And Death, who did not spare the Chief, sought lowlier victims. During the first week of the siege the average number killed daily was twenty. Even when the troops learnt to avoid the exposed places, and began to practise the little tricks and artifices that tempt an enemy to reveal his whereabouts to his own undoing, the daily death-roll was ten for more than a month. There was no real safety anywhere. Even in the Begum Kotee, where Winifred and the other ladies of the garrison were lodged, some of them were hit. Twice ere the end of July Winifred awoke in the morning to find bullets on the floor and the mortar of the wall broken within a few inches of her head. That she slept soundly under such conditions is a remarkable tribute to human nature's knack of adapting itself to circumstances. After a few days of excessive nervousness the most timorous among the women were heard to complain of the monotony of existence! And two amazing facts stand out from the record of guard-mounting, cartridge-making, cooking, cleaning, and the rest of the every-day doings inseparable from life even in a siege. Although the rebels now numbered at least twenty thousand men, including six thousand trained soldiers, they were long in hardening their hearts to attempt that escalade which, if undertaken on the last day of June, could scarcely have failed to be successful. They were not cowards. They gave proof in plenty of their courage and fighting stamina. Yet they cringed before men whom they had learnt to regard as the dominant race. The other equally surprising element in the situation was the readiness of the garrison, doomed by all the laws of war to early extinction, to extract humor out of its forlorn predicament. The most dangerous post in the entrenchment was the Cawnpore Battery. It was commanded by a building known as Johannes' House, whence an African negro, christened "Bob the Nailer" by the wits of the 32d, picked off dozens of the defenders during the opening days of the siege. What quarrel this stranger in a strange land had with the English no one knows, but the defenders were well aware of his identity, and annoyed him by exhibiting a most unflattering effigy. Needless to say, the whites of his eyes and his woolly hair were reproduced with marked effect, and "Bob the Nailer" gave added testimony of his skill with a rifle by shooting out both eyes in the dummy figure. Winifred had heard of this man. Once she actually saw him while she was peeping through a forbidden casement. Knowing the wholesale destruction of her fellow-countrymen with which he was credited, she had it in her heart to wish that she held a gun at that moment, and she would surely have done her best to kill him. He disappeared and she turned away with a sigh, to meet her uncle hastening towards her. "Ah, Winifred," he cried, "what were you doing there? Looking out, I am certain. Have you forgotten the punishment inflicted on Lot's wife when she would not obey orders?"