176 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



Hodson's health, which had been severely tried by 

 the pressure of his recent troubles, soon began to 

 recover itself in the bracing air of a station 7000 

 feet above the sea. " This is a great thing," he 

 writes on April 8, " but it is very hard to begin 

 again as a regimental subaltern after nearly eleven 

 years' hard work. However, I am very fond of the 

 profession, and there is much to be done and much 

 learnt, and under any other circumstances I should 

 not regret being with English soldiers again for a 

 time. Every one believes that I shall soon be 

 righted, but the 'soon' is a long time coming." 



Among those who received him with special 

 kindliness was the officer commanding his regiment, 

 Colonel John Welchman, who had led the 1st 

 Fusiliers with honour through all the fighting and 

 hardships of the second Burmese war. His sym- 

 pathies had already been won in Hodson's favour by 

 the letter which Colonel Robert Napier had addressed 

 him from Ambala a few days before Hodson reached 

 Dagshai. It is worth inserting at full length : — 



" My dear Colonel Welchman, — I have great 

 pleasure in meeting your request, to state in 

 writing my opinion regarding my friend Lieutenant 

 Hodson's case. Having been on intimate terms of 

 friendship with him since 1846, I was quite unpre- 

 pared for the reports to his disadvantage which were 

 circulated, and had no hesitation in pronouncing my 

 utter disbelief in, and repudiation of, them as being 

 at variance with everything I had ever known of his 

 character. On arriving at Peshawar in March 1855 

 I found that Lieutenant Hodson had been under- 

 going a course of inquiry before a special military 



