r the commandant's
wife, the mother of the commandant's only child?"

"Horrible! horrible!" she answered, with a shudder, forgetting for an
instant the dangers of the present in the recollection of the tragical
past. "For a period, our lives were not safe; murder hid behind every
bush, skulked in the shadow of every rock and tree, and we knew not at
what minute the little garrison might be rushed under cover of the
darkness and every soul slaughtered before the relief force could come
to our assistance. I died a hundred deaths in a day in my anxiety for
husband and child. And once the very zealousness of our comrades almost
brought about the horror I feared. Oh!"--with a shudder of horrified
recollection and a covering of the eyes, as if to shut out the memory of
it--"Oh! that night--that horrible night! Unknown to any of us, my baby,
rising from the bed where I had left him sleeping, whilst I went outside
to stand by Lord Chepstow, wandered beyond the line of defence, and,
before anybody realised it, was out in the open, alone and unprotected.

"Ferralt, the cook, saw him first; saw, too, the crouching figure of a
native, armed with a gun, in the shadow of the undergrowth. Without
hesitation the brave fellow rushed out, fell upon the native before he
could dart away, wrenched the gun from him, and brained him with the
butt. A cry of the utmost horror rang out upon the air, and, uttering
it, another native bounded out from a hiding-place close to where the
first had been killed, and flew zigzagging across the open, where
Cedric was. Evidently he had no intention of molesting the little
fellow, for he fled straight on past him, still shrieking after the
accident occurred; but to Ferralt it seemed as if his intention were to
murder the boy, and, clapping the gun to his shoulder, in a panic of
excitement, he fired. If it had been one of the soldiers,
someone--anyone--who understood marksmanship and was not likely to be in
a nervous quake over the circumstances, the thing could not have
happened, although the fugitive was careering along in a direct line
with my precious little one. But, with Ferralt--Oh, Mr. Cleek, can you
imagine my horror when I saw the flash of that shot, heard a shrill cry
of pain, and saw my child drop to the ground?"

"Good heaven!" exclaimed Cleek, agitated in spite of himself. "Then the
blunderer shot the child instead of the native?"

"Yes; and was so horrified by the mishap that, without waiti