After dinner, when the others had all gone back to their work, Philpot unobtrusively returned to the kitchen and gathered up the discarded paper wrappers in which some of the men had brought their food.

Spreading one of these open, he shook the crumbs from the others upon it.

In this way and by picking up particles of bread from the floor, he collected a little pile of crumbs and crusts.

To these he added some fragments that he had left from his own dinner.

He then took the parcel upstairs and opening one of the windows threw the crumbs on to the roof of the portico.