In the banquet which ensued the defenders of the outposts had no part. On the other hand, they sometimes enjoyed luxuries of their own. A pariah dog, seduced by blandishments never before lavished upon one of his despised race, was tempted within the walls and thence into the camp-kettle of Barrack Number Two. Towards that building, as towards the lion's den in the fable, pointed the footsteps of every kind of quadruped, and from it none. An aged horse, whose younger days had been spent in the ranks of the Irregular Cavalry, was killed, roasted, and eaten up in two meals by the combined pickets. The head was converted into soup, and sent into the intrenchment for the use of some favoured ladies; no explanations being offered or demanded concerning the nature of the stock. Captain Halliday, of the Fifty-ninth Native Infantry, who had come across on a morning visit, begged a portion for his poor wife, who was lying in the hospital, sick unto death of the small-pox. On his way back, walking, it may be, too slowly for security through dread of spilling one precious drop, he fell never to rise again. In the midst of every action and every movement, during the hours of labour and the minutes of refreshment, unlooked for and unavoidable the mortal stroke descended. For by day and night the fire never ceased. The round shot crashed and spun through the windows, raked the earthwork, and skipped about the open ground in every corner of our position. The bullets cut the air, and pattered on the wall like hail. The great shells rolled hissing along the floors and down the trenches, and, bursting, spread around them a circle of wrack, and mutilation, and promiscuous destruction. In their blind and merciless career those iron messengers spared neither old nor young, nor combatants nor sufferers, but flew ever onwards, inflicting superfluous wounds and unavailing destruction. A single bomb killed or maimed seven married women, who were seated in the ditch; killed Jacobi, a watchmaker, namesake of the intrepid coachwright; killed too the cashiered officer whose drunken freak had done something to accelerate the outbreak. There were those who endured in one day a double or a treble bereavement; while in some families none remained to mourn. Colonel Williams died of apoplexy, and his wife, disfigured and tortured by a frightful hurt in the face, would fain have rejoined her husband. On the fifteenth of June Miss Mary Williams was stunned by a fall of the ceiling, and expired in the arms of a wounded sister, unconscious of her loving care. Two daughters survived--for a while. Mistress White was walking with a twin child at either shoulder, and her good man, a private of the Thirty-second, by her side. The same ball slew the father, broke both elbows of the mother, and severely injured one of the orphans. Captain Reynolds lost an arm and his life by a cannon-shot; and Mrs. Reynolds, whose wrist had been pierced by a musket ball, sank under fever and sorrow.