the Squire, who, however, comforted himself with the reflection, that
the tower was perfectly safe, or at least was intended to be so, and
that his friends were in no probable danger but of a knock on the head
from a flying fragment of stone.

The succession of these thoughts in the mind of the Squire was
commensurate in rapidity to the progress of the ignition, which having
reached its extremity, the explosion took place, and the shattered
rock was hurled into the air in the midst of fire and smoke.

Mr Milestone had properly calculated the force of the explosion; for
the tower remained untouched: but the Squire, in his consolatory
reflections, had omitted the consideration of the influence of sudden
fear, which had so violent an effect on Mr Cranium, who was just
commencing a speech concerning the very fine prospect from the top of
the tower, that, cutting short the thread of his observations, he
bounded, under the elastic influence of terror, several feet into the
air. His ascent being unluckily a little out of the perpendicular, he
descended with a proportionate curve from the apex of his projection,
and alighted not on the wall of the tower, but in an ivy-bush by its
side, which, giving way beneath him, transferred him to a tuft of
hazel at its base, which, after upholding him an instant, consigned
him to the boughs of an ash that had rooted itself in a fissure about
half way down the rock, which finally transmitted him to the waters
below.

Squire Headlong anxiously watched the tower as the smoke which at
first enveloped it rolled away; but when this shadowy curtain was
withdrawn, and Mr Panscope was discovered, _solus_, in a tragical
attitude, his apprehensions became boundless, and he concluded that