monotonous shadow at night; with the onset of heavy winds, the roar of turbulent woods, the tumultuous tossing of leafy arms, and with what seemed the silent dissolution of the whole landscape in days of steady and uninterrupted downfall.  It came extravagantly, for every canyon had grown into a torrent, every gulch a waterspout, every watercourse a river, and all pouring into the North Fork, that, rushing past the settlement, seemed to threaten it with lifted crest and flying mane.  It came dangerously, for one night the river, leaping the feeble barrier of Devil’s Ford, swept away houses and banks, scattered with unconscious irony the laboriously collected heaps of gravel left for hydraulic machinery, and spread out a vast and silent lake across the submerged flat.

In the hurry and confusion of that night the girls had thrown open their cabin to the escaping miners, who hurried along the slope that was now the bank of the river.  Suddenly Christie felt her arm grasped, and she was half-led, half-dragged, into the inner room.  Her father stood before her.

“Where is George Kearney?” he asked tremulously.

“George Kearney!” echoed Christie, for a moment believing the excitement had turned her father’s brain.  “You know he is not here; he is in San Francisco.”

“He is here—­I tell you,” said Carr impatiently; “he has been here ever since the high water, trying to save the flume and reservoir.”

“George—­here!” Christie could only gasp.

“Yes!  He passed here a few moments ago, to see if you were all safe, and he has gone on towards the flume.  But what he is trying to do is madness.  If you see him, implore him to do no more.  Let him abandon the accursed flume to its fate.  It has worked already too much woe upon us all; why should it carry his brave and youthful soul down with it?”

The words were still ringing in her ears, when he suddenly passed away, with the hurrying crowd.  Scarcely knowing what she did, she ran out, vaguely intent only on one thought, seeking only the one face, lately so dear in recollection that she felt she would die if she never saw it again.  Perplexed by confused voices in the woods, she lost track of the crowd, until the voices suddenly were raised in one loud outcry, followed by the crashing of timber, the splashing of water, a silence, and then a dull, continuous roar.  She ran vaguely on in the direction of the reservoir, with her father’s injunction still in her mind, until a terrible idea displaced it, and she turned at right angles suddenly, and ran towards the slope leading down to the submerged flat.  She had barely left the shelter of the trees behind her before the roar of water seemed to rise at her very feet.  She stopped, dazed, bewildered, and horror-stricken, on the edge of the slope.  It was the slope no longer, but the bank of the river itself!