The outskirts of the town were more than a mile distant, and before they were reached, the throng saw that several buildings were burning, though the rainfall seemed sufficient to extinguish any ordinary conflagration. Philip, who was riding with several other men in a farm wagon, saw, when the wagon turned into the main street, that one of the burning buildings was his own store. Apparently it had been first unroofed and crushed by the storm, for all that remained of it and its contents seemed to be in a pit that once was the cellar, and from which rose a little flame and a great column of smoke and steam. "Let's save people first; property afterward!" he replied to the men in the wagon when they offered to remain with him and fight the fire. Afterward he received for his speech great credit which was utterly undeserved, for after an instant of angry surprise at his loss he was conscious of a strange, wild elation. A week earlier, such a blow would have been a serious reverse--perhaps ruin; now, thanks to his long-forgotten mining stock, he was fairly well off and could start anew elsewhere, entirely by himself and unhampered by conditions. He had tried hard to accept Claybanks as his home for life, and thought he had succeeded; but now, through the gloom of the storm, the outer world, especially all parts out of the cyclone belt, seemed delightfully inviting. "Where'll we find the people to save?" This question, from a man in the wagon, recalled Philip's better self, and he replied quickly:-- "In the path of the storm, and wherever Doctor Taggess is." It soon became evident that the cyclone path had been quite narrow,--not much wider, indeed, than the business street,--but the whirling funnel had gone diagonally over the town and thus destroyed or injured more than forty houses, the débris of which did much additional injury. Philip and the men passed rapidly from house to house along the new, rude clearing, and searched the ruins for dead and wounded. Fortunately almost all of the inhabitants of the town had taken part in the celebration. Those who remained were numerous enough to provide many fractures and bruises to be treated by Doctor Taggess and his corps of volunteer nurses, but apparently not one in the town had been killed outright. To obtain this gratifying assurance required long hours of searching far into the night, for some missing persons were found far from their homes, and with extraordinary opinions as to how their change of location had been effected.