p other children---?"

"Meaning nothing beyond my inquiry."

Redwood began to walk about the room. "Of course," he said, "one
might--But still! What are we coming to?"

Bensington evidently enjoyed his line of high intellectual detachment.
"The thing that interests me most, Redwood, of all this, is to think
that his brain at the top of him will also, so far as my reasoning goes,
be five-and-thirty feet or so above our level.... What's the matter?"

Redwood stood at the window and stared at a news placard on a paper-cart
that rattled up the street.

"What's the matter?" repeated Bensington, rising.

Redwood exclaimed violently.

"What is it?" said Bensington.

"Get a paper," said Redwood, moving doorward.

"Why?"

"Get a paper. Something--I didn't quite catch--Gigantic rats--!"

"Rats?"

"Yes, rats. Skinner was right after all!"

"What do you mean?"

"How the Deuce am _I_ to know till I see a paper? Great Rats! Good Lord!
I wonder if he's eaten!"

He glanced for his hat, and decided to go hatless.

As he rushed downstairs two steps at a time, he could hear along the
street the mighty howlings, to and fro of the Hooligan paper-sellers
making a Boom.

"'Orrible affair in Kent--'orrible affair in Kent. Doctor ... eaten by
rats. 'Orrible affair--'orrible affair--rats--eaten by Stchewpendous
rats. Full perticulars--'orrible affair."

III.

Cossar, the well-known civil engineer, found them in the great doorway
of the flat mansions, Redwood holding out the damp pink paper, and
Bensington on tiptoe reading over his arm. Cossar was a large-bodied man
with gaunt inelegant limbs casually placed at convenient corners of his
body, and a face like a carving abandoned at an early stage as
altogether too unpromising for completion. His nose had been left
square, and his lower jaw projected beyond his upper. He breathed
audibly. Few people considered him handsome. His hair was entirely
tangential, and his voice, which he used sparingly, was pitched high,
and had commonly a quality of bitter protest. He wore a grey cloth
jacket suit and a silk hat on all occasions. He plumbed an abysmal
trouser pocket with a vast red hand, paid his cabman, and came panting
resolutely up the steps, a copy of the pink paper clutched about the
middle, like Jove's thunderbolt, in his hand.

"Skinner?" Bensington was saying, regardless of his approach.

"Nothing about him," said Redwood. "Bound to be eaten. Both of them.
It's too