and it never stop
shake for four months. Ay yi, California! I theenk we all go into the
bay this morning, and I fall down twice when I run to see how little
Senorita Inez she feeling. Ay yi!"

"Why did you not go to the country?"

"And who take care the house? The car come back bime-by for the other
servants, but I no go. Si, I can go in the train--then--perhaps. But no
in automobilia. Is devil, no less."

"Well, if you should be frightened come up to me," and Isabel went on
hurriedly to her own home, suddenly reminded of the uncertainty of her
relative's nerves. But Victoria was standing on the porch staring
outward with such an intensity of gaze that she took no notice of
Isabel's approach. And when Isabel reached her side, she too stood
silent for a time. _The Call_ Building was on fire. This square tower of
seventeen stories and a dome, with some seventy windows on each side,
had caught fire at the top, and as the flames devoured the contents of
one floor as quickly as possible that they might dart down another
flight and gorge themselves anew, in an incredibly short time the two
hundred windows in sight, and no doubt those in the rear, were spouting
flames like the mouths of so many cannon: each sharply defined, owing to
the indestructible nature of the walls. Volumes of white smoke poured
upward to be lost in the black clouds above. At times the fire and
smoke, on either side, torn by the wind, seemed to dance and gyrate in a
Bacchanalian revel, taking monstrous forms, that exploded in showers of
sparks, glittering like the fabled California sands. Above the burning
district the smoke clouds changed form constantly. Sometimes they reeled
along like colossal water-spouts. The roar of the fire waxed louder as
one listened to it: a deep persistent energetic roar, as of a sea
climbing over a land its time had come to devour.

Suddenly a curtain of smoke swept down and obliterated the scene,
conveying a sense of respite, challenging the memory, although a moment
later it was shot with a million sparks.

Victoria announced briefly that they were to have lunch of a sort, but
for her part she would prefer a bath.

A bath, however, was out of the question, and, without washing the
cinders from their faces and hands, they sat down to beefsteak fried on
one of the oil-stoves used for heating the Mansard story, and canned
vegetables. That much indulgence they might have permitted themselves,
but human nature is prone