"He turned round towards us and rose from his knees.
"'I'm dashed if I can make the rotten thing go round,' he said.
"'It's all right, General,' said the Bishop. 'I have brought a plumber.'
"For the next few minutes my professional interest absorbed all my faculties. I laid out my instruments upon a board, tapped the boiler with a small hammer, tested the feed-tube, and in a few moments had made what I was convinced was a correct diagnosis of the trouble.
"But here I encountered the greatest professional dilemma in which I have ever been placed. There was nothing wrong with the boiler at all. It connected, as I ascertained at once by a thermo-dynamic valvular test, with the furnace (in fact, I could see it did), and the furnace quite evidently had been allowed to go out.
"What was I to do? If I told them this, I broke every professional rule of our union. If the thing became known I should probably be disbarred and lose my overalls for it. It was my plain professional duty to take a large hammer and knock holes in the boiler with it, smash up the furnace pipes, start a leak of gas, and then call in three or more of my colleagues.
"But somehow I couldn't find it in my heart to do it. The thought of the girl's appealing face arose before me.
"'How long has this trouble been going on?' I asked sternly.
"'Quite a time,' answered the Bishop. 'It began, did it not, General, the same day that the confounded furnace went out? The General here and Admiral Hay and I have been working at it for three days.'
"'Well, gentlemen,' I said, 'I don't want to read you a lesson on your own ineptitude, and I don't suppose you would understand it if I did. But don't you see that the whole trouble is because you let the furnace out? The boiler itself is all right, but you see, gents, it feeds off the furnace.'