d out her scanty wages by sundry--mostly very meagre--tips doled
out to her by impecunious artists in exchange for promiscuous domestic
services in and about the respective studios.

"But if Mrs. Owen's earnings were not large, they were very regular, and
she had no fastidious tastes. She and her cockatoo lived on her wages;
and all the tips added up, and never spent, year after year, went to
swell a very comfortable little account at interest in the Birkbeck
Bank. This little account had mounted up to a very tidy sum, and the
thrifty widow--or old maid--no one ever knew which she was--was
generally referred to by the young artists of the Rubens Studios as a
'lady of means.' But this is a digression.

"No one slept on the premises except Mrs. Owen and her cockatoo. The
rule was that one by one as the tenants left their rooms in the evening
they took their respective keys to the caretaker's room. She would then,
in the early morning, tidy and dust the studios and the office
downstairs, lay the fire and carry up coals.

"The foreman of the glass works was the first to arrive in the morning.
He had a latch-key, and let himself in, after which it was the custom of
the house that he should leave the street door open for the benefit of
the other tenants and their visitors.

"Usually, when he came at about nine o'clock, he found Mrs. Owen busy
about the house doing her work, and he had often a brief chat with her
about the weather, but on this particular morning of February 2nd he
neither saw nor heard her. However, as the shop had been tidied and the
fire laid, he surmised that Mrs. Owen had finished her work earlier than
usual, and thought no more about it. One by one the tenants of the
studios turned up, and the day sped on without any one's attention being
drawn noticeably to the fact that the caretaker had not appeared upon
the scene.

"It had been a bitterly cold night, and the day was even worse; a
cutting north-easterly gale was blowing, there had been a great deal of
snow during the night which lay quite thick on the ground, and at five
o'clock in the afternoon, when the last glimmer of the pale winter
daylight had disappeared, the confraternity of the brush put palette and
easel aside and prepared to go home. The first to leave was Mr. Charles
Pitt; he locked up his studio and, as usual, took his key into the
caretaker's room.

"He had just opened the door when an icy blast literally struck him in
the face; bo