bucketsful.

"It got so bad that we couldn't keep from hurrying and began to run.
We passed by the farm of the Alleux--that's the first of the
houses--and it looked like a sort of stone ghost. Bits of walls like
splintered pillars standing up out of the water; the house was
shipwrecked. The other farm, a little further, was as good as
drowned dead.

"Our house is the third. It's on the edge of the road that runs
along the top of the slope. We climbed up, facing the rain that beat
on us in the dusk and began to blind us--the cold and wet fairly
smacked us in the eye, flop!--and broke our ranks like machine-guns.

"The house! I ran like a greyhound--like an African attacking.
Mariette! I could see her with her arms raised high in the doorway
behind that fine curtain of night and rain--of rain so fierce that
it drove her back and kept her shrinking between the doorposts like
a statue of the Virgin in its niche. I just threw myself forward,
but remembered to give my pals the sign to follow me. The house
swallowed the lot of us. Mariette laughed a little to see me, with a
tear in her eye. She waited till we were alone together and then
laughed and cried all at once. I told the boys to make themselves at
home and sit down, some on the chairs and the rest on the table.

"'Where are they going, ces messieurs?' asked Manette.

"'We are going to Vauvelles.'

"'Jesus!' she said, 'you'll never get there. You can't do