ed to his own element, only to be killed
later by some thoughtless refugee who washed his hands in the water
with soap. The half bucket or so of water remaining in the pool helped
to save the day, for the fire fighters dipped rugs and sacks in it,
and, climbing to the flat roof, took turns in dashing through the
scorching heat to beat the cornices when they began to smoke. Even so,
the escape was so narrow that at times it seemed hopeless, and the
rescuers took the precaution to dig a hole in the garden and bury the
silverware, the St. Gaudens plaque, and other valuables.

When the three days' conflagration had finally worn itself out and the
tired and smoke-begrimed fighters could take account, they found the
house and its contents safe, except for a huge hole in the roof where
the earthquake had thrown down a large heavy chimney, piling up the
bricks on the bed in the guest-chamber, fortunately not occupied at
the time. But the outlook was ghastly, for the house stood high on its
clean-swept hill like a lonely outpost in a great waste of cinders,
half-fallen chimneys, and sagging walls. In two weeks' time, while
they still smoked, the ruins took on a strangely old look, and it was
like standing in the midst of the excavations of an ancient city.
Around the solitary house on the hill the wind howled, making a
mournful moaning sound through the broken network of wires that hung
everywhere in the streets.

Homeless refugees, running through the streets like wild creatures
driven before a prairie fire, came pouring past, and some stopped to
build their lean-to shacks of pieces of board and sacking against the
sheltering wall of the house. Blankets and other things were passed
out to keep them warm, and when they finally went their way the
blankets went with them, but Mrs. Stevenson was glad that they should
have them and said she would have done the same had she been in their
case.

All this while her son and daughter--the son in New York and the
daughter in Italy--were in a state of anguished suspense as to their
mother's fate. By a strange coincidence the daughter had herself been
in some danger from the great eruption of Vesuvius, and had but just
escaped from that when she heard newsboys crying in the streets of
Rome, "San Francisco _tutta distrutta_!" Several days passed in
intense anxiety before she received the telegram with the blessed
words "Mother safe!"

As it was quite impossible to live in the destroyed