the next morning by a
sensation of his having been seized by a pair of giant hands and thrown
suddenly and heavily upon the bedroom floor.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A LESSON ON STEAM.

Half-stunned, confused, and wondering, Vane Lee awoke to the fact that
he really was lying upon the carpet at the side of his bed, and for a
few moments, he felt that he must have fallen out; but, in an indistinct
fashion, he began to realise that he had heard a tremendous noise in his
sleep, and started so violently that he had rather thrown himself than
fallen out of bed, while to prove to him that there was something
terribly wrong, there were loud shrieks from the lower part of the
house, and from the passage came his uncle's voice.

"Vane, my lad, quick! jump up!"

"It's an earthquake," panted Vane, as he hurried on his clothes,
listening the while with fear and trembling, to the screams which still
rose at intervals from below.

"That's Eliza's voice," he thought, and directly after as he waited,
full of excitement, for the next shock, and the crumbling down of the
house, "That's cook."

Almost at the same moment a peculiar odour came creeping in beneath and
round the door; and Vane, as he forced a reluctant button through the
corresponding hole with fumbling fingers took a long sniff.

"'Tisn't an earthquake," he thought; "that's gunpowder!"

The next moment, after trying to think of what gunpowder there was on
the premises, and unable to recall any, he was for attributing the
explosion, for such he felt it to be, to some of the chemicals in the
laboratory.

That idea he quickly dismissed, for the screams were from the kitchen,
and he was coming round to the earthquake theory again, when a thought
flashed through his brain, and he cried aloud in triumph, just as the
doctor threw open his door:--

"It is gunpowder."

"Smells like it, boy," cried the doctor, excitedly, "but I had none.
Had you?"

"No, uncle," cried Vane, as a fresh burst of screaming, arose; "but it's
cook. She has been blowing up the copper hole to make the fire draw."

"Come along! That's it!" cried the doctor. "Stupid woman! I hope she
is not much burned."

This all took place as they were hurrying down into the hall, where the
odour was stifling now: that dank, offensive, hydrogenous smell which is
pretty familiar to most people, and as they hurried on to the kitchen
from which the cries for help came more faintly now, they entered upon a
di