eyes and failed. She bit desperately into her pigeon drumstick, trying to thinlt of aome-thing to say. "Whsn we get back," went on Arthur meditative- ly, "I'll have nothing to do — no work or anything. I'll be broke and out of a job." Estelle shook her head emphatically. Arthur paid no attention, "Estelle," he said, smiling, "would you like to be out of a job with me?" Estelle turned crimson. "I'tn not very successful," Arthur went on sober- ly. "I'm afraid I wouldn't make a very good hus- band, I'm rather worthless and lazy!" "You aren't," broke in Estelle; ' "you're — you're—" Arthur reached over and took her by the shoulders. "What?" he demanded. She would not look at him, but she did not draw away. He held her from him- for a moment. "What am I?" he demanded again. Somehow he found himself kissing the tips of her ears. Her face 'rVas buried against hia shoulder. "What am I?" he repeated sternly. Her voice was muffled by his coat. "You're — you're dear!" she said. There was an interlude of about a minute and a half, then she pushed him away from her. "Don't!" she said breathlessly, "Please don't!" "Aren't you going to marry me?" he demanded. Still crimson, she nodded shyly. He kissed her again. "Please don't!" she protested. She fondled the lapels of his coat, quite content to have hia arms about her. "Why mayn't I kiss you if you're going to marry me?" Arthur demanded. She looked up at him with an air of demure primness. "You — ^you've been eating pigeon," she told him in mock gravity, "andr^and your mouth is greasy!" A Geyser Effects A Happy Return IT was two weeks later. Estelle looked out over the now familiar wild landscape. It was much the same when she looked far away, but near by thei'e were great changes. A cleared trail led through the woods to the waterfront, and a raft of logs extended out into the river for hundreds of feet. Both sides of the raft were lined with busy fiahennen — men and women, too. A little to the north of the base of the building a huge mound of earth smoked sulleniy. The coal in the cellar had given out and charcoal had been found to be the best substitute they could improvise. The mound was where the charcoal was made. It was heart-breaking work to keep the fires go- ing with charcoal, because it burned so rapidly in the powerful draft of the furnaces, but the original fire-room gang had been recruited to several times its original number from among the toweritea, and the work was divided until jt did not aeem hard. As Estelle looked down two tiny figures sauntered across the clearing from the woods with a heavy animal alung between them. One was using a gun as a walking-stick. Estelle saw the flash of the sun on ita polished metal .barrel. There were a number of Indiana in the clearing. watching with wide-open eyes the activitiea of the whites. Dozens of birch-bark canoes dotted the Hudson, each with its load of fishermen, in- dustriously working for the white people. It had been hard to overcome the fear in the Indians, and they still paid superstitious reverence to the whites, but fair dealings, coupled with a constant readiness to defend themselves, had enabled Arthur to in- stitute a system of trading for food that had so far proved satisfactory. The whites had found spare electric-light bulbs valuable currency in dealing with the redmen. Pic- ture-wire, too, was highly prized. There was not a picture left hanging in any of the offices. Metal paper-knives bought huge quantities of provisions from the eager Indian traders, and' the story was current in the tower that Arthur had received eight canoe-loads of corn and vegetables in exchange for a broken-down typewriter. No one could guess what the savages wanted with the typewriter, but they had carted it away triumphantly. EsteUe smiled tenderly to herself as she remem- bered how Arthur had been the leading spirit in all the numberless enterprises in which the castaways had been forced to engage. He would come to her in a spare ten minutes, and tell her how every- thing was going. He seemed curiously boylike in those moments. Sometimes he would come straight from the fire- room — he insisted on taking-part in all the more arduous duties — having hastily cleaned himself for het inspection, snatch a hurried kiss and then go off, laughing to help chop down trees for the long fishing-raft. He had told them how to make char- coal, had taken a leading part in establishing and maintaining friendly relations with the Indians, and was now down in the deepest sub-basement, work- ing with a gang of volunteers to try to put the building back where it belonged, Estelle had said, after the collapse of the flooring in the board-room, that she heard a sound like the rushing of waters. Arthur, on examining the floor where the safe-deposit vault stood, found it had risen an inch. On these facts he had built up hia theory. The building, like all modern skyscrapers, rested on conci-ete piles extending down to bedrock. In the center of one of those piles there was a hollow tube originally intended to serve as an artesian well. The flow had been insufficient and the well had been stopped up. Arthur, of course, as an engineer, had studied the construction of the building with great care, and happened to remember that tliis partly hollow pile was the one nearest the safe-deposit vault. The collapse of the board-room floor had suggested that some change had happened in the building itself, and that was found when he saw that the deposit- vault had actually risen an inch. He at once connected the rise in the flooring above the hollow pile with the pipe in the pile. Estelle had heard liquid sounds. Evidently water had been forced into the hollow artesian pipe under an unthinkable pressure when the catastrophe oc- curred. From the rumbling and the suddenness of the whole catastrophe a volcanic or aeismic disturbance was evident. The connection of volcanic or seismic action with a ilow of water suggested a geyser or a hot spring of aome sort, probably a spring which