A stack of chimneys, on the house above them, had yielded to the storm, and descended in a shower of bricks and stones.
When the carpenter a moment afterwards stretched out his hand, scarcely knowing whether he was alive or dead, he found himself alone.

The fatal shower, from which he and his little charge escaped uninjured, had stricken his assailant and precipitated him into the boiling gulf.
"It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," thought the carpenter, turning his attention to the child, whose feeble struggles and cries proclaimed that, as yet, life had not been extinguished by the hardships it had undergone.

"Poor little creature!" he muttered, pressing it tenderly to his breast, as he grasped the rope and clambered up to the window: "if thou hast, indeed, lost both thy parents, as that terrible man said just now, thou art not wholly friendless and deserted, for I myself will be a father to thee! And in memory of this dreadful night, and the death from which I have, been the means of preserving thee, thou shalt bear the name of THAMES DARRELL." No sooner had Wood crept through the window, than nature gave way, and he fainted.

On coming to himself, he found he had been wrapped in a blanket and put to bed with a couple of hot bricks to his feet.

His first inquiries were concerning the child, and he was delighted to find that it still lived and was doing well.