggy was brought to the door, and Mr.
Edwards was on the point of starting, when
he was detained by the faithful Wuzeer
Singh. The guard waited an hour and a half
for its victim, and then was to be restrained
no longer and broke out in mutiny.

But, not a man would leave the Treasury
until he had secured his own share in its
plunder. At six o'clock in the evening, the
mutineers of Budaon broke the jail open.
Those from Bareilly were entering the station.
All the men of the local police, throwing their
badges off, joined them. The tumult and
the shouting of the revolted soldiery, and
the fierce yells of the released prisoners,
were closing upon the magistrate's house.
"I felt," says Mr. Edwards, "my work was
then over; that the ship had sunk under
me, and that it was now time to provide for
my own safety."

Mr. Edwards with the customs' patrol,
and the two indigo planters, attended
by Wuzeer Singh and an Afghan private
servant, set forth together. They had
not gone a hundred yards before they were
all met by a friendly Mahometan gentleman,
the chief of Shikooporah, who offered
refuge in his house, about three miles distant,
to the magistrate himself; but refused
to run the risk of sheltering the magistrate's
companions. Nevertheless, all went
to the proffered place of refuge, wading
a river to arrive at it; but, they had scarcely
dismounted from their horses and entered
the walled court, when one of the Sheikh's
brothers respectfully urged the impossibility
of giving a safe harbour to so many strangers.
Therefore, unless Mr. Edwards would accept
the shelter for himself alone, they must all
leave and go on to a village of his, about
eighteen miles distant on the left bank of the
Ganges. They did leave; and, after they were
gone, the house from which they had been
thus dismissed was beaten up by a body of
Irregular Horse for the direct purpose of
finding and destroying the Budaon magistrate.
This was the second hair-breadth
escape.

One of the Sheikhs led the way far from
the highroad by fields and by-paths through
villages swarming with armed men, who
were the Sheikh's tenantry, and who were
warned not to attack the fugitives by messengers
sent on before. Behind our countrymen
there was a bright gleam in the sky which
was the reflection from their burning households
in Budaon. At midnight they reached
the village pointed out to them: a miserable
place containing but one better sort of house
in which the Sheikh lodged when he went
thither on business. The Englishmen slept
on the roof of this house; and, after this date
until their sufferings were at an end, they seldom
slept with a roof over them. Their rest
was short. At four in the morning they
were aroused and urged to escape the search
of the Irregular Cavalry, by at once crossing
the Ganges to the Etah district. An hour
afterwards they were in the boat provided
for that purpose. On the opposite bank was
one of the mobs called pukars; an assemblage
of the men of several villages to attack,
plunder, and root up some one of the other
villages in their vicinity. These men fired a
few shots at the boat as it dropped down the
stream. At seven in the evening, when the
Englishmen from Budaon joined Messrs.
Phillips and Bramley at Puttealee, those
gentlemen were found surrounded by armed
enemies, and guarded by a native force of sixty
men, ready to rise and murder them.

For two days all remained at Puttealee in
this position, and then, on the fifth of June,
they dismissed forty of their dangerous protectors,