So she that had been sick for twelve years arose, like a ghost from the
tomb, and with her sister went out to seek for the girl they had lost.
They found their way to the boat, reeling together like drunken men.
Annie almost lifted her sister in, and then fell herself among the
drenched and waterlogged flowers.

With the instinct of old habitude they fell to the oars, Barbara rowing
the better and the stronger. They felt the oily swirl of the Dee rising
beneath them, and knew that there had been a mighty rain upon the hills.

"The Lord save us!" cried Barbara suddenly. "Look!"

She pointed up the long pool of the Black Water. What she saw no man
knows, for Aunt Annie had fainted, and Barbara was never herself after
that hour.

Aunt Annie lay like a log across her thwart. But, with the strength of
another world, Barbara unshipped the oar of her sister and slipped it
upon the thole-pin opposite to her own. Then she turned the head of the
boat up the pool of the Black Watery Something white floated dancingly
alongside, upborne for a moment on the boiling swirls of the rising
water. Barbara dropped her oars, and snatched at it. She held on to some
light wet fabric by one hand; with the other she shook her sister.

"Here's oor wee Gracie," she said: "Ann, help me hame wi' her!"

So they brought her home, and laid her all in dripping white upon her
white bed. Barbara sat at the bed-head and crooned, having lost her
wits. Aunt Annie moved all in a piece, as though she were about to fall