that light, that a seething turmoil was
going on just beneath it. He pointed at the place, but went on talking
of the other things in his mind.

"Say, you best take this pocketbook. We may get separated before the
night's out. It's half the farm money. You see--ther's no telling," he
ended up vaguely.

For one instant Buck removed his eyes from the surface of the lake to
glance at the snow-white head of his friend. Then he reached out and
took the pocketbook.

"Maybe Joan'll need it, anyway," he said, and thrust it in his pocket.
"We must----Say, git busy! Look!"

Buck's quick eyes had suddenly caught sight of a fresh disturbance in
the water. Of a sudden the whole surface of the lake seemed to be
rising in a great commotion. And as he finished speaking two terrific
detonations roared up from somewhere directly beneath them.

In an instant both men were on their feet and racing in headlong
flight for the point where they had left the women.

"Get Joan!" shouted the Padre from behind. He was less swift of foot
than Buck. "Get Joan! I'll see to the other."

Buck reached the girl's side. She had heard the explosions of the
underworld and stood shaking with terror.

"We're up agin it, Joan," he cried. And before the panic-stricken girl
could reply she was in his strong young arms speeding for the downward
path, which was their only hope.

"But the Padre! Aunt Mercy!" cried Joan, in a sudden recollection.

"They're comin' behind. He'll see to her----God in heaven!"

A deafening roar, a hundred times greater than the first explosions,
came from directly beneath the man's feet. The air was full of it. To
the fugitives it was as if the whole world had suddenly been riven
asunder. For one flashing moment it seemed to Buck that he had been
struck with fearful force from somewhere behind him, and as the blow
fell he was hurled headlong down the precipitous path.

A confused, painful sense of cruel buffeting left him only
half-conscious. There was a roar in his ears like the bombardment of
unearthly artillery. It filled his brain to the exclusion of all else,
while he hugged the girl close in his arms with some instinct of
saving her, and shielding her from the cruel blows with his own body.

Beyond that he had practically no sensation. Beyond that he had no
realization whatever. They were falling, falling, and every limb in
his body seemed to find the obstructions with deadly certainty. How
far, how long they were