ble loss of life! Thousands dead! Awful
scenes! Earthquake in California!"

The people swayed again--then stopped in massed groups,--some clutching
at the newsboys as they ran and buying the papers as fast as they could
be sold, while all the time above the muffled roar of the city they
sent their cries aloft, echoing near and far--

"Thousands dead! Awful scenes! Towns destroyed! Terrible Earthquake in
California!"

Sam Gwent stepped out from the church portal, elbowing his way through
the confusion,--the yells of the news vendors rang sharply in his ears
and yet for the moment he scarcely grasped their meaning; "California"
was the one word that caught him, as it were, with a hammer
stroke,--then "Thousands dead!" Finding at last an open passage through
the dispersing crowd, he went at something of a run after one of the
newsboys, and snatched the last paper he had to sell out of his hand.

"What is it?" he demanded as he paid his money.

"Dunno!" the boy replied, breathlessly--"'Xpect everybody's dead down
California way!"

Gwent unfolded the journal and stared at the great headlines, printed
in fat black letters, still smelling strongly of printer's ink.

Appalling Earthquake In California!--Mountain Upheaval!--Towns Wiped
Out!--Plaza Hotel Engulfed!--Frightful Loss of Life!

His eyes grew dim and dazzled--his brain swam,--he gazed up unseeingly
at the blue sky, the tall "sky-scraper" houses, the sweep of human and
vehicular traffic around him; and to his excited fancy the beautiful
face of Manella came, like a phantom, between him and all else that was
presented to his vision--that face warm and glowing with woman's
tenderness--the splendid dark eyes aflame with love for a man whose
indifference to her only strengthened her adoration and he seemed to
hear the deep defiant voice of Roger Seaton ringing in his ears--

"Annihilation! A holocaust of microbes! I would--and could--wipe them
off the face of the earth in twenty-four hours!" He could--and would!

"And by Heaven," said Gwent, within himself--"He's done it!"

CHAPTER XXIII

Struck by the hand of God! So men say when, after denying God's
existence ail their lives, the seeming solid earth heaves up like a
ship on a storm-billow, dragging down in its deep recoil their lives
and habitations. An earthquake! Its irresistible rise and fall makes
human beings more powerless than insects,--their houses and possessions
have less stability than the