The Christmas Miracle | Page 5

suddenly that the horse
was thrown back on his haunches. The rider sat as if petrified in the
presence of an awful disaster.
The house was gone! Even the site had vanished! Kennedy stared
bewildered. Slowly the realization of what had chanced here began to
creep through his brain. Evidently there had been a gigantic landslide.
The cliff-like projection was broken sheer off,--hurled into the depths
of the valley. Some action of subterranean waters, throughout ages,
doubtless, had been undermining the great crags till the rocky crust of
the earth had collapsed. He could see even now how the freeze had
fractured outcropping ledges where the ice had gathered in the fissures.
A deep abyss that he remembered as being at a considerable distance
from the mountain's brink, once spanned by a foot-bridge, now showed
the remnant of its jagged, shattered walls at the extreme verge of the
precipice.
A cold chill of horror benumbed his senses. Basil, the wife, the
children,--where were they? A terrible death, surely, to be torn from the
warm securities of the hearth-stone, without a moment's warning, and
hurled into the midst of this frantic turmoil of nature, down to the
depths of the gap,--a thousand feet below! And at what time had this
dread fate befallen his friend? He remembered that at the cross-roads'
store, when he had paused on his way to warm himself that morning,
some gossip was detailing the phenomenon of unseasonable thunder

during the previous night, while others protested that it must have been
only the clamors of "Christmas guns" firing all along the country-side.
"A turrible clap, it was," the raconteur had persisted. "Sounded ez ef all
creation hed split apart." Perhaps, therefore, the catastrophe might be
recent. Kennedy could scarcely command his muscles as he
dismounted and made his way slowly and cautiously to the verge.
Any deviation from the accustomed routine of nature has an unnerving
effect, unparalleled by disaster in other sort; no individual danger or
doom, the aspect of death by drowning, or gunshot, or disease, can so
abash the reason and stultify normal expectation. Kennedy was scarcely
conscious that he saw the vast disorder of the landslide, scattered from
the precipice on the mountain's brink to the depths of the Gap--inverted
roots of great pines thrust out in mid-air, foundations of crags riven
asunder and hurled in monstrous fragments along the steep slant,
unknown streams newly liberated from the caverns of the range and
cascading from the crevices of the rocks. In effect he could not believe
his own eyes. His mind realized the perception of his senses only when
his heart suddenly plunged with a wild hope,--he had discerned
amongst the turmoil a shape of line and rule, the little box-like hut!
Caught as it was in the boughs of a cluster of pines and firs, uprooted
and thrust out at an incline a little less than vertical, the inmates might
have been spared such shock of the fall as would otherwise have
proved fatal. Had the house been one of the substantial log-cabins of
the region its timbers must have been torn one from another, the
daubing and chinking scattered as mere atoms. But the more flimsy
character of the little dwelling had thus far served to save it,--the
interdependent "framing" of its structure held fast; the upright studding
and boards, nailed stoutly on, rendered it indeed the box that it looked.
It was, so to speak, built in one piece, and no part was subjected to
greater strain than another. But should the earth cave anew, should the
tough fibres of one of those gigantic roots tear out from the loosened
friable soil, should the elastic supporting branches barely sway in some
errant gust of wind, the little box would fall hundreds of feet, cracked
like a nut, shattering against the rocks of the levels below.
He wondered if the inmates yet lived,--he pitied them still more if they

only existed to realize their peril, to await in an anguish of fear their
ultimate doom. Perhaps--he felt he was but trifling with despair--some
rescue might be devised.
Such a weird cry he set up on the brink of the mountain!--full of horror,
grief, and that poignant hope. The echoes of the Gap seemed reluctant
to repeat the tones, dull, slow, muffled in snow. But a sturdy halloo
responded from the window, uppermost now, for the house lay on its
side amongst the boughs. Kennedy thought he saw the pallid
simulacrum of a face.
"This be Jube Kennedy," he cried, reassuringly. "I be goin' ter fetch
help,--men, ropes, and a windlass."
"Make haste then,--we uns be nigh friz."
"Ye air in no danger of fire, then?" asked the practical man.
"We hev hed none,--before we war flunged off'n the bluff we hed
squinched the