"Don't you 'Nanny' me! I've had enough of it. There hasn't been a moment's peace since the day your grandfather first put foot here. He's a Godless old man and ought to know better at his time of life. I won't stay in this house after to-night. No! not if you offered me a fortune!" "You don't mean . . ." She flamed out again. "Not for a _fortune_!" She suddenly rushed from the kitchen, upstairs, and into her own room. I heard the door crash to with nerve-shattering emphasis. Then a deadly silence enveloped the house. "Good Lord!" I gasped. For a full minute I stood quite still, paralyzed and helpless. This, surely, was the beginning of the end. Without Nanny, life was unthinkable--comfortless--void! I gazed miserably at the wretched English winter outside, and it seemed to symbolize all the grayness and coldness of the future. It also drew my attention to the fact that Molly and Gran'pa had still to be found. Where were they? Where could they be? I put on my hat and coat and hurried down the garden in the pouring rain. "Molly!" I cried. "Where are you?" The trees sighed and shook a deluge of tears on me. "Confound the old fool!" I muttered, floundering through the mud and filth which surrounded the fowl-pens. Even the hens themselves withdrew from my wrath. "Are you there?" I clamored, thrusting my hand through the low doorway. The only answer was a scurrying on the part of the feathered folk. . . . I stood up again and looked around the deserted and sodden garden. As I did so, I saw a thin thread of blue smoke dismally ascending from the midst of the raspberry canes. "Ah!" I cried. "So that's where you are!" In a second, I had bounded over the squelching celery bed and cabbage patch and reached the tell-tale spot. "Molly!" I shouted. The sound of voices reached me from the bowels of the earth! Puzzled and angry, I thrust aside the wet and clammy canes, stepped forward--and suddenly found myself treading on air. When I had recovered from the jolt and splash, it became apparent that I was now at the bottom of a huge rectangular hole some four or five feet in depth, and that the "floor" on which I stood, ankle deep in mud, rose at a fairly steep angle to the normal level of the garden. With my characteristic bad luck, I had plunged in at the "deep end." Turning quickly round, I discovered what was obviously the entrance to nothing more nor less than a crudely fashioned "dug-out" or underground retreat, which was shut off from the outer world by an improvised door of patchwork pieces of wood. From behind this, proceeded the faint sound of human voices, apparently shouting some sort of primitive song: "_Wah-wah! Wah-wah-woo!_" I listened for a moment or two. Then I sniffed at the unmistakable odor of grilled kippers--the kind of nauseating smell one usually associates with gypsies' tents, caravans and cheap lodging-houses.