es rise from courts and
gardens into the warm blue sky, indescribably blue, that appears almost
to touch the feathery heads of them. And all things within and without
the yellow vista are steeped in a sunshine electrically white, in a
radiance so powerful that it lends even to the pavement of basalt the
glitter of silver ore.

"Everywhere rushes mountain water--cool and crystal--clear, washing the
streets; from time to time you come to some public fountain flinging a
silvery column to the sun.... And often you will note, in the course of
a walk, little drinking fountains contrived in the angle of a building,
or in the thick walls bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public
squares; glittering threads of water spurting through lion-lips of
stone."

Alas for St. Pierre!

Above the pier but one street had been partly restored, and, at every
gap, the boy's gaze encountered gray ruins. The ash, poured out by the
mountain in its vast upheaval, has made a rich soil. To Stuart's eyes,
the town was a town of dreams, of great stone staircases that led to
nowhere, of high archways that gave upon a waste. The entrance hall of
the great Cathedral, once one of the finest in the West Indies, still
leads to the high altar, but that finds its home in a little wooden
structure with a tin roof, shrinking in what was once a corner of the
apse.

Built as a lean-to in the corner of what had once been a small, but
strongly-built house was a store, a very small store, outside the door
of which a crippled negro was sitting. Thinking that this might be one
of the old-timers of St. Pierre, Stuart stopped and bought a small
trinket, partly as a memento, partly as a means of getting into
conversation.

"But yes, Monsieur," answered the storekeeper, "it was my wife and I--we
escaped. My wife, she had been sent into Morne Rouge, that very morning,
with a message from her mistress. Me, I was working on the road, not
more than a mile away. I saw nothing of it, Monsieur. About half-past
seven that morning (twenty-two minutes, therefore, before the final
eruption) a shower of stones fell where I was working. One fell on my
back, and left me crippled, as you see. But my four children, ah!
Monsieur, they sleep here, somewhere!"

He waved his hand toward the riot of ruin and foliage which now marks
the city which once prided itself on being called "the gayest little
city in the West Indies."

"Yet you have come back!" exclaimed Stuart.

"But yes,