CHAPTER V.
BARRACKPUR, CALCUTTA, AND THE NORTH-WEST TO THE 9TH OF MAY.
Meanwhile, the excitement at Barrackpur was not diminishing. Isolated actions on the part of the sipáhís, indicating a very mutinous spirit, were reported to the Governor-General. The incident referred to in the last chapter, which had led to the trial and sentence to fourteen years' penal servitude of several sipáhís, had produced considerable perplexity in the minds of the authorities. But they still refused to believe that there was anything like a general plot. They preferred to think that the disaffection was confined to some men of one regiment only, or to a few men belonging to two regiments. The suspicions of the disaffected men were not, it was hoped, so deeply rooted as to be proof against argument. The Government was conscious of its own innocence. It harboured no evil designs against the sipáhís. It had no desire to move to the right or to the left out of the path it had undeviatingly followed for exactly a century. If this could be made clear to the men, all would assuredly go well. It was essentially a European argument, an argument which proved the most profound ignorance of the modes of thoughts of a race which was Asiatic, and for the most part Hindu. But it was the argument which naturally presented itself to the European mind. Lord Canning had authorised General Hearsey to try the ex-
