last resting-place.

"Where's the steps, Helen?" James inquired, and, after a brief silence:
"Georgiana!" he yelled.

The girl flew in.

"Bring us a pair o' steps," said he.

Followed an unsuccessful search for the pair of steps, which Andrew Dean
ultimately discovered in a corner of the hall itself, lying flat behind
a vast roll of carpet which was included in the goods purchased for
seven thousand two hundred and fifty pounds. The steps being found,
Georgiana explained at length how she distinctly remembered seeing one
of the men put them behind the roll of carpet.

"Now, what is it?" Andrew vigorously questioned. He was prepared,
evidently, to do anything that a man may do with a pair of steps. When
the operation was indicated to him, his first act was to take off his
coat, which he threw on the floor.

"Hammer! Nails!" he ejaculated. And Georgiana, intimidated by his tone,
contrived to find both hammer and nails. It is true that the hammer was
a coal hammer.

And in a remarkably short space of time he was balanced on the summit of
the steps with a nail in one hand, a hammer in the other, a pencil
behind his ear, and another nail in his mouth. The other three encircled
him from below, with upturned faces and open mouths, like young birds
expecting food. (Not that young birds expecting food wear gloves so
appropriate to the occasion as were Emanuel's.) James Ollerenshaw was
impressed by the workmanlike manner in which Andrew measured the width
of the glass box and marked it off on the wall before beginning to knock
nails. The presence of one nail in Andrew's mouth while he was knocking
in the other with a coal hammer, prevented him from outraging the social
code when the coal hammer embraced his fingers as well as the nail in
the field of its activity. Unhappily, when it came to the second nail,
no such hindrance operated.

The nails, having been knocked in, were duly and satisfactorily tested.

Then solemnly James seized the glass box containing the ship and ocean,
and bore it with all possible precautions to the pair of steps in front
of the great doors. Andrew descended two storeys, and, bending his body,
received the box from James as a parson receives a baby at the font. He
then remounted. The steps rocked.

"I'd happen better hold 'em," said James.

"It'll be all right," said Andrew.

"I'll hold them," said Emanuel, hastening forward.

The precise cause of the accident will probably never be kno