Mr. Tinker's gaze followed the direction of the outstretched arms. Across the yard towered the long mill chimney, and it was rocking and swaying like a drunken man. There was not a moment to be lost. The sergeant and Tom slipped the raft on to the bosom of the racing flood. It was all but torn from their grasp. "Get you on it with the women," cried Tom. Betty was with difficulty placed upon the frail support. Mr. Tinker followed her. The sergeant, obedient to Tom's gesture, sprang upon it. "Now, Dorothy, jump for your life"; but even as the words left his lips, the bark was torn from his grasp. There was a shriek of terror from those aboard, and Ramsden cried, "The chimney. Oh! God! It's falling!" Tom breathed a prayer. "It's you and me for it, Dorothy. Can you trust me?" He passed his arm around her; she pressed her lips to his, and Tom, with his almost unconscious charge, leaped far out into the centre of the headlong current. And even as he leaped the great chimney-stack, its base destroyed, swayed towards the house, and in one unbroken mass fell upon the roof that had been their refuge, and Tom and Dorothy were lost in the crested billows that leaped with angry roar to meet the very skies. CHAPTER XV. SOME ten days or so after the events recorded in the last chapter, a stout woman past the middle age sat by a large four-posted bed in a spacious and well-furnished bedroom. The eider-down coverlet of the bed, its damask hangings, the prie-dieu by its side, the rich covering of the walls, the silken curtaining of the windows, the full pile of the carpets, the costly paintings on the walls indicated the abode of wealth and refinement. The woman by the bedside, on whom fell the genial rays of a bright-burning fire, was plainly but neatly dressed. The anxious glances she cast upon the figure stretched upon the bed seemed to bespeak a greater, a tenderer concern than that of the ordinary professional nurse. There was no sound in the room save the ticking of the massive marble clock upon the mantel, and the regular breathing of the patient. The nurse turned the pages of a ponderous family Bible, but as her attention was confined to the highly coloured illustrations it is probable the printed page was a dead letter to her eyes. So absorbed was she in the contemplation of the ornate plate depicting the sale of Joseph by his brethren that she almost dropped the heavy book from her knees as a faint voice issued from between the curtain folds. "Has th' buzzer gone, Hannah?" "Sakes, alive! If he isn't wakken," the nurse exclaimed, drawing back the curtain. "Eh! Tom, lad, it's fain aw am to yer thi voice. But tha munnot talk nor fash thisen." "Has th' buzzer gone?" the invalid asked again. Then his eyes wandered slowly and somewhat vacantly about the room. "Where am I?" he asked.