The Warreners at once offered to fetch it for them, and as they spoke they
saw that the girls' faces were both swollen with crying.

"Is anything the matter, Miss Hargreaves?" Ned asked.

"Have you not heard," Edith said, "how poor little Rupert has been killed
by a shell? The ayah was badly hurt, and we all had close escapes; the
shells from that battery are terrible."

Expressing their sorrow at the news, the boys took the jugs, and crossing
the yard to the well, filled and brought them back.

"I wish we could do something to silence that battery," said Dick;" it
will knock the house about our ears, and we shall be having the women and
children killed every day."

"Let's go and have a look at it from the roof," replied Ned.

The roof was, like those of most of the houses in the Residency, flat, and
intended for the inmates to sit and enjoy the evening breeze. The parapet
was very low, but this had been raised by a line of sandbags, and behind
them five or six of the defenders were lying, firing through the openings
between the bags, in answer to the storm of musketry which the enemy were
keeping up on the post.

Stooping low to avoid the bullets which were singing overhead, the
Warreners moved across the terrace, and lying down, peered out through the
holes which had been left for musketry. Gubbins' house stood on one of the
highest points of the ground inclosed in the defenses, and from it they
could obtain a view of nearly the whole circle of the enemy's batteries.