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Shep was creeping about in the darkness.

“Look here! We’ve got to stop this clatter somehow. The stones are hot now. The whole thing’ll burn up like tinder if we can’t chock her wheels.”

“Shep! Does thee mean it?”

“Thee’ll see if I don’t. Thee won’t need any lantern either.”

“Can’t we break away the race?”

“Oh, there’s a way to stop it. There’s the tip-trough, but it’s down-stairs, and we can’t reach the pole.”

“I’ll go,” said Dorothy.

“It’s outside, thee knows. Thee’ll get awful wet, Dorothy.”

“Well, I’d just as soon be drowned as burned up. Come with me to the head of the stairs.”

They felt their way hand in hand in the darkness, and Dorothy went down alone. She had forgotten about the “tip-trough,” but she understood its significance. In a few moments a cascade shot out over the wheel, sending the water far into the garden.

“Right over my chrysanthemum bed!” sighed Dorothy.

The wheel swung slower and slower, the mocking tumult subsided, and the old mill sank into sleep again.

There was nothing now to drown the roaring of the floods and the steady drive of the storm.

“There’s a lantern,” Shep called from the door. He had opened the upper half, and was shielding himself behind it. “I guess it’s Evesham coming back for us. He’s a pretty good sort of a fellow, after all; don’t thee think so, Dorothy? He owes us something for drowning us out at the sheep-washing.”

“What does all this mean?” said Dorothy, as Evesham swung himself over the half-door, and his lantern showed them in their various phases of wetness.

“There’s a big leak in the lower dam! I’ve been afraid of it all along; there’s something wrong in the principle of the thing.”

Dorothy felt as if he had called her grandfather a fraud, and her father a delusion and a snare. She had grown up in the belief that the mill-dams were part of Nature’s original plan, in laying the foundations of the hills;–but it was no time to be resentful, and the facts were against her.

“Dorothy,” said Evesham, as he tucked the buffalo about her, “this is the second time I’ve tried to save you from drowning, but you never will wait! I’m all ready to be a hero, but you won’t be a heroine.”

“I’m too practical for a heroine,” said Dorothy. “There! I’ve forgotten my chickens.”

“I’m glad of it! Those chickens were a mistake. They oughtn’t to be perpetuated.”

Youth and happiness can stand a great deal of cold water; but it was not to be expected that Rachel Barton should be especially benefited by her night journey through the floods. Evesham waited in the hall when he heard the door of her room open next morning. Dorothy came slowly down the stairs; he knew by her lingering step and the softly closed door that she was not happy.

“Mother is very sick,” she answered his inquiry.

“It is like the turn of inflammation and rheumatism she had once before. It will be very slow,–and oh! it is such suffering! Why do the best women in the world have to suffer so?”

“Will you let me talk things over with you after breakfast, Dorothy?”

“Oh yes!” she said; “there is so much to do and think about. I wish father would come home!”

The tears came into Dorothy’s eyes as she looked at him. Rest–such as she had never known, or felt the need of till now–and strength immeasurable, since it would multiply her own by an unknown quantity, stood within reach of her hand, but she might not put it out! And Evesham was dizzy with the struggle between longing and resolution.

He had braced his nerves for a long and hungry waiting, but fate had yielded suddenly;–the floods had brought her to him,–his flotsam and jetsam, more precious than all the guarded treasures of the earth. She had come, with all her girlish, unconscious beguilements, and all her womanly cares, and anxieties too. He must strive against her sweetness, while he helped her to bear her burdens.