Had her very life depended on it, old Martha would have been totally unable to give any coherent account of what she felt, said, or did, when she came into Master Austin's room that morning at half-past seven with his hot water.

She thought she must have screamed, but such was her bewilderment and terror she really could not remember whether she did or no.

But she never had any doubt as to what she saw.

Instead of a fair white bed with Austin lying in it, she was confronted by the sight of a gaping hole in the roof, something that looked like a rubbish heap in a brickfield immediately underneath, and the long slender form of Austin himself wrapped in a comfortable wadded dressing-gown fast asleep upon the sofa.

"Bless us and save us!" she ejaculated under her breath.