nd the flood rushed over the abyss, and there
arose a blinding steam that hid the whole scene below, and ascending
circled the mountain peaks in mist.

All about them on the mountain-side rose the cries of terrified wild
things, and along the narrow pathway into the park a herd of cattle
and horses rushed and disappeared among the aspens that trembled as
never before. The collie, scenting their presence, came and crouched
whining at their feet, and a bird fell exhausted into the woman's
arms. She closed her hands over it, unconsciously giving it the
protection none could give them, and in the fog moved toward the
figure of her companion. His arm closed about her convulsively.

"Shall we go farther up the mountain?" he asked.

"'If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now,'" she answered, insensibly finding it easier to use another's
words than to coin phrases while holding death-watch over a continent.

They sat down on the boulder. After what seemed like countless hours,
she said, "I wonder how long we have been here. Perhaps it is years."

He looked at his watch. "I do not know whether we are in time or
eternity," he answered simply. "It is nearly four o'clock by this
watch."

Through the dense vapor they saw the sun rise, red and sullen, but the
mist was so impenetrable that they dared not move about. The day and
night passed, almost without their knowledge, and the second morning
found them, as the first, by the great boulder. The wind rose with the
sun, and when it blew aside the veil of mist, far as the eye could
reach, there rolled a sea, white-capped, turbulent, fretful, as if
unwilling to leave a single peak to tower above its lordly dominion.

The man and woman followed the collie to the cabin, and there found
some food, then they retraced their way until they could look down
over the valley where the town had slept. Nothing was left. There was
not even a prospector's cabin. The shock which had succeeded the first
wild dash had been volcanic. The very canons looked strange, and
though they called again and again there came no answer.

"Come," the man said imperiously. "Let us go to the Peak. There must
be some one there."

They reached the signal station late in the afternoon; no one was
there. Looking down from that awful eminence, they saw on the other
side of the range the same desolation, the same watery waste. They
seemed to be on an island, alone on a wide, wide sea. No