Strangely enough, they seem to have attached no value to the signs of approaching mischief which the man described to them; and it would appear that they considered the falling débris to be attributable to some accidental snow-slip, caused possibly by the warm rays of the noonday sun. Whatever they may have thought, they paid no heed to the warning; and the charcoal-burner having done all he could to save them from the threatened calamity, went on as fast as possible to carry his terrible news to three other villages, which were all directly exposed to the like danger. But they also utterly disbelieved in it, and laughed at the fears of the poor man, whose breathless and agitated condition clearly testified to the truth of his conviction that a very great peril was close at hand. One and all, they refused to quit their dwellings; and the charcoal-burner, having vainly endeavoured to awaken them to a sense of their danger, quitted the spot himself, and sought shelter elsewhere. Hours passed, and no further disturbance of any kind taking place, the villagers concluded the whole thing to have been a false alarm, and at night all retired to rest as usual, without apparently a shadow of misgiving. Suddenly, in the midst of the silence and darkness, a fearful crash of falling rocks sounded far and wide through the valley; and when the first rays of the sun lighted up the mountain peaks, a terrible scene of ruin and death was revealed. The four little hamlets had entirely disappeared; two of them, those that lay nearest to the slopes of Monte Pezza, were completely buried under an immense mass of fallen earth and rocks; the other two were submerged beneath the waters of the river Cordevole, which had been driven from its coarse by the berg-fall, and had spread out into what is now known as the Lake of Alleghe. None of the unhappy victims had a moment's time for escape, even had escape been possible. The rushing down of the mountain was instantaneous, and buried them as they lay sleeping; and the water flowed with impetuous rapidity into the unprotected villages, not one inmate of which survived to relate the experiences of that awful night.