It was a terrible picture that met their eyes as they entered that kitchen, which only a few hours before had been so bright and trim. A big fire was burning, and a clothes-rail—covered with damask table-napkins, among which hung an old rag mat—had been put so close to the bars that one of the napkins was nearly consumed, two or three were scorched, and the rag rug was smouldering. To draw back the clothes-rail and to throw the burning mat into the sink was the work of a moment, and effectually ended a great danger. The hearth was blurred with trodden cinders and spotted with grease. There were two pots standing on the range, one containing burnt-up porridge, and the other full of water with something floating in it which looked like a rag. Miss Latimer hurriedly opened the oven door, fully expecting to see a cindered fowl; but the oven was empty. Going to a cupboard she discovered the little turkey nicely trussed. That had been done the previous night, and it had not been touched since. Miss Latimer quietly lifted it down and put it into the oven. Dinner would be certainly late; but it would be the earlier the sooner one made a beginning. “I fear you are right, after all,” she said to Tom Black. “Yet this fit may have been coming on, and that may have stopped her work, and—— Ah!” Tom had also been making an investigation, and as she was speaking, he held up before her shocked eyes a bottle of whisky. It was still in the paper in which it had been sold; but it was almost empty. “There’s the doctor and Mr. Somerset!” Miss Latimer exclaimed with a tone of relief. “Now we shall soon know the truth. Anyway, we’re not wanted upstairs just this minute—we’d be only in the way. So let us try to get a little to the bottom of things down here. I know how keenly Mrs. Challoner will feel all this,” she said, confiding in the youth whom she had never seen till half an hour before, but for whose domestic help she now appealed as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Will you just see what is in that basin beside you?” Tom lifted the cover, peering gingerly. “I believe this is the pudding,” he said. “Dear me; very likely,” said Miss Latimer. She went back to the fireplace, and, dipping her fingers into the pot of water, drew forth the floating rag. It was the pudding-cloth neatly fastened up; only the pudding had never been inside! “And what is that strange noise I hear?” asked the old lady, gazing around. “It is the cat,” said Tom. “She is under the dresser, and she keeps ‘swearing.’” The young man seemed rather afraid to approach the indignant animal; but the old lady bravely put in her hand and drew pussy out. “No wonder she ‘swears,’ poor dear!” she observed. “Hot oil or grease has been dropped on her, and has burned away about an inch of fur. I don’t know what we can do for her, especially just now. But, at least, we’ll give her a saucer of milk as a sign of sympathy.”