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"Guess I haven't forgotten how to shoot in all these x years!" he co to examine the spoor "That may come in handy later!"

Then, still wary and watchful, he continued his exploration

He found that the city, as such, had entirely ceased to be

"Nothing but lines and monstrous rubbish-heaps of ruins," he sized up the situation, "traversed by lanes of forest and overgroith every sort of vegetation

"Every wooden building coone Steel alone standing, and that in rotten shape Nothing at all intact but the few concrete structures

"Ha! ha!" And he laughed satirically "If the builders of the twentieth century could have foreseen this they wouldn't have thrown quite such a chest, eh? And they talked of engineering!"

Useless though it was, he felt a certain pride in noting that the Osterhaut Building, on Seventeenth Street, had lasted rather better than the average

"My work!" said he, nodding with grim satisfaction, then passed on

Into the Subway he penetrated at Eighteenth Street, clih bushes and over reat tube, he saas choked with litter

Slily pools of water settled in the ancient road-bed The rails holly gone in places In others only rotten fragle-eyed toad stared ile of rubbish that had been a train--stalled there forever by the final block-signal of death

Through the broken arches overhead the rain and storrasses flourished here and there, where sunlight could penetrate

No hu since every vestige of man had been swept away Stern shuddered, ht here than at any other place so far visited

"And they boasted of a work for all time!" whispered he, awed by the horror of it "They boasted--like the financiers, the churchmen, the merchants, everybody! Boasted of their institutions, their city, their country And now--"

Out he clambered presently, terribly depressed by what he had witnessed, and set to work laying in still more supplies from the wrecked shops Now for the first tian to feel the horror of this loneliness

"No life here! Nobody to speak to--except the girl" he exclaimed aloud, the sound of his own voice uncanny in that woodland street of death "All gone, everything! My Heavens, suppose I didn't have her? How long could I go on alone, and keep my mind?"