y with a laugh.

"Well, this yer earthquake was ten years ago, just after I came. I
reckon I oughter remember it. It was a queer sort o' day in the fall,
dry and hot as if thar might hev bin a fire in the woods, only thar
wasn't no wind. Not a breath of air anywhar. The leaves of them
alders hung straight as a plumb-line. Except for that thar stream and
that thar wheel, nuthin' moved. Thar wasn't a bird on the wing over
that canyon; thar wasn't a squirrel skirmishin' in the hull wood; even
the lizards in the rocks stiffened like stone Chinese idols. It kept
gettin' quieter and quieter, ontil I walked out on that ledge and felt
as if I'd have to give a yell just to hear my own voice. Thar was a
thin veil over everything, and betwixt and between everything, and the
sun was rooted in the middle of it as if it couldn't move neither.
Everythin' seemed to be waitin', waitin', waitin'. Then all of a
suddin suthin' seemed to give somewhar! Suthin' fetched away with a
queer sort of rumblin', as if the peg had slipped outer creation. I
looked up and kalkilated to see half a dozen of them boulders come,
lickity switch, down the grade. But, darn my skin, if one of 'em
stirred! and yet while I was looking, the whole face o' that bluff
bowed over softly, as if saying 'Good-by,' and got clean away somewhar
before I knowed it. Why, you see that pile agin the side o' the
canyon! Well, a thousand feet under that there's trees, three hundred
feet high, still upright and standin'. You know how them pines over on
that far mountain-side always seem to be climbin' up, up, up, over each
other's heads to the very top? Well, Mr. Key, I SAW 'EM climbin'! And
when I pulled myself together and got back to the mill, everything was
quiet; and, by G--d, so was the mill-wheel, and there wasn't two inches
of water in the river!"

"And what did you think of it?" said Key, interested in spite of his
impatience.

"I thought, Mr. Key-- No! I mustn't say I thought, for I knowed it. I
knowed that suthin' had happened to my wife!"

Key did not smile, but even felt a faint superstitious thrill as he
gazed at him. After a pause Collinson resumed: "I heard a month after
that she had died about that time o' yaller fever in Texas with the
party she was comin' with. Her folks wrote that they died like flies,
and wuz all buried together, unbeknownst and promiscuous, and thar
wasn't no remains. She slipped away from me like that bluff over th