"He has murdered her," he thought; and getting a momentary chance, he fired, but without effect; Ben climbed a tree, springing from branch to branch like a squirrel, until he reached the top, and like a squirrel, chattering nonsense to himself. "If I had another shot I would put an end to his miserable existence," muttered Philip, turning away to trace, if possible, the track of the man, and find where he had dropped Alice. Soon he came out upon a small, open, elevated space--the river was upon one side, the woods all around. Something strange was in the air--nature seemed to be listening--not a breath rippled the water or made a leaf quiver--he felt hot and suffocated. Despite of all his mental misery, he, too, paused and listened like the elements--his ear caught a far-away murmur. The day had been very warm for that season of the year; it grew, now, oppressive. A low bank of dark clouds lay along the south and west, hanging over the prairie on the opposite side of the stream--it was such a bank of clouds as would seem to threaten rain before midnight; but even while he gazed, a great black column wheeled up from the mass and whirled along the sky with frightful rapidity. The distant murmur grew to a roar, and the roar deepened and increased until it was like the surf-swell of a thousand oceans. Stunned by the tumult, fascinated by the sublime terror of the spectacle, he followed with his gaze the course of the destructive traveler, which flew forward, sweeping down upon the country closer and more close. The air was black--night fell upon every thing--he saw the tornado--holding in its bosom dust, stones, branches of trees, roofs of houses, a dark, whirling mass of objects, which it had caught up as it ran--reach the river, and with an instinct of self-preservation, threw himself flat upon the ground, behind a rock which jutted up near him. He could tell when it smote the forest, for the tremendous roar was pierced through with the snapping, crackling sound of immense trees, broken off like pipe-stems and hurled in a universal crash to the earth. A short time he crouched where he was, held down in fact, pressed, flattened, hurt by the trampling winds; but nothing else struck him, and presently he struggled to his feet. What a spectacle met him, as he looked toward the forest from which he had so lately emerged! A vast and overwhelming ruin, in the midst of which it seemed impossible that any life, animal or vegetable, should have escaped. A desolation, such as poets have pictured as clinging to the "last man," came over the soul of Philip Moore. Where were his friends? where that gay party he had invited from their distant homes to meet this fate? where was Alice, his wife of an hour? His manhood yielded to the blow; he cowered and sobbed like a child.