Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/199

 the enemy were literally just across the street, the school-boys had throughout only two of their number wounded, while two died of disease. Mr. Hilton, whose narrative has been already quoted, can tell of more than one narrow escape, once when a spent cannon-ball passed between his legs; again when a fragment of shell smashed the cooking pot from which he was about to draw his ration; and another time he was assisting to work the semaphore on the roof, when a shell burst so near as to disgust him with that duty. He did manage to get hurt in a singular manner. A badly-aimed shell from one of their own batteries fell into the court-yard where he was sitting, and in the wild stampede which ensued he stumbled over his sister and cut his knee on a sharp stone. This wound ought to have healed in a few days, but constant hardship had thrown him into such a bad state of health, that it festered and kept him in pain for more than two months, under the terrible warning that his leg might have to be amputated if he did not take care of it.

Before this accident he had entered into his duties as a soldier with rather more zeal than discretion. The boys trusted with arms, used, it seems, to take ten or twenty rounds to the top of the house, and fire through the loop-holes at