Chapter XIV

Tom Pinder lost no time in waiting upon his solicitor and acquainting him with his desire that the proceedings should be stayed even if to stay them meant an ignominious surrender. Mr. Sykes did not conceal his surprise.

"What about the plaintiff's costs?" he asked. Tom said he had reason to hope these would not be insisted on. "It is yours I'm much concerned about."

"As to them, make your mind easy. I shall make out an account of my actual disbursements, and you must pay me off by such instalments as you find convenient."

"But your labour?" protested Tom, "the days of manna are over long ago, and I suppose that if popular opinion were ought to go by lawyers would be the last body of men in the world for whom a special dispensation from the general rule would be made."

"Ah well! popular opinion is sometimes wrong, let us hope, despite the saying, _Vox populi vox Dei_."

"I thought you were a Radical, Mr. Sykes."

"Yes, yes, but I am not so ardent a lover as to be blind to the faults of my mistress. But about this stay of proceedings. I must sound Wimpenny. I'm afraid he'll be for his pound of flesh and all the other blood he can squeeze out of you. He's very sore about that interim injunction and the judge's remarks at the time would scarcely be as balm of Gilead to him."

"I suppose Mr. Wimpenny will take his orders from his client."

"Oh! of course. Well, we shall see what we shall see. That's oracular, if it doesn't convey much information. What about your scheme of Co-operative production on advanced lines? Is that to die an untimely death? It seemed to me a most promising essay in social economics. So long as you were content to work like a slave and be a poor man, with no prospect of being anything but a poor man, the system seemed flawless."

"Systems for the regulation of human affairs will never be flawless, Mr. Sykes, till the men and women who are the flesh and blood of all systems are also flawless. Now I am far from being that."

"I presume not," said the lawyer, with something like a sigh. "I suppose you've got tired of this sacrificial altar and have secured a lucrative berth, and, like all the others, are going to worship the golden calf. _Sic transit gloria mundi_. I shed a tear to the memory of Co-op Mill and all the high resolves it enshrines. Who shall write its cold '_Hic jacet_.'"

"Nay, Mr. Sykes, I am not a Latin scholar; but if you will change your goose quill for the graver's chisel, you shall inscribe on the corner stone of Co-op Mill a proud, a defiant _Resurgam_."

"What! You intend to try again?"

"Certainly, I am already looking for premises _below_ Mr. Tinker's Mill. Unless the Holme takes to flowing uphill, I shall be safe from my present adversary, at all events."

Mr. Sykes rose and grasped his client's hand warmly. "That is good hearing, Mr. Pinder; you are a man. Ah! I don't wonder at Miss --"; but here the man of law checked himself.

"Confound it. The murther was nearly out," he muttered.

"I'll write to Wimpenny at once," he said, "but I mustn't seem too hot for a settlement or he'll hold out for all he knows. I shall begrudge him every penny that goes from your pocket to his. Well, good day. I wish I were a manufacturer, I'd turn world-mender too."

"Oh! If you shew the world the example of one lawyer who has an idea beyond his bill of costs, you'll have done your share," laughed Tom. "Convert nine others and Huddersfield need not fear the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah."

Pinder had more trouble with Ben Garside and his colleagues than he had encountered from his solicitor. Ben was for a fight to the finish. "Tinker's shewing th' blue feather," he opined. "What's come ovver thee, Tom? Tha'rt nooan bahn to duff when things are lookin' up a bit? Besides, th' best terms we can mak 'll be to pay us own 'torney an' gi' up Co-op Mill. We med as weel be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and if we're to be ruined we med as well be ruined gradely as hauf ruined. Aw reckon th' bailies 'll be bun to leeave us a bed to lig on, an we'st scrat along some rooad till they put th' coffin lid ovver us. Aw say feight to th' deeath. Talk abaat bowin' th' knee to Baal?"

"Baal!" quoth Hannah curtly. "Baal wer' a respectable sort compared wi Jabez Tinker; an' as for that Wimpenny, oh! If aw wer' a man, wouldn't aw just. That's all."

What "just" the irate dame would have done, words failed her to express, but judging from Hannah's gestures it was something that would not have improved Nehemiah's personal appearance.

But the negotiations with that gentleman which Mr. Sykes opened up did not promise to bear immediate fruit. It is possible that Mr. Wimpenny saw everything to be gained and nothing to be lost--by himself--in the sweetness long drawn out of proceedings in Chancery. The defendant's overtures were not met in a conciliatory spirit, and Sykes advised that nothing further should be attempted in that direction. Tom felt that he could do no more, and when he told Dorothy the steps he had taken to fulfil the promise she had wrung from him, Dorothy expressed herself content.

"You can hold out till May 21st?" She only asked.

"Oh, dear me, yes. From what I can judge when a lawyer in a Chancery suit contemplates a move in the proceedings, he takes a month to think it over, then he takes counsel's opinion, then he takes another month to think over counsel's opinion, then he rests for a month to recuperate his energies after their unwonted strain, then he writes to his London agent indicating the step he wishes to be taken, the agent takes a month to think over his principal's letter, and another month to reply to it, and at the end of all the country solicitor changes his mind, and the process circumbendibus begins _de novo_."

"You ought to have been a lawyer, Tom," commented Lucy. "You have been thinking over a certain step to my knowledge for more than twelve months, and you haven't taken it yet."

"And what's that, Lucy?" asked Dorothy.

"Oh! you'll know soon enough when he takes it," was the most explicit answer that Dorothy could obtain, and with that she had to be content.

"I wonder why Dorothy mentioned the twenty-first of May next?" asked Tom of Lucy, when they were alone together.

"Why she comes of age then, stupid," said Lucy, as shortly as ever she was known to speak.

But some months must elapse before that eventful day was due in the ordinary progress of the leaden-footed months. The Christmas of 1851 was for all in whose fortunes we are concerned, but a cheerless and anxious season. Work continued fairly good, and on that score there was nothing much to complain of. The winter months were open and depressing. The old adage that a green Yule makes a fat churchyard was amply verified. Low fevers were rife. The strains of the waits on Christmas Eve failed to arouse the sense of Christmas in the heart. Plum pudding and roast beef failed to stimulate to cheerfulness when all around was a damp, drizzly, clinging blanket of rain-charged atmosphere. For days together a pall of moisture settled over the Valley. The moors were soaked, and oozed like surcharged sponges. Every rill became a rivulet, every rivulet a river. The lower lands contiguous to the Holme were flooded. The dams were charged to the brinks, and in the mill-races the pressing waters strained the stoutest shuttles. From the hillsides the swollen streams brought rocky fragments rolling, tumbling, splashing. It was a man's work to watch the river immediately below the tail-goits of every mill, to prevent the goit being blocked by the flotsam of the stream, and the water-wheel thrown into back-water.

It was an anxious time for Tom and Ben on more than one account. The apprehensions that had long possessed Tom as to the safety of Bilberry reservoir did not leave him. Rather he saw daily reasons for the more concern. The new year of 1852 saw little improvement in the weather, Almost daily Tom made his way to the banks of the great dam, surveying it with anxious eye. When he spoke his fears to old residents, they were pooh-poohed. It was the old cry of "Wolf." The people in most immediate danger had been told so often that something was wrong with Bilberry embankment, and for so long had the gloomy predictions of the local Cassandras come to nought, that Tom spoke to deaf ears. None heeded him. Even Ben accorded him only the attention of politeness. The people lower down the Valley based their indifference to his suggestions of possible peril upon the indifference of those nearer the reservoir. If the people who lived cheek by jowl as it were with the big dam could afford to laugh at Tom's dismal forebodings, why should they put themselves about. They recommended Tom to permit the Commissioners to know something about their business, and more than hinted that he had enough to do to look after his own particular concerns without worrying himself about what was after all a matter for the public authorities. It did not occur to them to reflect that if a man is drowned it does not matter much to him whether he has met his death through public or private defeasance.

On Tuesday, the 4th of February Tom had been as usual to market. He had done his business early in the afternoon, but had been detained in town by the necessity of seeing Mr. Sykes in connection with the eternal lawsuit. Then he had to wait for a train so that it was long past the hour for the evening meal when he reached Ben Garside's house in Holmfirth. The tea-things had long been cleared away, but Hannah was soon bustling about preparing an appetising meal of broiled rashers, poached eggs, and tea and toasted teacake. The meal was grateful after the long wearying day. It had been a depressing day. The market had been slackly attended: the weather had something to do with that. It had rained pitilessly all day, a steady, persistent, dogged downpour, ceasing at times for the fragment of an hour, only to commence again, and so on, as if it never meant to stop. And as it was on the Tuesday, so it had been for three or four days before. At the "ordinary" at the Queen Hotel, kept by Mrs. Beevers, in the Market Street, the manufacturers from the valleys of the Colne and the Holme were full of talk of choked tail-goits water piled back into the wheel-race so that the wheel refused to turn upon its axis. The merchants shook their heads gloomily over the mild, open weather. They declared, as their grandchildren declare to-day, that when they were boys winter was winter; but now there was no depending on the weather, and the almanac was a snare and a delusion.

Tom lingered over his meal, luxuriating in the warmth of the room, and the pleasing rest of mind and body. But about nine o'clock the rain abated. The moon glided high in the heavens, sailing in and out among the masses of the drifting clouds. It looked as if the weather might take up after all. It was time it did. But wet or fine Tom had work to do he had fixed to do that night, work which could only be done at the mill, and which were better done that night. That done, the morrow would be clear for the morrow's work. He would have an hour at his account books, he told Ben, and sleep at the mill, and Jack--you have not, reader, forgotten Work'us Jack--should bear him company. Hannah protested in vain that "Tom was killing himself with overwork. Flesh and blood couldn't stand it, and Tom would never make old banes if he went on at that noit. It was bad enough to kill one's self to keep one's self, but it was ten times worse to kill one's self building a house o' cards, only to be blown down by that Jabez Tinker."

So Tom and Jack turned out into the night and set forth up the valley toward Hinchliffe Mill. Their road lay at times by the winding serpentine course of the river, and when the watery moon glanced downwards with bleared eye from among the clouds they could see the swollen waters. They met scarce a soul. It was late and a'ready the lights in the village and on the hillsides were being extinguished in the "house" or chamber. An occasional cur sadly bayed the moon. The swollen waters of the river rolled in their bed with sullen sob. It was a night of dread through which the growing wind wailed amid its tears. The gloom of the hour and scene fell upon the comrades. Scarce a word passed between them, as with bent heads and cloaks close drawn they made their way through the mire of the high-road and the sloughs of known bye-paths little trod. It was hard on ten of the night when the mill was reached. Jack kindled a fire in the office-grate and sat beside it for a time to dry his shoon. He made a brew of strong coffee for his master to cheer him through his task. Then Jack in stocking-feet sought the wool-hole where he had improvised a bed of unscoured pieces, greasy, but snug and warm, and anon his loud breathing might be heard above the beating of the storm without.

Up to something near the weird midnight hour Tom bent over his invoices and books, fighting against the waywardness of thoughts that seemed intent on anything but accounts. At length he abandoned his task half done. He felt strangely wake and alert. At all times able to do with little sleep,--that is a feature of your mill-worker--to-night he felt that he should woo slumber in vain. Donning his pilot jacket that had been steaming and drying on a chair-back before the fire, and lighting a lanthorn and taking in his hand his stout gnarled shillelagh, bought from an Irish hay-maker last harvest-time, he set forth alone on his usual round of the mill-yard, leaving the outer door of the mill on the latch. His round finished, led by what impulse, moved by that presentment he did not stay to consider, he left the mill-yard and began to climb the hill towards Bilberry reservoir. He walked sharply, for the night air was biting shrewdly, and Tom was a noted walker. His long strides soon covered the distance that lay between the mill and the reservoir bank. Tom hummed an air to keep him company in that vast solitude. The sky was clearer now than an hour or two before, but the night was still dark enough to make the feeble glimmer of the lanthorn grateful. Tom moderated his pace as he neared the embankment. Was it worth while to climb its steep face or should he turn his steps downhill. He could hear the water above his head lapping against the copings of the bank. Still, as he had come so far he might, he thought, as well walk the round of the embankment. He was on the huge abutment that turned its breast towards the valley the long barricade that cooped up the vast pile of water, and slowly, the lanthorn dangling by his side and swaying in the wind, he began to tread the path on the embankment top, slowly for in the uncertain light, a slip might cost him a sousing, and it was no hour for a cold bath. But, as he walked, peering ahead to pierce the gloom, and watching carefully his steps by the lanthorn's pale glimmer, he came, midway in his course, upon a sight that checked him with sudden halt, and made his heart stand still. There, at his very feet the water was trickling over the bank, and down the outside. A thin flow, perhaps, a couple of feet in width, had worn the upper soil, and now a continuous stream, not a quarter of an inch in depth, was gently, silently ebbing over the embankment. Even as Tom gazed spell-bound, he was sensible that the opening widened, the water that overflowed was deeper, and its escape in quicker time. A great fear seized on Tom, a dreadful thought well-nigh crushed his brain. He felt powerless to move. Then, with a cry, he rushed heedless along the embankment to the culvert. Not a drop of water flowed over the culvert's lip. The pent giant had found an outlet for itself, and was making for it. Tom ran back to the gap he had but just left. Even by this faint light he saw the breach was wider, the furrow deeper. Sick at heart, scarce realising what he did, Tom with stick and hand tried to tear up stones, cobbles, or sods that might stem the growing current. He spent his time and in vain. Fast as he made his tiny barrier, the licking wavelets undermined it and washed it gently down the embankment side; and the stream that now, oh! so silently, so grimly wore away the surface layers, bit and gnawed into the vast barrier and the clinging earthwork. But to Tom, with action had come perception. Vivid as lightning's flash the whole sequence of the possible, nay, the seeming inevitable, was borne upon his mind. He sprang to his feet, dashed down the embankment side. Not two hundred yards below the reservoir some houses stood darkling in the night, their inmates locked in sleep. With fist and stick Tom hammered at the door, thrust his stick, his fist through the windows of the bottom room, where oft the turn-up bed was stretched.

"Rouse ye, rouse ye!" he cried. "The reservoir! Flee for your lives!" Down to the Co-op Mill he dashed, racing as sure only as those do speed who know that Death follows hard upon their heels, and ever as he sped and passed some silent, lowly cot he paused a breathing space to rend the midnight silence with wild, yet wilder cry, "The flood! The flood! Haste ye, save yourselves." He reached the gates of his own mill, dashed to the corner where Jack still slept in dreamless sleep. He kicked his prostrate form, he shook him, dragged him to his feet.

"Don yo'r breeches. Here's yo'r' clogs. Haste, man! Bilberry's brust. Damn yo' wakken. Ar't deead?"

In that time of frenzied haste the language of his childhood came back to his lips.

Then as Jack, half awake, bewildered, donned his nether garments with but one idea, that Co-op Mill was on fire, Tom rushed to the stable where their one horse was housed. He threw a halter over its head; there was no time, no need for saddle. Jack had followed, thrusting his arms into his coat sleeves as he came. Tom sprang to the horse's back. The gate still opened wide.

"Clutch mi leg, Jack, an' stick to me an' yell wi' all thi might."

Tom's first thought had not been of Ben or his household; but gratitude, duty alike, made them his first care. He must reach Ben at any cost. The horse, urged by Tom's prodding heels and by the sticks that beat upon its flanks, galloped down the hill. Jack could not keep pace; panting, gasping, clinging, he stumbled and fell.

"Make for Ben Garside's," shouted Tom, and was swallowed up in the night, the horse's hoof beating the rain washed road with dull thuds, its heavy pants audible afar.

It was one o'clock and after when Tom made Ben's cottage He thundered at the door, and in a marvellously short time that seemed eternity to Tom, the upper window was raised, and Ben's capped head thrust forth.

"Th' pub's lower dahn, tha' druffen fooil," said Ben's voice drowsily.

"Open, Ben, open for God's sake. Th' embankment's burst at Bilberry."

But ere Ben had ceased to gape out of the lattice, Hannah, in her petticoat, had run down the slender, narrow stairs, and unbolted the door.

"Quick, quick, where's Lucy? Wakken her! Don yo', Hannah. Ben, Ben, haste thee, man. Oh, here's Jack; that's reight lad, aw feart tha'd be longer."

Lucy, pale, trembling, but calm, had come down, part dressed.

"Ar't sure, Tom?" asked Ben.

"It's giving bi inches, it cannot howd. What shall we do? Oh! What shall we do?"

"Mak' for th' hills, for sure," gasped Jack, as he drew deep draughts of breath.

Then Tom felt a quiet hand upon his own, and Lucy by his side drew him part aloof.

"There's Dorothy lower down," she whispered, "and if flood come, oh! Woe is me for all at Wilberlee. Hark! the alarm is spread. Race to Wilberlee; and Tom! kiss me, it may be good-bye."

Tom kissed the tremulous lips raised to his. "God keep you, Lucy, God keep us all. I cannot leave you."

But Hannah, too, had thought of Wilberlee. "There's Dorothy. Yo' mun give th' alarm at Wilberlee."

"And you?" asked Tom: but even as he asked he had turned to the door where the horse, all untethered, stood.

"Ben an' me 'll manage," said jack. "Up wi' thee, Tom. By gosh! hark to 'em screechin' up the valley."

Aye, aye, the warning cries had been heard and heeded, and as Tom wrung Ben's hand and vaulted to patient Bess's back the wind bore to his ears the startled cry, "The flood! The flood! It's come at last," and as the mare, spinning cobbles and pebbles behind its clattering feet, galloping as though the foul fiend pursued, dashed past farm and mill and house Tom cried loud and ever tender, "Oh, rouse yo', good folk, rouse yo'. Bilberry's on yo'. The bank's brust," and the small-paned windows were raised with quick grasp from within, and startled faces with widening eyes peered forth into the night, and still Tom raised the cry, now hoarse, now shrill, in voice that almost failed. "The flood, the flood!" And loud and louder still behind him grew the cries, deep toned of men, anguished shrill of women, wailing tones of children roused from cradle and from cot. The sleepy valley behind him slept no more. It had roused to panic, to the sudden apprehension of ravage, ruin, death. Whither flee? How save the little hoarded wealth; how bear the infirm mother, who by inglenook declined daily to her grave cheered by the babbling prattle of her daughter's bairns; how save the bairns themselves! And even as Tom rode the cries behind him swelled in volume till they fell upon his ears as a hoarse roar, broken by shrill and piercing shriek, and if his ears betrayed him not, above the din of human voice he heard the growl of gathered waters loosed. No use to look behind, the darkening skies veiled the sight. Thank God! Here is Wilberlee. Well Tom knew the entrance to the yard. Pray God the gate yielded to his thrust! It did. By there, through the yard, was the shortest cut to the house. He swung from the back of the beast, now blown and trembling. The panic had seized upon it. Grasping its mane Tom led it through the yard, round the mill gable. Here the noises from above were broken by the mill's flank and hushed. Not a light shone through the windows of the house. All was silent within, but at the garden foot the river roared, and Tom in the dim light saw that on its foaming breast it bore objects, strange, hideous, torn from the fields, floating stacks of hay, ponderous engines and machines, the dark outline of animals swept quickly by.

"Oh! rouse yo'! rouse yo'!" shrieked Tom. He tore a boulder from a rockery by, and with it crashed at the stout outer door. It shook and groaned but yielded not. Tom remembered that the window of the sitting-room or drawing-room came to within a foot's step from the ground. It was a moment's work to dash the window open with his feet, and Tom amid the falling of the glass and the creaking crash of wood-work was within the dark room, his clothes rent, his face scratched, his hands bleeding. There were sounds above of awakening life. Tom sprung to the foot of the passage stairs, finding the inner door he knew not how. "Wake ye, wake ye," he cried hoarsely.

Then a light glimmered above, on the landing. It was Jabez Tinker in his dressing gown. A candle was in his hand that he shaded from the upward current.

"Thank God, yo're up," shouted Tom, bounding up the steps. "Dress yo', quick. Rouse the house. Bilberry's burst. Oh! hark yo'."

Some building higher up the river had fallen with a groan into the stream and frantic cries rent the leaden skies mingling with the crash of stone and iron and stout timbers torn like mere sprigs.

Suddenly from the well of darkness shone the gleam of a lanthorn. It was impossible to see who held it. Mr. Tinker cried out:

"Who's that?"

"It's me, Sergeant Ramsden," said a calm, stentorian voice. "Glad you're up, sir. Time to flit. Had to wade here. Where's Betty?"

"I'm here, George; but yo' munnot think o' coming up till aw've med mysen some bit like."

But the tramp of the sergeant was on the stairs already. His was a welcome presence. The hurry and agitation of the past hour had told on Tom. He felt sorely the need of help. Mr. Tinker seemed paralysed not so much from fear as the sudden waking from sleep to stand face to face with what perils none could tell. Betty clung to her constable, but he was probably used to being clung to for protection by the weaker sex.

"Where's Peggy?" asked Tom.

"Gone to Harrogate to fetch aunt home."

It was Dorothy who spoke. She had partially dressed, but her long, curling, beautiful glossy hair fell like a veil upon her shoulders to her waist she was pale and anxious, but she retained a great measure of composure. She had drawn to her uncle's side but her eyes were on Tom.

"Are we safe here?" asked Mr. Tinker. "Is there any chance of my being able to get across the yard to the office?"

"Can't be done, sir," said the Sergeant, touching his high hat as well as he could with the hand that held the lanthorn. His other arm supported Betty.

"The garden's three feet deep and more. Same in mill yard, no doubt, and rising every second; had to wade in. Glad to find window broken down."

There was a sudden shriek from Betty. Through the door of the parlour that opened into the passage at the stair feet came a torrent of water nigh as high as the doorway itself. It flooded the passage, and, step by step, quicker than a man could mount them, scaled the staircase to the landing on which they stood. Small articles of furniture and ornaments were borne from the room, tossing and colliding as if in a grotesque dance.

"Make for the attic," said Mr. Tinker, and led the way, followed by the women. Tom was hard upon them. The sergeant followed with an agile departure from his professional staidness, deliberation, and dignity of gait that only stress of circumstances constrained. If a withering glance could have arrested it the rapidly rising, gaining flood would have stayed its inroad.

The attic was a low, barely furnished room, immediately under the roof. It was lighted from above by a thick sky-window. It held two low beds of plain deal--the chaste couches of Betty and Peggy. There were two chests of drawers, one doubtless sacred to each maid. There were two chairs, a washstand, a portrait of the sergeant, staff-in-hand, and the like of a soldier over which Peggy was supposed to weep out her heart in moments of despondency.

"I doubt we're not out of it here," whispered the sergeant to Tom. He cast his light through the doorway. "See, the water mounts quickly. 'Twill be on us, and we mun drown like rats in a hole."

"Can you swim?" asked Tom, under his breath.

The sergeant nodded.

"Doff your boots; keep your cloak and breeches nothing else. Get into that corner. Give me the light. Don't let them see you doff. They're fleyed enough."

There was no time even for suspense. The water was already in the attic. Tom dragged a bed beneath the skylight and with a blow from his stick shivered the thick glass.

"Yo' mun get through th' skylight, Ramsden," he bawled. The turmoil of the waters drowned all lower speech. "I'll pass t'others to you."

Ramsden nodded. The habit of discipline is invaluable in the hour of emergency. Tom had taken the command even in his old master's house, and it seemed natural that he should order and others obey.

With difficulty he twisted the portly constable through the aperture. It was a tight squeeze.

"Tear up some of the slates. Widen th' hole," shouted Tom, as he dragged a trunk to the top of the bed to stand on. "Now Dorothy," he whispered, "you next."

"No, uncle," she said, drawing back. This was no hour for ceremony. Tom almost lifted Mr. Tinker bodily on to the trunk, the sergeant from above seized his wrists, and Tom, with a mighty heave, hoisted him aloft.

"Now you, Betty," said Dorothy.

It was well for Betty the stone slabs had been wrenched with little difficulty from the sounding lines of the aperture. She was stout and heavy as seemeth a cook, and if there had not been strong braced thighs on the stack, and arms like iron beneath her, Betty would have slept that morn her last sleep on earth in the tiny attic she had known so long.

"Now, Dorothy," said Tom. She was already on the chest. He pressed her hand tenderly as she turned her face towards the gap through which the Sergeant had passed. Tom lifted her through almost bodily. "Come you, now," she said as she left his arms.

"Here, sergeant," bawled Tom, "take these blankets and things. It'll be cold up there." And Tom hastily passed blankets, sheets, and counterpanes through the window. Then those above heard him tearing at the bedsteads like one possessed. He rove them asunder by main force and passed the sections to the sergeant. Then springing on to the chest he thrust his arms to either side of the roof, and with a thrust of the feet that sent the box flying, forced and prised himself to the roof.

They could see little even by the light which the constable still retained. They were sure only that Wilberlee House was all but submerged, and that the devouring waters as they swept by them crawled up the sloping roof. From the thick darkness came shouts and wails and cries, and the thundering crash of falling buildings. By the lanthorn's glare and the casual glimpsing of the moon they saw, as they strained their visions to pierce the black encircling pall, what looked like huge pieces of machinery that broke from the tomb of the night before their eyes and then were gone again. More than once, almost level with the house eaves, a face of a man or woman, a white, pallid, drawn face, with eyes distended in speechless horror, would flash above the waters and then be borne away like chaff in a mighty blast, or the long white trailing of a woman's dress would shoot beneath their feet, come and go ere they realised it was come. And ever and anon those awful, thrilling, sickening cries, whose dread import they but too surely guessed. The night was bitter cold. They clung together, crouching low, their absorbing thought--would the house stand the shock of those pounding waters, would the dinning flood go on for ever?

Tom only had been engaged. Getting what hold he could by the low chimney of the house, he fastened together with the cording of the beds the disjointed laths, making a very passable raft. This he lowered to the verge of the roof. It might be needed, who might say? The very house seemed to shake under them as they crouched and waited in agonised suspense. Had it been less stoutly built it must ere this have been swept bodily away as rows upon rows of houses that night of doom were swept away by the devouring torrent--many bearing with them husband, wife and child, scarce roused from sleep ere the flood clasped them in the embrace of death.

And still the surging water rose higher and higher, now creeping slowly up the thatch, now sweeping swiftly upwards and now falling as suddenly for a foot or two, giving a momentary hope the violence of the storm was over--but only to surge nearer and nearer to those who now clung to the ridge of the arched roof. Tom contrived to crawl cautiously to Mr. Tinker's side. With difficulty making the dazed man hear him above the roar of the waters and the dinn that stunned their sense, Tom made him understand that they must now trust to the frail raft he had improvised.

"It's our only chance, sir. The bindings of the roof are giving. And look, look!"

Tom pointed across the mill-yard. The moon was clear of the clouds, and for a few moments the scene of desolation and the waste of waters might be seen by the silver light.

Mr. Tinker's gaze followed the direction of the outstretched arms. Across the yard towered the long mill chimney, and it was rocking and swaying like a drunken man. There was not a moment to be lost. The sergeant and Tom slipped the raft on to the bosom of the racing flood. It was all but torn from their grasp.

"Get you on it with the women," cried Tom. Betty was with difficulty placed upon the frail support. Mr. Tinker followed her. The sergeant, obedient to Tom's gesture, sprang upon it.

"Now, Dorothy, jump for your life"; but even as the words left his lips, the bark was torn from his grasp. There was a shriek of terror from those aboard, and Ramsden cried, "The chimney. Oh! God! It's falling!"

Tom breathed a prayer.

"It's you and me for it, Dorothy. Can you trust me?" He passed his arm around her; she pressed her lips to his, and Tom, with his almost unconscious charge, leaped far out into the centre of the headlong current. And even as he leaped the great chimney-stack, its base destroyed, swayed towards the house, and in one unbroken mass fell upon the roof that had been their refuge, and Tom and Dorothy were lost in the crested billows that leaped with angry roar to meet the very skies.