"How soon can we hope to start back?" asked Estelle eagerly.

Arthur hesitated, then a great deal of the excitement ebbed from
his face, leaving it rather worried and stern.

"It may be a month, or two months, or a year," he answered
gravely. "I don't know. If the first thing I try will work, it
won't be long. If we have to experiment, I daren't guess how long
we may be. But"--his chin set firmly--"we're going to get back."

Estelle looked at him speculatively. Her own expression grew a
little worried, too.

"But in a month," she said dubiously, "we--there is hardly any hope
of our finding food for two thousand people for a month, is there?"

"We've got to," Arthur declared. "We can't hope to get that much
food from the Indians. It will be days before they'll dare to come
back to their village, if they ever come. It will be weeks before
we can hope to have them earnestly at work to feed us, and that's
leaving aside the question of how we'll communicate with them, and
how we'll manage to trade with them. Frankly, I think everybody is
going to have to draw his belt tight before we get through--if we
do. Some of us will get along, anyway."

Estelle's eyes opened wide as the meaning of his last sentence
penetrated her mind.

"You mean--that all of us won't--"

"I'm going to take care of you," Arthur said gravely, "but there
are liable to be lively doings around here when people begin to
realize they're really in a tight fix for food. I'm going to get
Van Deventer to help me organize a police band to enforce martial
law. We mustn't have any disorder, that's certain, and I don't
trust a city-bred man in a pinch unless I know him."

He stooped and picked up a revolver from the floor, left there
by one of the bank watchmen when he fled, in the belief that the
building was falling.

VII.

Arthur stood at the window of his office and stared out toward the
west. The sun was setting, but upon what a scene!

Where, from this same window Arthur had seen the sun setting behind
the Jersey hills, all edged with the angular roofs of factories,
with their chimneys emitting columns of smoke, he now saw the same
sun sinking redly behind a mass of luxuriant foliage. And where
he was accustomed to look upon the tops of high buildings--each
entitled to the name of "skyscraper"--he now saw miles and miles
of waving green branches.

The wide Hudson flowed on placidly, all unruffled by the arrival of
this strange monume