At that moment they felt the earth shake beneath their feet; the walls of the theater trembled; and beyond, in the distance, they heard the crash of falling roofs. An instant more and the mountain cloud seemed to roll towards them, dark and rapid, like a torrent. 5

At the same time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes mixed with vast fragments of burning stone! Over the crushing vines, over the desolate streets, over the amphitheater itself, far and wide, with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea, fell that awful 10 shower! No longer thought the crowd of justice

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or of Arbaces; safety for themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly-each dashing, pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the fallen,- amidst groans and oaths and prayers 5 and sudden shrieks, the enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages. Whither should they fly for protection from the terrors of the open air?

And then darker and larger and mightier spread the 10 cloud above them. It was a sudden and more ghastly night rushing upon the realm of noon!

From "The Last Days of Pompeii."

SPRING IN KENTUCKY.

JAMES LANE ALLEN.

JAMES LANE ALLEN was born on a farm near Lexington, Ky., in 1850. The early years of his life were spent in careful study. He became interested in

literature, and wrote sketches and poems for several magazines and papers.

In 1885 he went to New York City to continue this work. He wrote a number of interesting articles on the "Blue Grass Region" in Kentucky. These were published in "Harper's Magazine." His first stories appeared shortly after in "The Century."

Mr. Allen knows and loves Kentucky, and it is there that he locates his scenes. He has written a number of delightful novels which have been widely read. He resides in New York City and is popular as a writer.

IT is the middle of February. So bleak a season 20 touches my concern for birds, which never seem quite at home in this world; and the winter has been most lean and hungry for them. Many snows have fallensnows that are as raw cotton spread over their breakfast table, and cutting off connection between them and 25 its bounties.

Next summer I must let the weeds grow up in my garden, so that they may have a better chance for seeds above the stingy level of the universal white.

Of late I have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest, for every borrower will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of sing5 ing. But were a man never so usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments and a choir of heavenly voices?

And to-day, also, I ordered from a nurseryman more 10 trees of holly, juniper, and fir, since the forest is naked, and every shrub and hedgerow is bare. What would become of our birds if there were no evergreensNature's hostelries for the homeless ones? Living in the depths of these, they can keep snow, ice, and wind 15 at bay; prying eyes cannot watch them, nor enemies so well draw near; cones, or seed, or berries are their store; and in those untrodden chambers each can have the sacred company of his mate.

But wintering here has terrible risks which few can 20 run. Scarcely in autumn have the leaves begun to drop from their high perches silently downward when the birds begin to drop away from the bare boughs silently southward. Lo! some morning the leaves are on the ground and the birds have vanished.

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The species that remain, or that come to us then, wear the hues of the season and melt into the tone of Nature's background-blues, grays, browns, with touches of white on tail and breast and wing for coming flakes of snow.

March has gone like its winds. The other night, as I lay awake, there fell from the upper air the notes of the wild-gander as he wedged his way onward by faith, not by sight, toward his distant bourn. I rose and, throwing open the shutters, strained eyes toward the 5 unseen explorer, startled, as a half-asleep soldier might be startled by the faint bugle-call of his commander blown to him from the clouds. What far-off lands, streaked with mortal dawn, does he believe in?

March is a month when the needle of my nature. 10 dips toward the country. I am away, greeting everything as it wakes out of a winter sleep, stretches arms upward and legs downward, and drinks goblet after goblet of young sunshine. I must find the dark-green snowdrop, and sometimes help to remove from her 15 head, as she lifts it slowly from her couch, the frosted nightcap which the old nurse would insist that she should wear.

The pale-green tips of daffodils are a thing of beauty. There is the sunstruck brook of the field, underneath 20 the thin ice of which drops form and fall, form and fall like big, round, silvery eyes that grow bigger and brighter with astonishment that you should laugh at them as they vanish.

But most I love to see Nature do her spring house- 25 cleaning in Kentucky, with the rain-clouds for her water-buckets, and the wind for her brooms. What an amount of drenching and sweeping she can do in a day! How she dashes pailfuls into every dirty