CHAPTER VII.
True to his Post.
Lot's wife was changed into a pillar of salt; and if that pillar still remained, we should see her to-day standing in exactly the same attitude in which she was standing when death suddenly came upon her.
About a hundred years ago, a baker in the south of Italy sunk a well in his garden; and whilst doing so he suddenly came upon a buried city, a city which had been lost to the world for 1800 years.

The underground city was no empty place; it was peopled with the dead, and these were found in the very attitude and position in which death had overtaken them, standing, sitting, lying, just as they had been on that awful day when Mount Vesuvius sent out terrible showers of ashes, destroying them all.
Very various were the positions of the dead in that buried city.

Many were in the streets, in the attitude of running, trying to make their escape from the city gate; others were in deep vaults whither they had gone for safety, crouching, in their fear of what might fall upon them; others were on staircases and flights of stone steps leading to the roof, in the attitude of climbing to a place where they hoped the lava might not bury them.

Two men were found by the garden gate of a large and beautiful mansion.

One was standing with the key in his hand, a handsome ring on his finger, and a hundred gold and silver coins scattered round him.