The shuddering surface of the bog began to extend on every side to even the solid ground which curbed it, and with relief we saw that Dick and Joyce stood high up on a rock. All things on its surface seemed to melt away and disappear, as though swallowed up. This silent change or demoralization spread down in the direction of Murdock's house—but when it got to the edge of the hollow in which the house stood, it seemed to move as swiftly forward as water leaps down a cataract.
Instinctively we both shouted a warning to Murdock—he, too, villain though he was, had a life to lose. He had evidently felt some kind of shock or change, for he came rushing out of the house full of terror. For an instant he seemed paralyzed with fright as he saw what was happening. And it was little wonder! for in that instant the whole house began to sink into the earth—to sink as a ship founders in a stormy sea, but without the violence and turmoil that marks such a catastrophe. There was something more terrible—more deadly in that silent, causeless destruction than in the devastation of the earthquake or the hurricane.
The wind had now dropped away; the morning light struck full over the hill, and we could see clearly. The sound of the waves dashing on the rocks below, and the booming of the distant breakers filled the air—but through it came another sound, the like of which I had never heard, and the like of which I hope, in God's pro-
