As already mentioned, with the exception of the company which captured the golden _tâzia_ and the Mohurrum paraphernalia, the Ninety-Third got very little loot; and by the time we returned to the city order was in some measure restored, prize-agents appointed, and guards placed at the different thoroughfares to intercept camp-followers and other plunderers on their way back to camp, who were thus made to disgorge their plunder, nominally for the public good or the benefit of the army. But it was shrewdly suspected by the troops that certain small caskets in battered cases, which contained the redemption of mortgaged estates in Scotland, England, and Ireland, and snug fishing and shooting-boxes in every game-haunted and salmon-frequented angle of the world, found their way inside the uniform-cases of even the prize-agents. I could myself name one deeply-encumbered estate which was cleared of mortgage to the tune of £180,000 within two years of the plunder of Lucknow. But to what good? I only wish I had to go through a similar campaign with the experience I have now. But that is all very fine thirty-five years after! "There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood"--my readers know the rest. I missed the flood, and the tide is not likely to turn my way again. Before we left Lucknow the plunder accumulated by the prize-agents was estimated at over £600,000 (according to _The Times_ of 31st of May, 1858), and within a week it had reached a million and a quarter sterling. What became of it all? Each private soldier who served throughout the relief and capture of Lucknow got prize-money to the value of Rs. 17.8; but the thirty _lakhs_ of treasure which were found in the well at Bithoor, leaving the plunder of the Nânâ Sâhib's palace out of the calculation, much more than covered that amount. Yet I could myself name over a dozen men who served throughout every engagement, two of whom gained the Victoria Cross, who have died in the almshouse of their native parishes, and several in the almshouse of the Calcutta District Charitable Society! But enough of moralising; I must get back to 1858.
Many camp-followers and others managed to evade the guards, and cavalry-patrols were put on duty along the different routes on both banks of the Goomtee and in the wider thoroughfares of Lucknow.