he fiendish host; while the horns were blown from
mountain to mountain, announcing utter destruction to whatsoever should
venture to obstruct the path of the army of the winds. In the shrieking
solitude it seemed as if chaos and the end of the world were come. The
poor old man crouched down, keeping his body between the gale and the
baby's cradle, while the last remaining wall of the cottage fell flat
before his eyes. But he felt himself being urged slowly but surely away
from the refuge of the trench, downwards, downwards. The cradle, in
spite of its iron ballast, was just overturning, when, with the strength
of despair, he threw his body across it, digging his feet into the
ground, and once more knotted the loose end of rope around his waist.
The downward slip was stayed. Pushing the cradle with knees and arms,
clutching the soil with hands and feet, he crept with his precious
charge nearer and nearer the widened hole. Once over the edge the baby
would be safe. The windy fiend seemed to be pursuing him with vindictive
hate. It shrieked and tore around that bare strip of mountain side, as
though the whole purpose of its fury was to destroy the old man and the
babe. With a superhuman effort he grasped the cradle in both arms and
lifted it in, then fell senseless across the opening.

Gradually the demon horns ceased to blow, the great guns died into
silence, and the army of the air dispersed. The rain fell in torrents,
but the old man never moved.

When the storm was over, and anxious steps hastened up the mountain
path, and horror-stricken faces gazed at the ruined home and the havoc
all around, there was broken-hearted lamentation for the old man and the
child, supposed to have perished in the tornado. At last the mother's
searching eye discerned in the sunshine that lay across the still
mountain-side an unfamiliar object; and hastening towards it with the
lingering hope of learning some news of her darling, she perceived the
old man lying in his last sleep, with the eternal Peace in his
child-like face, still stretched as if in protection across a trench, in
which the baby lay safe in its cradle, sleeping as peacefully as he.

THE ROAD BY THE SEA.

PART I.

From East to West there stretched a long, straight road, glimmering
white across the grey evening landscape: silently conscious, it seemed,
of the countless human feet, that for ages had trodden it and gone their
way--their way for good, or their way f