The
doctor held to the latter opinion, especially after seeing a certain
brown-haired dog running to hide behind a heap of stones.
"It was a dog!" the doctor felt sure. To Rolla, however, the animal was
even more significant. She exclaimed about it in a way which confirmed
the doctor's guess. On she went at a faster rate, plainly excited and
hopeful of seeing something further that she could recognize.
She found it in a hurry. Reaching the end of one block of the ruins, she
turned the corner and started to follow the cross street. Whereupon she
stopped short, to gaze in consternation at a line of something whitish
which stretched from one side of the "street" to the other.
It was a line of human skeletons.
There were perhaps two hundred in the lot, piled one on top of the
other, and forming a low barrier across the pavement. To Rolla the thing
was simply terrible, and totally without explanation. To the people on
the earth, it suggested a formation of troops, shot down in their tracks
and left where they had fallen. The doctor would have given a year of
his life if only Rolla had had the courage to examine the bones; there
might have been bullet-holes, or other evidence of how they had met
their death.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130