THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
like the upturned feet of a prostrate man, were the bottom timbers of the cottage.
Somewhere inside the chaotic mass lay Lemois and Gaston!
A cry of horror went up from the crowd, made more intense by the shriek of a fisherwoman—Gaston’s mother—who just before the crash came had seen her son’s head at the library window, and who was now fighting her way to where Herbert was keeping back the mob until he could make up his mind what was best to do. Her breathless news decided him.
“Louis!” he shouted, his voice ringing above the roar of the sea, “pick out two men—good ones—and follow me!”
The four worked their way to a careened window now flattened within a foot of the ground, crawled over the sill, and Herbert calling out to Lemois and Gaston all the while, crept under a tangle of twisted beams, flooring, and furniture, until they reached what was once the farther wall of the library.
Under an overturned sofa, pinned down but unhurt, white with dust and broken plaster and almost unrecognizable, they found our landlord. Gaston lay a few feet away, the breath
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