orders given to have it
fulfilled.

A pitiful scene took place when the King bent over a poor man, whose
right leg had been amputated, and asked what he could do to comfort and
aid him in his affliction.

"Send me my son, who is serving as a soldier," said the maimed peasant.

The King, visibly affected, clasped the old man's hand and exclaimed:

"My poor fellow! I can do much, but to grant your request would mean
breaking the laws, which I must be the first to respect. I would give
anything I have were it possible by so doing to send your son to you,
but I cannot do so."

While the King was thus engaged at the scenes of desolation, Queen
Helene visited the charitable institutions at Naples and inspected the
places where the refugees were housed, doing what she could to improve
conditions and add to the comfort of the sufferers. The Princess of
Schleswig-Holstein, who was in Naples, made an automobile visit to the
afflicted towns, but the motor broke down, and she was forced to return
on foot, walking a distance of twelve miles through the ashes and
displaying a power of endurance that surprised the natives.

THE CANOPY OF DUST.

By Friday, April 13th, the eruption was practically at an end. Vesuvius
had spent itself in the enormous convulsion of the 7th and 8th and
the subsequent minor explosions and had returned to its normal state,
ceasing to give any signs of life, except the cloud of smoke which still
rose from its crater and spread like a thick curtain over and around the
mountain. Looked at from Naples, there was none of the familiar aspects
of the volcano, with its output of smoke and ashes by day and fiery
gleam by night. Now it lay buried in darkness and obscurity, clothed
in a dense pall of smoke. At Rome there was sunshine, but twenty miles
south hung a misty veil, and twenty-five miles above Naples a zone of
semi-obscurity began, blotting out the sun, whose light trickled through
with a sickly glare. Everything was whitened with powdery dust; pretty
white villas were daubed and dripping with mud, and people were busy
shoveling the ashes from their roofs.

The crowds at the stations resembled millers, their clothes flour
covered; the Campania presented the appearance of a Dakota prairie after
a blizzard of snow, though everything was gray instead of white. The
ashes lay in drifts knee deep. As the volcano was approached semi-night
replaced the day, the gloom being so deep that telegraph poles t