That his son should be a coward was naturally an awful blow to him.

Home was too unhappy to be endured, and when an uncle of mine, who was a director on the Company's Board, offered me a berth in the Civil Service, I thankfully accepted it, believing that in that capacity I need never hear a gun fired again.
"You will understand, then, the anxiety I am feeling owing to these rumors of disaffection among the Sepoys, and the possibility of anything like a general mutiny.
"It is not of being killed that I have any fear; upon the contrary, I have suffered so much in the last eight years from the consciousness that the reason why I left the army was widely known, that I should welcome death, if it came to me noiselessly; but the thought that if there is trouble I shall assuredly not be able to play my part like a man fills me with absolute horror, and now more than ever.
"So you will understand now why the picture I saw, in which I was fighting in the middle of the Sepoys, is to me not only improbable, but simply impossible.

It is a horrible story to have to tell.

This is the first time I have opened my lips on the subject since I spoke to my father, but I know that you, both as a friend and a doctor, will pity rather than blame me.".