A piercing scream from Kerœcia startled them, and before either companion could prevent it, she fell to the floor in a deathlike swoon. Mineola ran to the courtyard, where a water jar, overgrown with green timothy, swung from the portico, and brought back a gourdful of ice-cold water. Suravia knelt beside Kerœcia and sprinkled her face liberally. “Speak to thy handmaiden,” she cried. “Speak, I beseech thee!” In their excitement they did not notice that the room was suddenly growing dark, and that the cool, moist air had become close and stifling. “Use the fan gently,” said Suravia, with a sharp, peremptory ring in her voice. Mineola made no answer. She was praying. Kerœcia recovered her senses with a start. She seemed dazed for a moment; then she sat bolt upright, gasping for breath pitifully. “What has distressed and hurt thee so?” asked Mineola with quivering lips, kneeling beside her and offering support. The sound of a voice seemed to recall Kerœcia’s wandering senses. “O God! Give me courage!” was her agonized cry. “My beloved is vowed to celibacy, and I must die!” “What sayest thou?” “Kerœcia, what dost thou mean?” “Tell us fully,” they both said at once. “Didst thou not see? In the opal—It was so from the beginning! O Thou Merciful One, take thy wretched servant! What have I done? Shame everlasting is my portion!” “Why did he not tell thee of his vow?” asked Suravia, a note of rising indignation in her voice. “How could he? I am to blame. He would not humiliate and degrade me before my people.” She gave way to a paroxysm of heart-breaking grief, while Mineola, weeping in sympathy, sought to console her. Suravia went back to the tablet. The opal was entirely opaque; not a particle of its fire and sparkle was visible. “I will see what the other stones have to reveal. The sensitive turquoise, the forget-me-not of gems, lives and suffers as we do. It has the power of reproduction, and by its employment the Dorado intended to express a hope for the future. But this symbol of youth, love and tenderness seems to have shriveled in size, and has turned to a sickly green. Beside it is the sympathetic ruby faded to a pale coral. Misfortune—” A sharp, swaying, rocking movement, sending the windowpanes to the ground with a crash, and throwing the women against each other violently, blanched their faces and caused them to cling together for support. A deafening explosion followed, and then the cry of her panic-stricken people aroused Kerœcia. “Run for thy lives!” shouted a voice in the street. “The mountains are smoking and spitting fire! Quick! quick! quick! Run!” They barely escaped in time to miss the falling walls. In the streets an indescribable scene was being enacted. What is now known as Lassen Peak sent up a long fiery column, and the earth heaved and groaned under the exertion.