boon-companions singing--over their graves; for that night, long
before the "cock did craw, or the day daw," their mouths were full of
water and mud, and not the "barley bree."

To know their fate needed but a glance at the miserable, shattered,
gutted fragment of the inn that stood. There was a chimney, a triangular
piece of roof, a quarter of the inside of one second-floor room, with
all the boards gone and half the joists gone, and the others either
hanging down perpendicular or sticking up at an angle of forty-five.
Even on the side furthest from the flood the water had hacked and plowed
away the wall so deeply, that the miserable wreck had a jagged waist, no
bigger in proportion than a wasp's.

Not far from this amazing ruin was a little two-storied house, whose
four rooms looked exactly, as four rooms are represented in section
on the stage, the front wall having been blown clean away, and the
furniture and inmates swept out; the very fender and fire-irons had been
carried away: a bird-cage, a clock, and a grate were left hanging to the
three walls.

As a part of this village stood on high ground, the survivors were
within reach of relief; and Little gave a policeman orders to buy
clothes at the shop, and have them charged to him.

This done, he begged Ransome to cross the water, and relieve the poor
wretches who had escaped so narrowly with him. Ransome consented at
once; but then came a difficulty--the bridge, like every bridge that the
flying lake had struck, was swept away. However, the stream was narrow,
and, as they were already muddy to the knee, they found a place where
the miscellaneous ruin made stepping-stones, and by passing first on to
a piece of masonry, and from that to a broken water-wheel, and then on
to a rock, they got across.

They passed the coiner's house. It stood on rather high ground, and had
got off cheap. The water had merely carried away the door and windows,
and washed every movable out of it.

Ransome sighed. "Poor Shifty!" said he; "you'll never play us another
trick. What an end for a man of your abilities!"

And now the day began to dawn, and that was fortunate, for otherwise
they could hardly have found the house they were going to.

On the way to it they came on two dead bodies, an old man of eighty and
a child scarce a week old. One fate had united these extremes of human
life, the ripe sheaf and the spring bud. It transpired afterward that
they had been drowned in diff