ing down the river, signaling the "St. Lawrence."

Each turn of the ponderous wheels swept her nearer and nearer, and the
"St. Lawrence" was drifting directly across her bow. It was a moment so
feighted with horror it almost turned Varrick's brain. Five hundred
souls, or more, all unconscious of their deadly peril, were laughing and
chattering down below, and the pilot was dead at the wheel!

Ere he could give the alarm, a terrible catastrophe would occur. He
realized this, and made the supreme effort of his life to avert it. But
fate was against him. In his mad haste to leap down the stair-way to
give warning, his foot slipped, and he fell headlong to the floor of the
lower deck, his temple, coming in contact with the railing, rendering
him unconscious. Heaven was merciful to him that he did not realize what
took place at that instant.

There was a sudden shock, a terrible crash, and half a thousand souls,
with terrified shrieks on their lips, found themselves struggling in the
dark waters!

It was a reign of terror that those who participated in it, never
forgot.

When Hubert Varrick returned to consciousness he found himself lying
full length upon the greensward, and his face upturned to the moonlight,
with the dead and dying around him, and the groans of the wounded
ringing in his ears.

For an instant he was bewildered; then, with a rush, Memory mounted its
throne in his whirling brain, and he recollected what had happened--the
pilot dead at the wheel, another steamer sweeping down upon them; how he
had rushed below to inform the passengers of their peril; how his foot
had slipped, and he knew no more.

He realized that there must have been a horrible disaster.

How came he there? Who had saved him? Then, like a flash, he thought of
Gerelda. Where was she? What had become of her? He struggled to his
feet, weak and dazed.

He made the most diligent search for her, but she was nowhere to be
found. Some one at length came hurriedly up to him. In the clear bright
moonlight Varrick saw that it was the doctor in whose care he had left
his young bride when he had gone on deck for fresh air.

"You are looking for _her_, sir?" he asked, huskily.

"Yes," cried Varrick, tremulously.

"Are you brave enough to hear the truth?" said the other, slowly.

"Yes," answered Varrick.

"Your wife was lost in the disaster. I was by her side when the steamer
was struck. We had both concluded to go on deck to join you. Wit