Collingwood said no more then--except to remark that such a sight must indeed have been trying to the nerves. But for purposes of his own he determined to have a talk with Cobcroft, and the next evening, seeing him in his garden again, he went out to him and got into conversation, and eventually led up to the subject of Mallathorpe's Mill, the new chimney of which could be seen from a corner of the garden. "Your wife tells me," observed Collingwood, "that you were present when the old chimney fell at the mill yonder?" Cobcroft, a quiet, unassuming man, usually of few words, looked along the hillside at the new chimney, and nodded his head. A curious, far-away look came into his eyes. "I was, sir!" he said. "And I hope I may never see aught o' that sort again, as long as ever I live. It was one o' those things a man can never forget!" "Don't talk about it if you don't want to," remarked Collingwood. "But I've heard so much about that affair that----" "Oh, I don't mind talking about it," replied Cobcroft. He leaned over the fence of his garden, still gazing at the mill in the distance. "There were others that saw it, of course: lots of 'em. But I was close at hand--our office was filled with the dust in a few seconds." "It was a sudden affair?" asked Collingwood. "It was one of those affairs," answered Cobcroft slowly, "that some folk had been expecting for a long time--only nobody had the sense to see that it might happen at some unexpected minute. It was a very old chimney. It looked all right--stood plumb, and all that. But Mr. Mallathorpe--my old master, Mr. John Mallathorpe, I'm talking of--he got an idea from two or three little things, d'ye see, that it wasn't as safe as it ought to be. And he got a couple of these professional steeplejacks to examine it. They made a thorough examination, too--so far as one could tell by what they did. They'd been at the job several days when the accident happened. One of 'em had only just come down when the chimney fell. Mr. Mallathorpe, himself, and his manager, and his cashier, had just stepped out of the counting-house and crossed the yard to hear what this man had got to say when--down it came! Not the slightest warning at the time. It just--collapsed!" "You saw the actual collapse?" asked Collingwood.