THE DAM Doctor Allen Barnes turned slowly toward the house where the wife of Sim Gage still lay.

His heart was heavy with the hardest duty he had ever known in all his life.
But as he reached a point half way between the two houses he suddenly stopped.

At that moment every man on the little street stopped also.
The routine of the patrol had been relaxed in the excitement of these late events.

Indeed, it seemed tacitly agreed that the climax had come, so that there was no need now for further guardianship of the property.

It was not so.
The sound was a short, heavy moan, as nearly as it may be described, and not a sharp rending note; a vast, deep groan, somewhere deep in the earth, as though a volcano were about to erupt.