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Delightedly he examined these treasures

"They're worth old between here and what's left of San Francisco!"

He found nothingelse was rusted beyond use So, having convinced hiathered up his finds and started back whence he had coed to transport everything up into the arcade

"Now for a glie well in hand, he uised as everything noas, fallen and disjointed, nized many familiar features

Here, he recalled, the telephone-booths had been; there the inforain, he remembered the little curved counter where once upon a time a man in uniform had sold tickets to such as had wanted to visit the tower

Counter noas dust; ticket-rayish powder Stern shivered slightly, and pressed on

As he approached the outer air, he noticed thatvine had rooted in the pave the once nificent floor

The doorway itself was almost choked by a tremendous Norway pine which had struck root close to the building, and now insolently blocked that here, other-tione

But Stern cla the floor with his sledge, as he went, lest he fall through an unseen weak spots into the depths of coal-cellars below And presently he reached the outer air, unharmed

"But--but, the sidewalk?" cried he, amazed "The street--the Square? Where are they?" And in astonishh it had told hiiven hinitude

He had expected some remains of human life to show upon the earth, some semblance of thewas there; nothing at all on the ground to show that he was in the heart of a city

He could, indeed, catch gliled thickets that grew close up to the age-alls of the Metropolitan, he couldconstruction on the south side of what had been Twenty-Third Street

But of the street itself, no trace remained--no pavement, no sidewalk, no curb And even so near and so conspicuous an object as the wreck of the Flatiron was now entirely concealed by the dense forest