“And you will take care of the others, too,” she said.  “Uncle Robert doesn’t know what to do, nor William.  Oh!  Look!  The poor black people!  There they come running up from the quarters.  See how they are crowding round the door, wild with terror!  But you will know what to say to them as well as the others.  I am not afraid, with you,” quietly looking up in his grave face.  “Is it the end of the world, dear heart?”

He said that he knew no more than herself what it could be, unless some terrific tempest might be near.  They moved hurriedly on toward the house, and as they went he told her that he was going to the boat where he had been called to see a man ill of the plague.  The call had come during the night, but he could not leave another patient to answer it more quickly.  And now he would not leave her, for all the rest of the world, till they knew what this awful thing was which seemed about to happen.  The white people had come out of the house and stood speechless and motionless, looking up at the heavens and down at the earth, seeing both but dimly through that ghastly twilight so awfully lit by that lurid ball of fire.

“Here comes Father Orin!” cried the doctor.  “Look at Toby and my horse; see how they are walking!”

The horses could be indistinctly seen advancing slowly and reluctantly through the yellowish gloom with a curious, sliding motion, as if stepping on ice.  Paul started toward them, but paused, struck motionless, and held by a sight still more strange.  The same breathless stillness brooded over everything; the windless air now weighed like lead, and yet at this moment the greatest trees and smallest bushes suddenly began to quiver from bottom to top.  As far as the horror-struck eyes could reach through that unnatural twilight, the mightiest cottonwoods were now bending and nodding like the frailest reeds.  And then there arose in the far northeast a faint rumbling which rushed swiftly onward toward the southeast, growing, louder as it came, and breaking over Cedar House in a thunderous roar.  At the deafening crash Paul turned and ran back to Ruth, catching her in his arms.  The ground was now sliding beneath their feet.  The solid earth was waving and rising and falling like a stormy sea.

“It’s an earthquake,” he whispered, with his lips against her cheek.  “Don’t fear, it will pass.”

A second shock followed the first, and there was no lightening of the dreadful gloom which was one of the greatest horrors of that horrible time.  But the men were rallying now that they knew what they had to meet, and they quickly and firmly drew the terror-stricken, helpless old women further away from the house, fearing that the massive logs of its walls might be shaken down.

“That isn’t far enough,” said Father Orin.  “Come still farther,” glancing round for the safest refuge.  “Merciful God!  Look at the river!”