The stall rocked, and a few bricks tumbled down.

He winced as his mind replayed a slow-motion animation of the way the bricks had tumbled and spun as they fell toward the child frozen with fear on the street below.

These latest incidents have not yet matched last December's epidemic, when bricks tumbled from the side of a 39-story building on Madison Avenue, masonry plummeted from three other buildings and a six-story structure collapsed on 42d Street.

Then - apparently a short time after workers got off the scaffolding - the wall crumbled and bricks tumbled about 30 feet onto the roof of the building next door.

Following the wedding of an aunt two days ago, the girl and her family were walking toward the railway station when a brick tumbled ..." But that wasn't the only time he'd had dealings with her, was it?

He moved a length of pipe, and broken bricks tumbled down along with a charred sneaker that he at first thought might have a foot in it but was empty, its owner either buried or blown out of his shoe by the concussion.

The tremor of the explosions had shaken the city so hard that brick, cornice, glass, and metal were tumbling and crashing.