began
to break through the wall without delay.

"I like this," Wilson said. "It is a thousand times better than sitting
up there waiting till they choose to make an attack. How wide shall we
make it?"

"As narrow as we can for one to pass along at a time," Bathurst said.
"The narrower it is, the less trouble we shall have with the roof."

"But only one will be able to work at a time in that case."

"That will be quite enough,". Bathurst said. "It will be hot work and
hard. We will relieve each other every five minutes or so."

A very short time sufficed to break through the wall.

"Thank goodness, it is earth," Wilson said, thrusting a crowbar through
the opening as soon as it was made.

"I had no fear of its being rock, Wilson. If it had been, they would not
have taken the trouble to have walled the sides of the cellar. The soil
is very deep all over here. The natives have to line their wells thirty
or forty feet down."

The enemy were quiet all day, but the garrison thought it likely that,
warned by the lesson of the night before, they were erecting a battery
some distance farther back, masked by the trees, and that until it was
ready to open fire they would know nothing about it.

"So you have turned miner, Mr. Wilson?" Isobel Hannay said to him as,
after a change and a bath, he came in to get his lunch.

"I calculate I have lost half a stone in weight, Miss Hannay. If I were
to go on at this for a month or two there would be nothing left of me."

"And how far did you drive the hole?"

"Gallery, Miss Hannay; please call it a gallery, it sounds so much
better. We got in five yards. I should hardly have believed it possible,
but Bathurst is a tremendous fellow to work. He uses a pick as if he had
been a sapper all his life. We kept the men pretty hard at work, I can
tell you, carrying up the earth. Richards is at work now, and I bet him
five rupees that he and Herbert don't drive as far as we did."

"There is not much use in betting now, Mr. Wilson," Isobel said sadly.

"No, I suppose not, Miss Hannay; but it gives a sort of interest to
one's work. I have blistered my hands horribly, but I suppose they will
get hard in a day or two."

"I wish we could work at something," Isobel said. "Now that we have
finished with the bags and bandages, the time seems very long; the only
thing there is to do is to play with the children and try to keep them
good; it is fortunate there is a bit of garden for them to p