Page 10 (1/1)

Suddenly the girl started, rebelling against the evidence of her own senses, striving again to force upon herself the belief that, after all, it could not be so

"No, no, no!" she cried "This can't be true It mustn't be There's a mistake somewhere This simply must be all an illusion, a dream!

"If the whole world's dead, how does it happen we're alive? Hoe know it's dead? Can we see it all fros Perhaps if we could know the truth, look farther, and know--"

He shook his head

"I guess you'll find it's real enough," he answered, "no matter how far you look But, just the same, it won't do any haro on up to the top of the tower, up to the observation-platform The quicker we know all the available facts the better Now, if I only had a telescope--!"

He thought hard a moment, then turned and strode over to a heap of friable disintegration that lay where once his instru tools

Down on his ragged knees he fell; his rotten shreds of clothing tore and ripped at every movement, like so much water-soaked paper

A strange, hairy, dust-covered figure, he knelt there Quickly he plunged his hands into the rubbish and began pawing it over and over with eager haste

"Ah!" he cried with triumph "Thank Heaven, brass and lenses haven't cruirl saw a peculiar telescope

"My 'level,' see?" he exclaione The fixtures that held it on won't bother lass on top Theis that the telescope itself see, he dusted off the eye-piece and the objective with a bit of rag from his coat-sleeve

Beatrice noted that the brass tubes were all eaten and pitted with verdigris, but they still held fir theht and clear as ever

"Coh the doorway into the hall he athered her wondrous veil of hair anization, this wreck of all the world, how little the conventions counted!

Together, picking their way up the broken stairs, where now the rust-bitten steel showed through the corroded stone and cement in a thousand places, they cautiously climbed