I am not afraid of bullets,
Doctor; it's the horrible, fiendish noise that I cannot stand."

"I know, my boy," the Doctor said kindly; "but it comes to the same
thing. You did put yourself in the way of bullets when your doing so was
of no possible advantage, and it is almost a miracle that you escaped
unhurt. You must remain here quiet for the present. II shall leave you
in charge of Mrs. Hunter. There is nothing for you to do on the roof
at present. This attack is a mere outbreak of rage on the part of the
Sepoys that we have all escaped them. They know well enough they can't
take this house by merely firing away at the roof. When they attack in
earnest it will be quite time for you to take part in the affair again.
Now, Mrs. Hunter, my orders are absolute that he is not to be allowed to
get up."

On the Doctor leaving the room he found several of the ladies outside;
the news that Mr. Bathurst had been carried down had spread among them.

"Is he badly hurt, Doctor?"

"No, ladies. Mr. Bathurst is, unfortunately for himself, an extremely
nervous man, and the noise of firearms has an effect upon him that he
cannot by any effort of his own overcome. In order, as he says, to try
and accustom himself to it, he went and stood at the edge of the parapet
in full sight of the Sepoys, and let them blaze away at him. He must
have been killed if Forster and I had not dragged him away by main
force. Then came the natural reaction, and he fainted. That is all there
is about it. Poor fellow, he is extremely sensitive on the ground of
personal courage. In other respects I have known him do things requiring
an amount of pluck that not one man in a hundred possesses, and I wish
you all to remember that his nervousness at the effect of the noise of
firearms is a purely constitutional weakness, for which he is in no way
to be blamed. He has just risked his life in the most reckless manner in
order to overcome what he considers, and what he knows that some persons
consider, is cowardice, and it would be as cruel, and I may say as
contemptible, to despise him for a constitutional failing as it would be
to despise a person for being born a humpback or a cripple. But I cannot
stand talking any longer. I shall be of more use on the roof than I am
here."

Isobel Hannay was not among those who had gathered near the door of the
room in which Bathurst was lying, but the Doctor had raised his voice,
and she heard what he said, and bent over he