n of the dike begin to tremble, then cave in with a
hideous, sucking crash that shook the ground under them, he saw the
flood of muddy water come roaring in and sweep against the painfully
built rampart which swayed and crumbled to its fall.

In a wild turmoil of running, shouting men, backing wagons and rearing
horses, he managed to extricate the clumsy monster that had been put
under his care, brought it laboring and snorting out on higher ground
and fell to work again. The barrier they had set up with so much toil
was tumbling and collapsing in great gaps where the hungry current
flung against it, but it held just long enough for them to raise
another wall, longer, higher, firmer than the other and built with the
frantic haste of desperate men.

The hours went by, it was long after midnight, with the sky growing
pale for the morning. Once or twice Oliver had seen Anthony Crawford
working among the rest, carrying sacks of sand, jostled and cursed by
the men about him, but in spite of their abuse, toiling steadily
onward. When the dike collapsed and the men ran for their lives, one
wagon lurched off the road; its driver was flung from the seat and
caught under the wheel, while the horses, having jammed the tongue
against the bank, reared and plunged helplessly. Oliver saw Anthony
Crawford run out, with the swift, muddy water flowing knee-deep around
him, watched him extricate the man, drag him to the seat, and back the
frantic horses away from the bank to bring them struggling through the
water to safety. There was no time for words of commendation. Both men
at once went back to their task of carrying sacks as the slow building
of another wall began.

Some one had built a fire on the knoll, and here the farmers' wives,
with Janet and Polly among them, were boiling coffee, frying bacon,
and serving out food to the hungry, worn-out men. Oliver had munched a
generous sandwich as he drove down the road. As he came back again he
noticed a strange lull and observed that the men were leaning on their
shovels and that the work had ceased. Tom Brighton, wet and muddy from
head to foot, motioned him to come near.

"We've done all we can," the big farmer beside them was saying, "the
sacks are nearly gone and the men are dead beat. If she breaks through
now, the whole valley will have to go under."

The water was halfway up the side of the earth-banked wall and was
still rising. Here and there a muddy trickle came oozing thro