was empty. All at once the picture at which they were gazing, the
spread of wall on which it was painted, the whole bulk of the huge
building began to shudder, and went on shuddering--"just," Mr. Porson
used to say when describing the thing to a friend, "like the skin of a
horse determined to get rid of a gad-fly." The same moment the tiles
on the roof began to clatter like so many castanets in the hands of
giants, and the ground to wriggle and heave. But they were too much
absorbed in what was before their eyes to heed much what went on under
their feet. The oscillatory displacement of the front of the church
did not at most seem to cover more than a hand-breadth, but it was
enough. Down came the plaster surface, with the judge and his mother,
clashing on the pavement below, while the good and the bad yet stood
trembling. A few of the people came running out, thinking the open
square after all safer than the church, but there was no rush to the
open air. The shaking had lasted about twenty seconds, or at most half
a minute, when, without indication to the eyes watching the front,
there came a roaring crash and a huge rumbling, through and far above
which, rose a multitudinous shriek of terror, dismay, and agony, and a
number of men and women issued as if shot from a catapult. Then a few
came straggling out, and then--no more. The roof had fallen upon the
rest.

With the first rush from the church, the shaking ceased utterly, and
the still earth seemed again the immovable thing the English
spectators had conceived her. Of what had taken place there was little
sign on the earth, no sign in the blue sun-glorious heaven; only in
the air there was a cloud of dust so thick as to look almost solid,
and from the cloud, as it seemed, came a ghastly cry, mingled of
shrieks and groans and articulate appeals for help. The cry kept on
issuing, while the calm front of the church, dominated by that