They crawled back to the trap-door and descended into the house. But in a moment the doctor saw that the evacuation of the roof would have serious consequences for the gallant band in the front compound. Unless the fire from the opposite house, now packed with marksmen, could be dominated, the next attack on the compound must inevitably succeed. As soon as its defenders showed themselves in attempting to charge the assailants from the wall, they would become the targets for muskets at no more than fifty or sixty yards' range. "Run down and bring the men into the house," said the doctor. Ahmed hastened below and gave the order in the sahib's name, adding a caution to beware of flying bullets. The men scampered back along the foot of the wall, crouching low. They were not visible from the opposite house until they had covered half the distance to the door; then the enemy espied their movement and fired a volley. But the men were going rapidly in single file; only one was struck, by a bullet rebounding from the wall, and in another ten seconds the whole band was safe within the house. The withdrawal was not a moment too soon. There was suddenly a sound of many hammers falling upon steel. The enemy were making an attack upon the walls both at the front and back, driving iron spikes into them with the object of making loopholes. The walls were stoutly built, and it was a full quarter of an hour before the iron bars began to show on their inner side. In half-an-hour at least twenty loopholes had been pierced both in the front and back, and a continuous fusillade was kept up upon the shutters and doors of the house. As soon as one man fired outside, apparently his place was taken by another with a newly-loaded musket, and the new-comer only waited until the smoke had partially cleared to discharge his piece. The woodwork of the house was both thick and hard; only a small proportion of the bullets penetrated the interior; but the range was no more than thirty or forty yards, and there were many good marksmen among the sepoys. Two of the garrison standing behind the loopholes were struck, and one musket was rendered useless. The khansaman ran to inform the doctor, who had the injured men carried upstairs, where he extracted the bullets and bound up their wounds. For a few minutes more the work of loopholing the wall continued, and the defences were battered with an uninterrupted hail of bullets. Gradually the shots found weak spots in the woodwork. Another man was hit, this time through a fissure torn in the shutter by a previous bullet. Every now and again a yell from the outside told that a bullet from the defences had made its way through the loopholes of the wall. These apertures were a good deal larger than those in the doors and shutters of the house, and offered a far better mark. The assailants could afford to lose twenty men to one of the besieged. And when the mutineers noticed that the firing from the house was less in volume owing to the