They vaulted over, with the agility of modern girls practised in gymnastics, and very soon were inside the church. The dust was thicker than ever, but in the excitement of displaying the various points of interest Laura hardly noticed it; and they poked about everywhere, little dreaming of the appalling risk they ran. Llewellyn, on quitting the school, came round to speak to Reed; and found the old man, who had just returned, standing staring stupidly at the bare nail on the wall. "Did you come and fetch the church key away, sir?" he began. "I? I've never touched it--never seen it! And yet it's gone from the nail! Surely it can't be that somebody has taken it to go inside the church! Lane says the tower can't possibly last out the day." For an instant they gazed at each other with scared faces; and then Llewellyn rushed away, mad with fear, clearing first the churchyard fence, and then the tombstones with incredible bounds. As he went a curious, dull rumble was audible, and to his horror he distinctly saw the massive tower first sway slightly, and then commence to slip, slip with a horrible motion unlike anything he had ever seen before. The church door was ajar--there must be somebody inside! Pray Heaven he might be in time! [Illustration: "I couldn't rest till I saw you," she faltered.--_p. 44._] Meanwhile the girls, poring over an old floor-brass, were startled by the rumbling; whilst the dust grew so much thicker that Laura exclaimed, "Pah! What a stuffy old place! That rumble must be thunder--there it is again!" Still not suspecting their danger, they leisurely retraced their steps to the south door, at the bottom of the church, very near the fatal tower. Laura could distinctly remember turning past the last pew; but after that nothing was clear. She only knew that some man, unrecognisable in the cloud of dust and mortar which suddenly obscured everything, threw himself, as a still louder rumble occurred, with what then seemed absolutely brutal violence upon her and Daisy. Seizing her with a force which for days left bruises on her arms, he positively hurled her and her friend before him through the open door. Then before he had himself quite crossed the threshold the entire fabric of the tower fell with a terrific crash, wrecking the whole of that end of the church. III.