elwyn.

"I'll go up," he said. "You can't do anything with that arm of yours."

"I can help," maintained Dick stoutly.

Garth shook his head.

"No. If you slipped amongst the mess there'll be up there, I'd have two
cripples on my hands instead of one. You stay here and look after the
women--and get one of them to fix you up a temporary splint."

The two men moved forward, the women pressing eagerly behind them;
then, as the light from Garth's lantern steamed ahead there came an
instantaneous outcry of dismay.

The whole stairway was twisted and askew. It had a ludicrously drunken
look, as though it were lolling up against the wall--like a staircase in
a picture of which the perspective is all wrong.

"It isn't safe!" exclaimed Selwyn quickly. "You can't go up. We shall
have to wait till help comes."

"I'm going up--now," said Garth quietly.

"But it isn't safe, man! Those stairs won't bear you!"

"They'll have to"--laconically. "That top story may go at any minute. It
would collapse like a pack of cards if another bomb fell near enough for
us to feel the concussion. And young Durward would have about as much
chance as a rat in a trap."

A silence descended on the little group of anxious people as he finished
speaking. The gravity of Tim's position suddenly revealed itself--and
the danger involved by an attempt at rescue.

Sara drew close to Garth's side.

"_Must_ you go, Garth?" she asked. "Wouldn't it be safe to wait till
help comes?"

"Tim isn't _safe_ there, actually five minutes. The floors may hold--or
they mayn't! I must go, sweet."

She caught his hand and held it an instant against her cheek. Then--

"Go, dear," she whispered. "Go quickly. And oh!--God keep you!"

He was gone, picking his way gingerly, treading as lightly as a cat,
so that the wrenched stairway hardly creaked beneath his swift, lithe
steps.

Once there came the sudden rattle of some falling scrap of broken
plaster, and Sara, leaning with closed eyes and white, set face, against
the framework of a doorway, shivered soundlessly.

Soon he had disappeared round the distorted head of the staircase, and
those who were watching could only discern the bobbing glimmer of the
light he carried mounting higher and higher.

Then--after an interminable time, it seemed--there came the sound of
voices . . . he had found Tim . . . a pause . . . then again a short,
quick speech and the word "Right?" drifted faintly down to the strained
e