doubt if it would pass a squad without
those children in it. I suppose it would hold several tons of dynamite!
Heigh-ho, I suppose it is all in the day's work. What can you expect if
you live in an earthquake country?" They had reached the pavement and
she put her lips close to Isabel's ear. "I'd like to get out of the
damned place and never see it again," she whispered. "I'll keep a stiff
upper lip, but those are my sentiments and I guess I have company."

She stepped lightly into the car, nodded with a grim gayety, and in
another moment had disappeared round the corner of Taylor and California
streets.

Isabel started down the hill, and almost immediately met Anne
Montgomery. She had not recognized her as they approached each other,
for the glare was in her eyes; but Miss Montgomery ran forward and
kissed her.

"What on earth did you come to this God-forsaken place for, when you had
the country to stay in?" she demanded. "Oh, Lady Victoria? I did not
know she was here. Just come with me and look at a sight."

She put her arm through Isabel's and led her rapidly for several blocks
along California Street, then down Hyde towards moving columns of
people. The fire was far south of these refugees as yet, but they looked
down every cross street and saw it; and more than once during their slow
flight they had seen the soldiers at the visible end of each long vista
move a block farther north. "I tramped a long way with them," said Miss
Montgomery, "carrying things for a woman I never saw before. Then a man
took the burden over and I started up the hill to see how some friends
were faring."

From this point they could hear the roar and crackle of the fire and the
crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of
thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks
and stones. Isabel, still feeling like a palimpsest, lingered for an
hour looking at these refugees. They were vastly different, in all but
their impotence, from those of the early morning. Hundreds were from the
"boarding-house district"; others were householders; a large number, no
doubt, owned their carriages or automobiles, but those had been
impressed long since. It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, for
by this time nearly every one had recovered from the shock of the
earthquake; many forgotten it, no doubt, in the new horror. They had not
the blank expression of the poor, dazed by the second calamity following
so