aracter might have been
sketched from Forster. He is a man without either heart or conscience;
a man who would sacrifice everything to his own pleasures; and yet even
when one knows him to be what he is, one can hardly help liking him. I
wonder how it is, my dear, that scamps are generally more pleasant than
good men?"

"I never thought about it, Mrs. Doolan," Isobel said, roused to a smile
by the earnestness with which Mrs. Doolan propounded the problem; "and
can give no reason except that we are attracted by natures the reverse
of our own."

Mrs. Doolan laughed.

"So you think we are better than men, Isobel? I don't--not one bit. We
are cramped in our opportunities; but given equal opportunities I don't
think there would be anything to choose between us. But we mustn't stay
talking here any longer; we both go on duty in the sick ward at four
o'clock."

The enemy's batteries opened on the following morning more violently
than before. More guns had been placed in position during the night, and
a rain of missiles was poured upon the house. For the next six days the
position of the besieged became hourly worse. Several breaches had been
made in the wall, and the shots now struck the house, and the inmates
passed the greater part of their time in the basement.

The heat was terrible, and, as the firing was kept up night and
day, sleep was almost impossible. The number of the besiegers had
considerably increased, large numbers of the country people taking part
in the siege, while a regiment of Sepoys from Cawnpore had taken the
place of the detachment of the 103d Bengal Infantry, of whom, indeed,
but few now remained.

The garrison no longer held the courtyard. Several times masses of the
enemy had surged up and poured through the breaches, but a large number
of hand grenades of various sizes had been constructed by the defenders,
and the effects of these thrown down from the roof among the crowded
masses were so terrible that the natives each time fell back. The horses
had all been turned out through the breach on the day after Captain
Forster's departure, in order to save their lives. A plague of flies
was not the least of the defenders' troubles. After the repulse of the
assaults the defenders went out at night and carried the bodies of the
natives who had fallen in the courtyard beyond the wall. Nevertheless,
the odor of blood attracted such countless swarms of flies that the
ground was black with them, and they