lence was absolutely profound. They were
surrounded by groves where the birds as a rule piped and sang loudly;
but everything was hushed as if the thick dust-cloud had shut in all
sound.

And what a cloud of dust! The dust of a buried city, of a people who
had lived when the earth was a couple of thousand years or more younger,
when western Europe was the home of barbarians. The dust of buildings
that had been erected by the most civilised peoples then dwelling in the
world, and this now rising in the thick dense cloud which seemed as if
it would never pass.

An hour must have gone by, and they were conscious as they stood there
in a group that the mist looked blacker, and by this they felt that the
night must be coming on. For some time now there had not been the
slightest quiver of the ground, and in place of the horses standing with
their legs spread wide and heads low, staring wildly, and snorting with
dread, they had gathered themselves together again, and were beginning
to crop the herbage here and there, but blowing over it and letting it
fall from their lips again as if in disgust.

And no wonder, for every blade and leaf was covered with a fine
impalpable powder, while, as the perspiration dried upon the exposed
parts of the travellers, their skins seemed to be stiff and caked with
the dust.

"I think the earthquake is over, excellencies," said Yussuf calmly. "I
could not be sure, but the look of the sky this evening was strange."

"I had read of earthquakes out here," said the professor, who was
gaining confidence now; "but you do not often have such shocks as
these?"

"Oh, yes, effendi; it is not an unusual thing. Much more terrible than
this; whole towns are sometimes swallowed up. Hundreds of lives are
lost, and hundreds left homeless."

"Then you call this a slight earthquake?" said Mr Burne.

"Certainly, excellency, here," was the reply. "It may have been very
terrible elsewhere. Terrible to us if we had been standing beside those
stones which fell. It would have been awful enough if all these ruins
had been, as they once were, grandly built houses and temples."

"And I was grumbling about poor dear old sooty, foggy England," said Mr
Burne. "Dear, dear, dear, what foolish things one says!"

"Is not the dust settling down?" said the professor just then.

"A little, your excellency; but it is so fine that unless we have a
breeze it may be hours before it is gone."

"Then what do yo