falling, whither the awful journey was
carrying them, these things passed from him utterly.

Then, abruptly, all sensation ceased. The limit of endurance had been
reached. For him, at least, the battle for life seemed ended. The
greater forces might contest in bitter rage. Element might war with
element, till the whole face of the world was changed; for Providence,
in a belated mercy, had suspended animation, and spared these two poor
atoms of humanity a further witness of a conflict of forces beyond
their finite understanding.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ALONE--

"Buck! Buck!"

Faint and small, the cry was lost in the wilderness of silence. It
died out, a heart-broken moan of despair, fading to nothingness in the
still, desolate world.

Then came another sound. It was the crash of a falling tree. It was
louder, but it, too, could scarcely break the stillness, so silent was
the world, so desolate was it in the absence of all life.

Day had broken. The sky was brilliant with swift-speeding clouds of
fleecy white. The great sun had lifted well above the horizon, and
already its warming rays were thirstily drinking from a sodden,
rain-drenched earth.

The perfect calm of a summer morning reigned. Up above, high up, where
it was quite lost to the desolation below, a great wind was still
speeding on the fleecy storm-clouds, brushing them from its path and
replacing them with the frothing scud of a glorious day. But the air
had not yet regained its wonted freshness. The reek of charred timber
was everywhere. It poisoned the air, and held memory whence it would
willingly escape.

"Oh, Buck, speak to me! Open your eyes! Oh, my love, my dear, dear
love!"

The cry had grown in pitch. It was the cry of a woman whose whole soul
is yearning for the love which had been ruthlessly torn from her
bosom.

Again it died away in a sob of anguish, and all was still again. Not a
sound broke the appalling quiet. Not a leaf rustled, for the world
seemed shorn of all foliage. Not a sound came from the insect world,
for even the smallest, the most minute of such life seemed to have
fled, or been destroyed. There was neither the flutter of a wing, nor
the voice of the prowling carnivora, for even the winged denizens of
the mountains and the haunting scavengers had fled in terror from such
a wilderness of desolation.

"Buck, oh, my Buck! Speak, speak! He's dead! Oh, my God, he's dead!"

Louder the voice came, and now in its wail wa