“’Ware my arm!” warned Selwyn, as they approached.  “It’s broken, confound it!” He seemed, for the moment, oblivious of the pain.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Selwyn, finding herself physically intact, was keeping up an irritating moaning, interspersed with pettish diatribes against a Government that could be so culpably careless as to permit her to be bombed out of house and home; whilst Jane Crab, who had found and lit a candle, and recklessly stuck it to the table in its own grease, was bluffly endeavouring to console her.

For once Selwyn’s saint-like patience failed him.

“Oh, shut up whining, Minnie!” he exclaimed forcefully.  “It would be more to the point if you got down on your knees and said thank you to some one or something instead of grousing like that!”

He turned hurriedly to Garth, who was flashing his lantern hither and thither, locating the damage done.

“Look here,” he said.  “Young Durward’s upstairs.  We must get him down.”

“Where does he sleep?  One side of the house is staved in.”

“He’s not that side, thank Heaven!  But the odds are he’s badly hurt.  And, anyway, he’s helpless.  I was just going up to carry him down when that damned bomb got us.”

Garth swung out into the hall and sent a ringing shout up through the house.  An instant later Tim’s answer floated down to them.

“All serene!  Can’t move!”

Again Garth sent his voice pealing upwards—­

“Hold on!  We’ll be with you in a minute.”

He turned to Selwyn.

“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.