g close within the entrance," said Langton.
"The gateway arch must have fallen on her as she turned. . . . One
side of her skull was broken. I pulled down some branches and
covered her."

"Your own face is bleeding."

"Is it?" He put up a hand. "Yes--I remember, a brick struck me, on
my way from the stables--no, a beam grazed me as I ran for the
back-stairs, meaning to get you out that way. The stairs were
choked. . . . I made sure you were in the house. The horses . . .
have you ever heard a horse scream?"

She shivered. At a turn of the road they came full in view of the
black pall stretching over the city. Flames shot up through it, here
and there. Lisbon was on fire in half a dozen places at least; and
now for the first time she became aware that the wind had sprung up
again and was blowing violently. She could not remember when it
first started: the morning had been still, the Tagus--she recalled
it--unruffled.

At the very foot of the hill they came on the first of three fires--
two houses blazing furiously, and a whole side-street doomed, if the
wind should hold. Among the ruins of a house, right in the face of
the fire, squatted a dozen persons, men and women, all dazed by
terror. The women had opened their parasols--possibly to screen
their faces from the heat--albeit they might have escaped this quite
easily by shifting their positions a few paces. None of these folk
betrayed the smallest interest in Ruth or in Langton. Indeed, they
scarcely lifted their eyes.

The suburbs were deserted, for the earthquake had surprised all
Lisbon in a pack, crowded within its churches, or in its central
streets and squares. Yet the emptiness of what should have been the
thoroughfares astonished them scarcely less than did the piles of
masonry, breast-high in places, over which they picked their way in
the uncanny twilight. They had scarcely passed beyond the glare of
the burning houses when Langton stumbled over a corpse--the first
they encountered. He drew Ruth aside from it, entreating her in a
low voice to walk warily. But she had seen.

"We shall see many before we reach the Cathedral," she said quietly.

They stumbled on, meeting with few living creatures; and these few
asked them no questions, but went by, stumbling, with hands groping,
as though they moved in a dream. A voice wailed "Jesus! Jesus!" and
the cry, issuing Heaven knew whence, shook Ruth's nerve for a moment.

Once Langton pluck