and the
little car quickly carried them up the incline above the top of the dam.

They paused here at the first sharp curve under the lee of the cut
bank, where they might take breath and look down. There came up and
grouped themselves near them and beyond them now several of the people
of the camp, and practically all of the soldiers from the barracks, who
fell into a stiff, silent line, looking down. It was a scene singular
enough which lay before them, this wild remaking of the wilderness.

There came another cosmic cry from the chaos below them, more
terrifying than anything yet had been. Two Forks was throwing in the
reserves. The enemy was breaking! Doctor Barnes knew what this meant.
The break was widening. He stood looking down. And then he heard a
human voice cry out, a voice he knew.

He turned--and saw Mary Gage fall as though in a faint upon the ground.
Her eye-bandages were off, her eyes wholly uncovered to the light.

"Well, it's over now," said he quietly to Annie Squires. "One way or
the other, it's done."

He lifted her gently, attended her until at length she moved,
stood--until at length he knew that she saw!

She turned her face back from the ruin which had been her first vision
of her new world, and looked into the eyes of the man who had given
back to her eyes with which to see. And he looked deep, deep into her
own, grave and unsmiling.

She spoke to him at last. "I can see," said she simply.

"I'm very glad," said he, trying to be as simple. But he turned her
away, giving her into Annie's arms.

"Look!" cried other voices.

A section of the side of the great U, running clear back to a seam
which had formed in the dam face, slowly broke out and went down. The
water rose like a tide now, very rapidly, because the canyon itself, so
narrow and so full of abrupt curves, made no adequate outlet for this
augmented flood. The entire lower part of the camp was covered, and
the flood, eddying back from the mountain wall, came creeping up toward
the top of the grade, covering now this and now that portion of the
settlement. One house after another was swept away before their eyes.

Doctor Barnes stood looking out over it all moodily. He did not go
back to Mary Gage. Back beyond a few of the soldiers were chattering
idly, but no one paid attention to them, for not even they themselves
knew that they were talking. But at length a voice, clear and
distinct, did come to Doctor Bar