I'd have given a good bit to have him back again."

She was standing in front of the dresser, fixing her hair over her
ears. She turned and looked at me over her shoulder.

"Probably Mr. Pitman was a man," she said. "My husband is a fiend, a
devil."

Well, a good many women have said that to me at different times. But
just let me say such a thing to _them_, or repeat their own words
to them the next day, and they would fly at me in a fury. So I said
nothing, and put the cream into her tea.

I never saw her again.




CHAPTER II

There is not much sleeping done in the flood district during a spring
flood. The gas was shut off, and I gave Mr. Reynolds and the Ladleys
each a lamp. I sat in the back room that I had made into a temporary
kitchen, with a candle, and with a bedquilt around my shoulders. The
water rose fast in the lower hall, but by midnight, at the seventh
step, it stopped rising and stood still. I always have a skiff during
the flood season, and as the water rose, I tied it to one spindle of
the staircase after another.

I made myself a cup of tea, and at one o'clock I stretched out on a