ng up and
down the veranda.

"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed. "I did not dare to wonder if you were dead
or alive. Why did we ever come to this God-forsaken country?" She did
not offer to embrace them, but her eyes were brilliant, and there was a
color in her cheeks. And no one had ever heard her talk so fast. "Was
it as dreadful with you? Did you get out of the house? I was awake when
I heard that awful roar. Somehow, I knew what it meant, and before the
earthquake was well begun I was out here. I never ran so fast in my
life, although I was flung against the walls. And I almost wished I had
stayed in the house. Such a sight! That awful reeling city! Just imagine
thousands of buildings plunging, and leaping, and dancing, and toppling.
Towers bowing to you so solemnly that I almost disgraced myself and had
hysterics. And steeples pitching off, or huddling down like corpses. And
that awful loud deep steady roar and crash of a thousand walls and
chimneys falling. And the dust that seemed to swallow the city. For a
moment I thought it had gone, and expected the hills to follow. Then it
rose and everybody on earth seemed to be in those streets--and in white.
They looked like Isabel's Leghorns. Such pigmies from up here. Pigmies!
That is what we all are. And Angelique, the wretch, has run away."

"Well, she cannot go far, as all the railroads but one seem to be
injured," said Gwynne, soothingly. "Better go in and dress and we'll
walk down and take a look at things. That will divert your mind."

But it was not until Isabel had assured her that the worst force of an
earth movement in California spent itself in the first great shock, and
offered to help her dress, that Victoria could be persuaded to enter the
house. Gwynne fetched Isabel's field-glass and studied the scene below,
picking out the more disastrous work of the earthquake. All the new
solid buildings, and most of the old, appeared to be unharmed, and the
residence district, built of wood on stone foundations, for the most
part, was much as usual, save for its altered sky-line: every chimney
and skylight had disappeared. But tall slender factory chimneys had
broken raggedly in half, and the great tower of the City Hall, standing
high against the blue sky and advancing smoke, seemed to shriek like a
man whose flesh had been torn off with hot pincers until only the shamed
skeleton was left. Nothing but the steel cage that had supported the
bricks remained: eloquent of th