Leacraft had watched and waited. Every new development, each changing report, the wearily studied logs of the ships and steamers, the daily averages of temperature and rainfall, the swelling disorder in the climate of the United States, and confirmed rumors of the hot current--which might be the Gulf Stream--pouring, pouring northward, and hugging the shores of California and Washington and Oregon, and even repelling the cold from Alaska, supplying a stove to its shores, which, it was promptly surmised, would make of it a northern paradise, all, in a cumulative way, pointed to one result--the evacuation of England. His speculative mind hurried on to the picturing of the changed aspects of the national life, and he felt that for once Science, embodied in the laws of Nature, was about to put to flight the mentality of men, and pour the vials of its confusion over the proud, the boasting defiance of their thin optimism. And yet--what might not Opportunity perform? Perhaps the old receptacles of civilization needed emptying; their garnered seeds to be more quickly cast upon the winds of chance to germinate and flower again in the waste places of the world. And Leacraft hurried to and fro--a small inherited competency had dissolved his business bonds--a lonely, sad man, excited by the thoughts of the world’s trembling position on a new threshold of events, and thus forgetting the gnawing pains of his own disappointment. During September he had been at the far north of Scotland, and retreated day by day with the invading cold, fleeing with its fleeing people, southward. On the memorable evening whose events have been rehearsed, he had found Edinburgh practically voided, and left to its entombment. The work of getting the people away, of convincing the incredulous, of providing for the needy, of deporting the treasures of this great depository, had been hastily and imperfectly done. In spite of Sir John C--’s useful plans, it could not be different. Disorder, recriminations, riot and clashes were inevitable at a moment of such sudden penetrating terror. Blocks after blocks of private homes remained with little or nothing of their rich contents removed. This condition was understood, and predatory bands of desperate men broke into them, encamped in them and defied expulsion. They laughed at warnings, and after filling their improvised camps with coal and stores, prepared with exultation to enjoy this novel debauch. Furniture and household effects had been dumped or deserted in the streets, and almost any extemporaneous digging in the drifts would uncover books, clothing and utensils. A grotesque hogarthian aspect had been produced by the retreat of the cats to the houses, and their mingled swarms at windows and on sills, whither they were strangely followed by hordes of mice and rats, expelled from the country and filtering into the city in scampering lines before the weather had reached the height of its tempestuous inclemency.