stay indoors!" Stephen said, when he had
laid Saidee on the pile of blankets in a corner of the room.

"Yes--yes--I promise!"

The girl gave him both hands. He kissed them, and then, without turning,
went out and shut the door. It was only at this moment that he
remembered Margot, remembered her with anguish, because of the echo of
Victoria's voice in his ears as she named him her "dearest."

As Stephen came from behind the barricade which screened the dining-room
from the courtyard, he found Rostafel shooting right and left at men who
tried to climb the rear wall, having been missed by Nevill's fire.
Rostafel had recovered the rifle snatched by Stephen in his stampede to
the stairway, and, sobered by the fight, was making good use of it.
Stephen had now armed himself with his own, left for safety behind the
barrier while he signalled in the tower; and together the two men had
hot work in the quadrangle. Here and there an escalader escaped the fire
from the watch-towers, and hung half over the wall, but dropped alive
into the courtyard, only to be bayoneted by the Frenchman. The
signalling-tower gave little shelter against the enemy, as most of the
outer wall had fallen above the height of twenty feet from the ground;
but, as without it only three sides of the quadrangle could be fully
defended, once again Stephen scrambled up the choked and broken
stairway. Screening himself as best he could behind a jagged ledge of
adobe, he fired through a crack at three or four Arabs who made a human
ladder for a comrade to mount the wall. The man at the top fell. The
next mounted, to be shot by Nevill from a watch-tower. The bullet
pierced the fellow's leg, which was what Nevill wished, for he, who
hated to rob even an insect of its life, aimed now invariably at arms or
legs, never at any vital part. "All we want," he thought half guiltily,
"is to disable the poor brutes. They must obey the marabout. We've no
spite against 'em!"

But every one knew that it was a question of moments only before some
Arab, quicker or luckier than the rest, would succeed in firing the
trail of gunpowder already laid. The gate would be blown up. Then would
follow a rush of the enemy and the second stand of the defenders behind
the barricade. Last of all, the retreat to the dining-room.

Among the first precautions Stephen had taken was that of locking the
doors of all rooms except the dining-room, and pulling out the keys, so
that, when the enemy