the disaster.

"It is just as well," said he. "I brought them because you asked me to
bring them, not because I supposed there would be one among them that
would suit you. But they are not wasted. These poor, dumb, dripping
plans preach a most eloquent sermon, the practical application of which
is only too evident."

"But how _can_ you make a tight roof? There has always been a leak here
when it rains with the wind in a certain quarter. We keep a pan under
it all the time, but somebody forgot to empty it; so it ran over last
night."

"You ought to see the house that I built," said Jack. "The wind may
blow where it listeth and never a drop comes through the roof."

"Oh, Jack, what a story! Only yesterday you showed me where the ceiling
was stained and the paper just ready to come off."

"That wasn't from rain water. It was from snow and ice water, which is
a very different affair. We had peculiar weather last winter. I know a
man who lost three thousand dollars' worth of frescoes in one night."

"It is indeed a different matter as regards the construction of the
roof, but the water is wet all the same, and a roof is inexcusable that
fails to keep all beneath it dry, however peculiar the weather may be.
No, it is not difficult to make a tight roof with the aid of common
sense and common faithfulness. The most vulnerable spots during a rain
storm are beside the dormers and the chimneys, over the bay-window
roofs and in the valleys, that is, wherever the plane surface and the
uniform slope of the roof is broken. In guarding these it is not safe
to assume that water never runs up hill; a strong wind will drive it up
the slope of a roof under slates, shingles or flashings as easily as it
drives up the high tide of Lincolnshire. It will cause the water
pouring down the side of a chimney, a dormer window, or any other
vertical wall, to run off in an oblique direction and into cracks that
never thought of being exposed to falling rain. 'Valleys' fail to
carry their own rivers when they are punctured by nails carelessly
driven too far within their borders; when the rust that corrupts the
metal of which they are commonly composed has eaten their substance
from the under side perhaps, their weakness undiscovered till the
torrent breaks through; when they become choked with leaves and dust
and overflow their banks; when they are torn asunder by their efforts
to accommodate themselves to changes of temperature, and when ice cak