The doorway itself was almost choked by a tremendous Norway pine which
had struck root close to the building, and now insolently blocked that
way where, other-time many thousand men and women every day had come
and gone.

But Stern clambered out past this obstacle, testing 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 astonishment he stopped, staring.

The view from the tower, though it had told him something of the
changes wrought, had given him no adequate conception of their
magnitude.

He had expected some remains of human life to show upon the earth,
some semblance of the metropolis to remain in the street. But no,
nothing was there; nothing at all on the ground to show that he was in
the heart of a city.

He could, indeed, catch glimpses of a building here or there. Through
the tangled thickets that grew close up to the age-worn walls of the
Metropolitan, he could make out a few bits of tottering construction
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