By this time the inmates of the Residency, from looking death so hard in the face, had grown strangely callous both to suffering and to danger. Men now showed themselves indifferent before the most heart-rending spectacles, while they coolly undertook perilous tasks at which, two months ago, the boldest would have hesitated. Children could be seen playing with grape-shot for marbles, and making little mines instead of mud-pies. Women took slight notice of the hair-breadth escapes that happened daily with them as with others. "Balls fall at our feet," says Mr. Rees in his journal, "and we continue the conversation without a remark; bullets graze our very hair, and we never speak of them. Narrow escapes are so very common that even women and children cease to notice them. They are the rule, not the exception. At one time a bullet passed through my hat; at another, I escaped being shot dead by one of the enemy's best riflemen, by an unfortunate soldier passing unexpectedly before me, and receiving the wound through the temples instead; at another, I moved off from a place where, in less than the twinkling of an eye afterwards, a musket-ball stuck in the wall. At another, again, I was covered with dust and pieces of brick by a round-shot that struck the wall not two inches away from me; at another, again, a shell burst a couple of yards away from me, killing an old woman and wounding a native boy and a native cook, one dangerously, the other slightly--but no; I must stop, for I could never exhaust the catalogue of hair-breadth escapes which every man in the garrison can speak of as well as myself." Still, their hearts could not but grow heavy at times, especially as the feast of the Mohurrem drew near, when Moslem zeal might be expected to stimulate its votaries to more desperate fury. Desertions went on fast among the servants, and it was feared that, if relief came not soon, the Sepoys would go over to their mutinous comrades, who daily tried to seduce them with threats and promises. Some native Christians and half-castes, of whom better might have been expected, did run away in a body, only to be butchered by the fanatics among whom they so faithlessly cast their fortunes. A third of the Europeans had perished; the rest were worn with sickness and suffering, but they had not lost an inch of ground. It was no fault of Havelock if he still lay at Cawnpore, forty miles away. Once and again he had advanced, beating the enemy every time they ventured to face him; but after two pitched battles, in which this fearless General had already had six horses killed under him, and several minor combats, the country-people rising up about him in fierce opposition, cholera also decimating the ranks, his losses were so heavy that he could not yet hope to force a way to Lucknow, much less through the narrow streets, where every house might be found a fortress.