Part 23 (1/2)

Listen!”

The gloo sloay, and up out of that gloo faintly through giant aphones

”_Clear away! Clear away! Clear away!_” they said, and the valley and the ht up the echoes, until it see Then fell a strange and weird silence, and the echoes faded away like the voices of dyingof a coyote that answered the ht Joanne was close to the rock Quietly theon the battery drew back

”It is ready!” said one

”Wait!” said Blackton, as his ent to speak, ”Listen!”

For five aphone cried the word:

”_Fire!_”

”All is clear,” said the engineer, with a deep breath ”All you have to do, Miss Gray, is to move that little lever from the side on which it now rests to the opposite side Are you ready?”

In the darkness Joanne's left hand had sought John's It clung to his tightly He could feel a little shi+ver run through her

”Yes,” she whispered

”Then--if you please--press the button!”

Slowly Joanne's right hand crept out, while the fingers of her left clung tighter to Aldous She touched the button--thrust it over A little cry that fell from between her tense lips told them she had done the work, and a silence like that of death fell on those aited

A half a minute--perhaps three quarters--and a shi+ver ran under their feet, but there was no sound; and then a black pall, darker than the night, seemed to rise up out of the mountain, and with that, a second later, ca, as if the earth were convulsed under foot; volumes of dense black s, twisting volumes of black becauns rent the air As fast as the eye could follow sheets of flaher, in lightning flashes, until the lurid tongues licked the air a quarter of a mile above the startled wilderness Explosion followed explosion, so boo as if in midair Unseen by the watchers, the heavens were filled with hurtling rocks; solid ranite ten feet square were thrown a hundred feet away; rocks weighing a ton were hurled still farther, as if they were no iant; chunks that would have crashed from the roof to the basement of a skyscraper dropped a third of a htful convulsions continued, and the tongues of flahts died out, shorter and shorter grew the sullen flashes, and then again fell--silence!

During those appalling moments, unconscious of the act, Joanne had shrank close to Aldous, so that he felt the soft crush of her hair and the swift ht theh of a man who had looked upon ell done

”It has done the trick,” he said ”To-ed ht Hutchins, the superintendent, is passing through in the afternoon, and I want him to see it” He spoke now to a , have Twenty-eight ready at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon--four o'clock--sharp!”

Then he said:

”Dust and a bad so hoh the gloom John Aldous still held Joanne's hand in his own, and she made no effort to take it fro, when Aldous joined the engineer in the dining-room below, he was disappointed to find the breakfast table prepared for two instead of four It was evident that Peggy Blackton and Joanne were not going to interrupt their beauty nap on their account

Blackton saw his friend's inquiring look, and chuckled

”Guess we'll have to get along without 'e, old ht--after you went to bed?”

”No”

”You were too far away,” chuckled Blackton again, ”I was in the rooy soht sort of coo to bed until after twelve o'clock I looked atlike two bees, and every little while they'd giggle, and then go on buzzing again By George, there wasn't a break in it! When one let up the other'd begin, and so at once Consequently, they're sleeping now”