THE OUTBREAK AT MULTAN, AND AFTER. 69 



Lumsden had left such matters almost entirely in 

 his subaltern's hands. The two men agreed in 

 the choice of khaki, or dust colour, for the uni- 

 form of the Guides. AVith regard to the choice 

 of weapons, Mr Hodson was requested to send out 

 300 carbines of a pattern to be selected by himself, 

 which to his thinking " seemed scarcely a clerical 

 business." 



When the Guides arrived at Lahore very few 

 of the men had firearms of any sort. The only 

 weapons that any of them could boast of were 

 old flint-muskets which had been in use for more 

 than a quarter of a century. They had never 

 been clothed in uniform, but wore their native 

 dresses of various hues and shapes. 



The result of these commissions proved so satis- 

 factory that Sir Charles Napier, who in 1849 

 succeeded Lord Gough as commander - in - chief, 

 pronounced the Guides to be the only properly 

 dressed light troops he had seen in India. 



The conspirators whom Hodson had gone in 

 search of were duly captured, and he " had the 

 satisfaction of seeing them hung three days later." 

 He then, in his own words, " tried a slight fever 

 as a variety for two days." On May 14 he 

 " started to bag the Rani, or queen - mother, in 

 her abode beyond the Ravi, she having been 

 convicted of complicity in the designs of the 

 conspirators. Lumsden and myself were deputed 

 by the Resident to call on her and intimate that 

 her presence was urgently required. A detach- 

 ment was ordered out to support us, in case any 

 resistance should be ofi'ered. Fortunately it was 

 not required, as the Rani complied at once with 



