spade struck on a slanting ledge of slaty rock. No further progress
could be made there; the trench must be dug in a different direction.
Once more the old man, panting heavily, drove the spade into the hard
ground, and in two or three minutes had so far altered the position of
the hole that the rock was avoided. The gale was increasing every
moment, and at times he could hardly keep his feet.

Suddenly, through the roar of the wind, was heard another sound, a
rattling and rushing, as of loosened stones and of earth. All his senses
on the alert, the old man glanced swiftly up, and saw a row of four tall
fir trees, which stood out like sentinels, on a ridge of the mountain,
in the very path of the storm, turn over like nine-pins, one after the
other, and tearing up the soil with their roots, slip down the
mountain-side, dragging with them an avalanche of earth. His eye darted
to the cottage with a sudden fear. Even as he looked, the wind was
lifting some of the slates on the roof, rattling them, loosening them,
and in a few moments would scatter them around like chaff, chaff that
would bring death to any on whom it should chance to light. With an odd,
calculating look, the old man turned again to his digging, and,
breathless as before, shovelled out the earth from the hole, with a
speed of which his stiff and feeble frame would have been thought
incapable; while now and again, without ceasing his work, he darted a
backward glance at the doomed cottage. It ought to stand until the hole
was dug; and at least in the digging there was a chance of safety: in
going back to fetch the baby now, there was none.

After about five minutes, with a hideous yell, the demon tore in such
fury across the mountain-side, that the old man would have been carried
off his feet in a moment, and swept with the rest of the _débris_ into
the valley, but that he threw himself on the ground, clutching tightly