he ground; while after a close scrutiny Roy made out the fact that
two men were riding upon one horse in the rear of the right-hand troop.

The men on the tower gave a loud cheer, trifling as their success had
been, and were eager to fire again; but Roy was content to show the
enemy that the defenders were well prepared let them advance where they
would, for he knew that the slaying of a few men by a lucky shot would
not have much influence on his success.

He stayed till the men had disappeared beyond the trees on the hill
slope; and then, enjoining watchfulness, completed his visit to the
other towers, descended to report how matters were progressing to his
mother, who announced that her patient slept, and lastly hurried back to
where the enemy were pounding away at the gate-way, and Ben and his men
steadily replying.

"Hurt?" he cried excitedly, as he saw that one of the men had a rough
bandage about his arm. "You had better go below at once."

"What! for that, sir?" said the man, staring; "it's only a scratch from
a bit of stone."

The injury was very slight; but during Roy's absence the enemy had
managed to send one shot so truly that it had struck the front corner of
the embrasure of the corporal's gun, and splintered away a great piece
of the stone, many fragments still lying about on the platform.

"Yes, sir; they're shooting better than we are, or their guns are more
true. Our powder's good, old as it is; but it doesn't matter how
carefully we aim, we can never tell to a foot or two where the shot will
hit. They won't go where we want 'em."

"Well, theirs will not either, Ben," said Roy, "or they would have done
more mischief to us than this."

"That's true, sir," grumbled the old soldier; "and after all said and
done, I don't think much of big guns. If you could get 'em close up to
the end of a ridgement, and the men would stand still, you could bowl a
lot of 'em over like skittles; but there's a lot of waste going on with
this sort of firing, and if it warn't for the show we make, and which
keeps 'em off, we might as well sit down and smoke our pipes, and watch
where the balls went that they send."

"But you must keep on, Ben. You may have a lucky shot yet."

"Oh, we aren't done so very badly since you went, sir! Soon as they'd
done that bit o' damage to the top there, as'll cost Sir Granby a lot o'
money to repair, the corporal sent 'em an answer which made 'em carry
away four men to the rea