one particle of the havoc the long
dark hours of night had wrought.

High up on a shattered eminence, where a sea of tumbled rock marked
the face of Devil's Hill, where the great hot lake had been held
suspended, Joan and Buck gazed out upon the battle-ground of nature's
forces.

Presently the girl's eyes came back to the face of her lover. She
could not long keep them from the face, which, such a few hours ago,
she had believed she would never behold again in life. She felt as
though he were one returned to her from the grave, and feared lest she
should wake to find his returning only a dream.

He was a strange figure. The tattered remains of his clothing were
scarcely enough to cover his nakedness, and Joan, with loving,
unskilled hands, had lavered and dressed his wounds with portions of
her own undergarments and the waters of the creek, whither, earlier,
she had laboriously supported his enfeebled body. But Providence had
spared him an added mercy besides bringing him back to life. It seemed
a sheer miracle that his bones had been left whole. His flesh was
torn, his whole body was terribly bruised and lacerated, but that
worst of all disasters in life had been spared him, and he was left
with the painful use of every limb.

But the thought of this miracle left the man untouched. Only did Joan
remember, and offer up her thankfulness. The man was of the wild, he
was young, life was with him, life with all its joys and sorrows, all
its shadowy possibilities, so he recked nothing of what he had
escaped. That was his way.

While Joan's devoted eyes watched the steady light in his, staring out
so intently at the wreck of world before him, no word passed her lips.
It was as though he were the lord of their fate and she waited his
commands.

But for long Buck had no thought for their personal concerns. He
forgot even the pains which racked his torn body, he forgot even the
regrets which the destruction he now beheld had first inspired him
with. He was marveling, he was awed at the thought of those dread
elements, those titanic forces he had witnessed at play.

There lay the hideous skeleton picked bare to the bones. Every
semblance of the beauty lines, which, in the earth's mature
completion, it had worn, had vanished, and only mouldering remains
were left. How had it happened? What terrible, or sublime purpose, had
been achieved during that night of terror? He could not think.

His eyes dropped to that which lay