s now dawn, and the black sky had faded to a dark gray.

The rain was pouring down as if all "the gates of heaven" had been
opened for another deluge.

The river and the creek lashed to fury, were roaring and rushing onward,
like devouring monsters.

"Merciful Heaven! Talk of the fury of fire, but look here!" exclaimed
the doctor, glancing around. But his voice was lost in the sound of many
waters.

Their road, after passing the outer gates of the prison, lay away from
the banks of the creek, and down the course of the river, towards the
village.

But for the darkness of that stormy dawn they might have seen a fearful
sight below. The lower portion of the town was already overflowed, and
the waters were still rising. Many of the people were gathered upon the
house-tops, and others were out in boats, engaged in rescuing their
neighbors from the flooded dwellings.

But for the horrible roaring of the torrents, they might have heard the
shouts and cries of the terrified inhabitants shocked and half-frenzied
by the suddenness of this overwhelming calamity.

But they heard and saw but little of this as they plunged on through the
darkness, in the deluge of rain and thunder of waters. Unawares they
were drawing near their fate. They came upon it gradually.

"Good Heaven! what is the matter down there?" suddenly cried the doctor,
as he dimly discerned the forms of men, women, and children gathered
upon the house-tops, which did not look like house-tops, but like
flat-boats floating upon the dark waters.

"I say, Berners, what the deuce is the matter down there? Your eyes are
younger than mine--look," anxiously insisted the doctor, peering down
into the gloomy and horrible chaos.

"It is a flood. The river is over the town," replied Mr. Berners,
carelessly; for he, in his grief, would not have minded if the whole of
the Black Valley had been turned into a black sea.

"The river over the town! Good Heaven! And you say that as indifferently
as if hundreds of human lives and millions of money were not
imperilled," cried the doctor, breaking away from his companion, and
running down towards the village.

A terrible, a heart-crushing sight met his eyes!

The doctor's family occupied a beautiful low-roofed villa on the
opposite bank of Violet Run, a little stream of water making up from the
Black River. The doctor's first thought was of his own home, of course,
and he ran swiftly on, through darkness and storm, until