But now he found himself confronted by a new exigency, the geological interferences of Nature, and it piqued his curiosity, it assailed his fancy with indubitable fascination. By reason of his intellectual proneness to these questions, which quite deeply occupied his mind, he felt at this moment that the tremendous and supreme chance of his own mighty nation, succumbing to the accidents of a tidal caprice might offer him an alternative refuge of interest which would help to dull the pain of his misfortune. So convulsing a spectacle as the pitiless war of nature upon the embedded bulwarks of a great commercial nation’s prosperity, terrified him as a possible historical fact. Above all, it terrified him as a British subject. It became so overwhelming in the magnitude of its effects that he shudderingly admitted to himself that his love for Sally suffered a relieving diminution, as though in such events the End of the World seemed precipitated, and all human ties became obliterated, were dissolved. The day closed in resplendent beauty. The sun curtained in a haze, shed a diffused glory through the upper sky, and sank at last in a grating of narrow bars of cloud, that lay across the west like reefs of gold, slowly transmuted into a purple nimbus upon the faintly turquoised ether. The great crowds dispersed, the troops escorted the President away, and music from near and far seemed to mingle dreamily with the mute harmonies of the sunset. The Garretts, with Mr. Leacraft and Brig Barry, returned that night by train to Baltimore. The night proved a sleepless and excited one for Leacraft. He felt ill at ease. There was much reason for uneasiness and heartache, and the hours passed in a dull series of mournful reflections upon his own trouble, and the immodest threat of nature at the prestige of his people. The next morning he entered the library and found Miss Garrett bending over the morning paper. She looked up as he appeared in the doorway, and there was for both a moment’s hesitation, before the morning’s greeting passed their lips. It was Sally who first spoke, and her voice was eager with alarm. “Mr. Leacraft, the President’s lecture--surely, it was nothing else--is all here. And there is more news from the Isthmus. The land is sinking, all sinking, and”--she turned to the paper--“almost all the canal has now disappeared beneath the assault of the waves, and a stormy waste of waters sweeps across the Isthmus of Panama. Isn’t it simply fearful? And nothing can be done.”