y a rock behind, forming one side of the enclosure, and
dykes of loose stones, forming the others, at a height there was no
tradition of any flood having reached. He then went home, and
having told Robert what he had done, and had his supper, set out in
the early-failing light, to ascend the mountain. A great
thunder-storm was at hand, and was calling him. It was almost dark
before he reached the top, but he knew the surface of Glashgar
nearly as well as the floor of the cottage. Just as he had fought
his way to the crest of the peak in the face of one of the fiercest
of the blasts abroad that night, a sudden rush of fire made the
heavens like the smoke-filled vault of an oven, and at once the
thunder followed, in a succession of single sharp explosions without
any roll between. The mountain shook with the windy shocks, but the
first of the thunder-storm was the worst, and it soon passed. The
wind and the rain continued, and the darkness was filled with the
rush of the water everywhere wildly tearing down the sides of the
mountain. Thus heaven and earth held communication in torrents all
the night. Down the steeps of the limpid air they ran to the hard
sides of the hills, where at once, as if they were no longer at
home, and did not like the change, they began to work mischief. To
the ears and heart of Gibbie their noises were a mass of broken
music. Every spring and autumn the floods came, and he knew them,
and they were welcome to him in their seasons.

It required some care to find his way down through the darkness and
the waters to the cottage, but as he was neither in fear nor in
haste, he was in little danger, and his hands and feet could pick
out the path where his eyes were useless. When at length he reached
his bed, it was not for a long time to sleep, but to lie awake and
listen to the raging of the wind all about and above and below the
cottage, and the rushing of the streams down past it on every side.
To his imagination it was as if he lay in the very bed of the
channel by which the waters of heaven were shooting to the valleys
of the earth; and when he fell asleep at last, his dream was of the
rush of the river of the water of life from under the throne of God;
and he saw men drink thereof, and everyone as he drank straightway
knew that he was one with the Father, and one with every child of
his throughout the infinite universe.

He woke, and what remained of his dream was love in his heart, a