hment frankly.

"Thunder on a cool night in May! Who ever heard of such a thing?"

"It is the voice of the Shining One," said Nanna to herself, and hurried
on the faster.

"Yet the lightning must have struck somewhere," persisted Piers Minor,
"for the sky is red. There! look for yourself."

Half a dozen blocks away to the westward they could see flames shooting
from the windows of a warehouse. Its contents must have been highly
combustible, for they were burning like chaff in a furnace draught. As
they stood and watched the conflagration a second explosion occurred,
and so close at hand that the ground seemed to rock beneath their feet.
And with that Nanna's heart grew faint within her, for now she knew
certainly that they were too late. The Shining One had spoken, and Doom
was falling.

Piers Minor looked at his companion with troubled eyes. What was this
devil's work?

"The Shining One," she whispered, and clung to his arm. "See how his
tongues of fire lick up the dust of Doom."

"But who is the Shining One?" demanded the young man, wonderingly.

"Listen!"

Deep under the crackling of the flames vibrated the diapason of the
great dynamo. Piers Minor turned pale.

"He speaks," whispered the girl. "And now look, look!"

A little distance away stood one of the ancient telegraph-poles carrying
a tangled mass of wire ends. The pole had been swaying dangerously in
the rising gale; now with a loud crack it broke off close to the ground
and fell so that the wires were brought into naked contact with a copper
cable suspended on the opposite side of the street. Instantly the "dead"
wires awoke to life, spluttering and hissing like a bunch of snakes; a
cataract of yellow-blue sparks poured from the broken ends.

"The tongues of fire," said Nanna. "You may have seen them devour a
single tree in the forest or suck out a man's life with a touch, but
to-night they are hungry and they are eating up the world."

A terrifying conclusion that was not so far away from the truth. During
the last few minutes the area of the conflagration had increased
tremendously and the whole central portion of the city, including the
Citadel Square, was now a vast furnace in which no life could possibly
exist. For the moment the general direction of the wind had shifted, and
the flames were not bearing down so rapidly as before upon the two
fugitives. They would be in comparative safety for some time yet unless
the gale veered back to it