tumbling along, far outside its banks, so that Patience wondered
whether there could be any danger of its coming up to their hut and
perhaps drowning them.

"I think there is no fear," said Steadfast. "You see this house has
been here from old times and never got washed away."

"It wouldn't wash away very easily," said Patience, "I wish we were
in one of the holes up there."

"If it looks like danger we might get up," said Steadfast, and to
please her he cleared a path to a freshly discovered cave a little
lower down the stream, but so high up on the rocky sides of the
ravine as to be safe from the water.

Once Patience, left at home watching the rushing of the stream,
became so frightened that she actually took the children up there,
and set Rusha to hold the baby while she dragged up some sheepskins
and some food.

Steadfast coming home asked what she was about and laughed at her,
showing her, by the marks on the trees, that the flood was already
going down. Such alarms came seldom, but the constant damp was
worse. Happily it was always possible to keep up a fire, wood and
turf peat was plentiful and could be had for the cutting and
carrying, and though the smoke made their eyes tingle, perhaps it
hindered the damp from hurting them, when all the walls wept, in
spite of the reed mats which they had woven and hung over them. And
then it was so dark, Patience's rushes did not give light enough to
see to do anything by them even when they did not get blown out, and