The woman heard him. She waved her white hand and it seemed she was waving him back out of peril. Then she pointed up the slope. Adam wheeled. What a thrilling sight! Rocks were streaking down, hurtling into the air, falling to crack powder from other rocks, that likewise were set in motion. Far up the long gray slope, with its million facets of stones shining in the sunlight, appeared Virey, working frantically. No longer did he seek to frighten his wife. He meant to kill her. His insane genius had read the secret of the slope, and in an instant he would have the avalanche in motion. The cracking clamor increased. Adam opened his lips to yell a terrible threat up at Virey, but a whizzing bowlder, large as a bucket, flashing within a foot of his head, awakened him to his own peril. He saw other rocks bounding down in line with him, and, changing his position, stepping, leaping, dodging, he managed to evade them. He had no fear for himself, but terror for the woman, and for Virey deadly rage possessed his heart. Then a piercing split, as of rocks rent asunder, a rattling crash, and the lower half of the great gray slope was in motion. The avalanche! Adam leaped at the startling sound, and, bounding a few yards to a huge bowlder, high as his head and higher, he mounted it. There, unmindful of himself, he wheeled to look for Magdalene Virey. Too late to reach her! She faced that avalanche, arms spread aloft, every line of her body instinct with the magnificent spirit which had been her doom. “_Run! Run! Run!_” shrieked Adam, wildly. Lost was his piercing shriek in the swallowing, gathering might of the crashing roar of the avalanche. A pall of dust, a gray tumbling mass, moved down ponderously, majestically, to hide from Adam’s sight the white form of Magdalene Virey. It spread to where Adam stood, enveloped him, and then, in boom and thunder and crash as of falling worlds, the bowlder was lifted and carried along with the avalanche. CHAPTER XIX Adam was thrown prostrate. In the thick, smothering dust he all but lost his senses. Adam felt what seemed a stream of stones rolling over his feet. The thundering, deafening roar rolled on, spread and thinned to a rattling crash, deadened and ceased. Then from the hollows of the hills boomed a mighty echo, a lifting and throwing of measureless sound, that thumped from battlement to battlement and rumbled away like muttering thunder. The silence then was terrible by contrast. As horror relaxed its grim clutch Adam began to realize that miraculously he had been spared. In the hot, dusty pall he fought for breath like a drowning man. The heavy dust settled and the lighter drifted away.