BEFORE DELHI. 249 



used to boast that he could make the Sahib-log 

 believe what he chose ; that it was notorious that 

 he was a very dangerous character, disseminating 

 rebel doctrines, and preparing to take a leading 

 part in the event of the rebellion succeeding, while 

 keeping ostensibly on good terms with the authori- 

 ties, and hoodwinking them. Isri Singh had never 

 heard Major Hodson's conduct in shooting him 

 called in question." 



" The same officer had been told previously by a 

 native officer of Hodson's Horse, who was present 

 on the occasion, that no one doubted the guilt of 

 the condemned man, and all considered his death 

 a mere act of justice." 



It is also true that Bisharat Ali had once stood 

 Hodson's security for a loan from his regimental 

 bank. This loan, however, had long since been 

 repaid, and Hodson was certainly not the man to 

 let past obligations stand in the way of his im- 

 perative duty towards a convicted mutineer. As 

 the writer in 'Blackwood' justly remarks, "He 

 was found in the midst of a hotbed of rebels, with 

 whom he was evidently on friendly terms, or he 

 could not have remained there alive ; and that too 

 not within a few days or weeks of the outbreak of 

 the Mutiny, but at the end of August, long before 

 which time every soldier who was loyal to the 

 British Government had been summoned to rejoin 

 his regiment. Under these circumstances, and at 

 such a time, any officer who did his duty would 

 have acted as Hodson did."^ 



Moreover, at such a crisis no half measures were 

 really possible. Hodson, in truth, had no alterna- 



^ 'Blackwood's Magazine' for March 1899. 



