Still great uneasiness was felt and hundreds of eyes eagerly watched the watermark, but for many hours there was but little fall and, indeed, it was 4 o'clock, p.m., on Saturday before there was any marked diminution in the volume of water. About 10 o'clock, a.m., on Saturday, the crowd of spectators that covered the hill near Jefferson's Rock, heard a crash on Virginius Island and soon it was known that the noise was caused by the falling in of a portion of the building occupied by Mr. John Wernwag as a dwelling and a machine shop. Mr. Wernwag was the same that has been noticed in this book as a man of great mechanical genius, but very retiring habits. He resided alone in this house and, surrounded by strange tools and devices of his own planning and construction, and entirely devoted to those creatures of his brain and hand, he lived in a world of his own, voluntarily cut off from association with his kind. In a few minutes the sound was repeated, when the remainder of the building crumbled and fell into the tide. The roof floated down the stream, but at first nothing was seen of Mr. Wernwag himself. Many a loud and earnest prayer was sent to Heaven from the throng of spectators for the soul of the poor recluse and the hoarse murmur of many voices in supplication, mingled with hysterical screams from women and the more sensitive of the other sex, the wild rush of the river and all the awful surrounding presented a combination of horrors happily of rare occurrence. Two large trees grew on the river bank about a hundred yards below the island, and, as the roof floated down the stream, it fortunately dashed against one of them and was broken in two. Through the space made between the portions of the roof Wernwag's head was seen to emerge from the water and soon the brave old man had succeeded in climbing nimbly to one of the pieces. He had sunk under the roof and would have been suffocated in a few minutes had not the tree broken the incubus that was preventing him from making any exertion to save himself by swimming. As he secured his seat on the fragment he was seen to motion with his hand as if bidding adieu to his life-long friends. It is probable that he merely wiped his brow and put back his dripping hair, but the belief got abroad that he motioned a farewell and the excitement of the people was greatly intensified. Past the town he was hurried by the remorseless flood, until he was lost to sight amid the waves of "the Bull Ring," a rocky ledge that runs across the Potomac a little below the mouth of the Shenandoah. Over this barrier in time of high water, the waves of the united rivers plunge with a fury equalled only by the ocean tides bursting on an iron-bound coast, and the most sanguine of those who took heart on seeing Mr. Wernwag emerge from under the incubus and climb to the fragment of roof, now gave up all hope of him, but in an hour or two a report reached Harper's Ferry that he had been rescued at Berlin--now Brunswick--about