three feet thick with
rocks, and stones, and bricks, and carcasses. The pleasant valley was
one horrid quagmire, in which he could take few steps, burdened as
he was, without sticking, or stumbling against some sure sign of
destruction and death: within the compass of fifty yards he found a
steam-boiler and its appurtenances (they must have weighed some tons,
yet they had been driven more than a mile), and a dead cow, and the
body of a wagon turned upside down: [the wheels of this same wagon were
afterward found fifteen miles from the body].

He began to stagger and pant.

"Let me walk, my angel," said Grace. "I'm not a baby."

She held his hand tight, and tried to walk with him step by step. Her
white feet shone in the pale moonlight.

They made for rising ground, and were rewarded by finding the debris
less massive.

"The flood must have been narrow hereabouts," said Henry. "We shall soon
be clear of it, I hope."

Soon after this, they came under a short but sturdy oak that had
survived; and, entangled in its close and crooked branches, was
something white. They came nearer; it was a dead body: some poor man or
woman hurried from sleep to Eternity.

They shuddered and crawled on, still making for higher ground, but sore
perplexed.

Presently they heard a sort of sigh. They went toward it, and found a
poor horse stuck at an angle; his efforts to escape being marred by a
heavy stone to which he was haltered.

Henry patted him, and encouraged him, and sawed through his halter;
then he struggled up, but Henry held him, and put Grace on him. She sat
across him and held on by the mane.

The horse, being left to himself, turned back a little, and crossed the
quagmire till he got into a bridle-road, and this landed them high and
dry on the turnpike.

Here they stopped, and, by one impulse, embraced each other, and thanked
God for their wonderful escape.

But soon Henry's exultation took a turn that shocked Grace's religious
sentiments, which recent acquaintance had strengthened.

"Yes," he cried, "now I believe that God really does interpose in
earthly things; I believe every thing; yesterday I believed nothing. The
one villain is swept away, and we two are miraculously saved. Now we can
marry to-morrow--no, to-day, for it is past midnight. Oh, how good He
is, especially for killing that scoundrel out of our way. Without his
death, what was life worth to me? But now--oh, Heavens! is it all a
dream? Hurrah! h