I let her put on her things and come down with me to the lodge-gate to
watch. I was afraid to go any farther, and there we waited, without
even the relief of a report, till we had heard the great clock strike
quarter after quarter, and were expecting it to strike eleven, when
steps came near at last, and Eustace opened the gate. We threw
ourselves upon him, and he cried out with surprise, then said, "He is
alive!"

"Who! Harold?"

"Harold! Nonsense. What should be the matter with Harold? But he is
going to stay with him--Yolland I mean--for the night! It was all his
confounded experiments. It was very well that I went down--nothing was
being done without a head to direct, but they always know what to be at
when _I_ come among them."

No one there knew the cause of the accident, except that it had taken
place in Mr. Yolland's laboratory, where he had been trying
experiments. The house itself had been violently shattered, and those
nearest had suffered considerably. Happily, it stood in a yard of its
own, so that none adjoined it, and though the fronts of the two
opposite "Dragon's Heads" had broken windows and torn doors, no person
within them had been more than stunned and bruised. But the former
"Dragon's Head" itself had become a mere pile of stones, bricks, and
timbers. The old couple in charge had happily been out, and stood in
dismay over the heap, which Harold and a few of the men were trying to
remove, in the dismal search for Mr. Yolland and the boy he employed to
assist him. The boy was found first, fearfully burnt about the face
and hands, but protected from being crushed by the boards which had
fallen slantwise over him. And under another beam, which guarded his
head, but rested on his leg, lay young Yolland.

Harold's strength had raised the beam, and he was drawn out. He
revived as the night air blew on his face, looked up as Harold lifted
him, said, "I have it," and fainted the next moment. They had taken
him to his lodgings, where Dr. Kingston had set the broken leg and
bound the damaged rib, but could not yet pronounce on the other
injuries, and Harold had taken on himself the watch for the night.

The explanation that we all held by was, that the damage was caused by
an officious act of the assistant, who, perceiving that it was growing
dark, fired a match, and began to light the gas at the critical moment
of the experiment, by which the means of obtaining the utmost heat at
the