a young lieutenant named Aikman. The same afternoon Wilson took up his quarters in the Imperial palace.
Dehlí was now virtually won. But there still remained in the vicinity, even in the city itself, thousands of armed rebels, ready to take advantage of the slightest slackness on the part of the victors. So large had been the casualties that Wilson had fit for service but little over 3000 men. From these the guards of the several posts had to be provided. The King of Dehlí was still at large, a rallying point to the disaffected. It seemed to the General essential that a determined effort should be made to capture his person.
The King and his principal advisers had been painfully affected by the success which had depressed General Wilson. The lodgment effected at so much cost, on the 14th, which had caused Wilson to doubt the advisability of proceeding further, had produced in the mind of the King and his surroundings the conviction that, unless the British should retire, the game of the revolters was up. Fortunately he had no Baird-Smith at his elbow to whisper to him how the small hours of the night might be advantageously employed. And although he felt that as long as the Láhor gate, the magazine, and the fort should hold out there was still hope, yet the success of the British on the 14th, partial though it was, had taken all the fight out of the rebels. The men who, whilst the British were on the ridge, had been so daring in sortie, so unremitting in attack, had been completely demoralised by the display made by the British on the 14th. The reader will notice how lacking in force and energy were the blows they struck after the British troops had displayed their enormous superiority in hand-to-hand fighting on that day. The fact that the lodgment effected on the ramparts on the first day of the assault had cowed them, accounts for
