roared as in early spring, the garden was inundated, and the meadow
a shallow pond. The sheep had been driven into the upper barn floor:
the chickens were in the corn-bin; and old John and the cows had been
transferred from the stable, that stood low, to the weighing floor of the
mill. A gloomy echoing and gurgling sounded from the dark wheel-chamber
where the water was rushing under the wheel and jarring it with its tumult.
At eight o'clock the woodshed was flooded and water began to creep under
the kitchen door. Dorothy and the boys carried armfuls of wood and stacked
them in the passage to the sitting-room, two steps higher up. At nine
o'clock the boys were sent protesting to bed, and Dorothy, looking out of
their window as she fumbled about in the dark for a pair of Shep's trousers
that needed mending, saw a lantern flickering up the road. It was Evesham
on his way to the mill-dams. The light glimmered on his oilskin coat as he
climbed the stile behind the well-curb.

"He raised the flood-gates at noon," Dorothy said to herself. "I wonder if
he is anxious about the dams." She resolved to watch for his return, but
she was busy settling her mother for the night when she heard his footsteps
on the porch. The roar of water from the hills startled Dorothy as she
opened the door; it had increased in violence within an hour. A gust of
wind and rain followed Evesham into the entry.

"Come in," she said, running lightly across the sitting-room to close the
door of her mother's room.

He stood opposite her on the hearth-rug and looked into her eyes, across
the estrangement of the summer. It was not Dorothy of the mill-head, or
of Slocum's meadow, or the cold maid of the well; it was a very anxious,
lonely little girl in a crumbling old house, with a foot of water in the
cellar and a sick mother in the next room. She had forgotten about Ephraim