Others, too, had gone out, fleeing from the danger of roofs and walls, or merely seeking companionship in blind fear. The streets were thronged; the churches were full of praying and crying. The _carabinieri_ and the _guardie municipali_ kept order as best they could among a crowd on the verge of hysteria. Here and there trooped in file homeless peasants from the ruined villages, their possessions bound on their backs or the backs of their beasts. From the comments tossed about one might infer this disaster to be probably the work of the good God or of the Evil One, or merely the spontaneous freakish rage of the eternally cursed mountain. Each view had its adherents. Betty, at a street corner, ran into Luli. Like all the others, he was a shadow to her, a shadow to whom she said: 'Have you seen Tommy?' He had not seen Tommy; he walked with her, helping her to look for Tommy; he was to her a shadow moving at her side, who spoke and was answered nothing. His speaking was: 'How should we find him to-night? It's hopeless. He'll turn up all right in the morning; there's nothing to be frightened about.' It was irrelevant; Betty heard it as from a great distance; she was looking for Tommy--looking for him at street corners, going up steep climbing _vicoli_ and down again, searching all the faces in the crowd. The shadow kept patiently at her side, with a shrug for the folly of it. The storm and the earthquake had certainly dazed her, set her wits wandering; he advised her many times to go home and sleep, since the shocks were now over and would very likely not recur. 'Tommy may be home by now,' the shadow said. Betty shook her head; she knew that in the dim room nothing stirred but the flickering lamp. She looked for Tommy. Out of the Toledo they came into the Piazza del Plebiscito, and so down the Strada del Gigante to Santa Lucia by the sea, where Tommy was so often, but was not now. Looking from Santa Lucia across the black bay, they saw the blazing game that the fiery cone was still playing untired; the earth's groaning sounded above the sweeping of the shaken sea. Into the town they plunged again, Betty and the protesting shadow, who wanted to go to bed. The storm had dropped; upon the wind of dawn came the red rain of the cinders, the black clouds of the dust, blinding and choking. Behind these the grey morning grew; a dim day broke slowly on the tired, shaken city. Since he could not prevail on Betty to go home, Luli went home himself; he could not walk the streets all night looking for Tommy, who was, no doubt, well amused somewhere. 'It isn't a fit night for you to be out,' he told Betty, 'but I am falling asleep: I must have rest. What would you have? You'd much better go home too.' So they parted.