es of stone, giving way before
them. Wooden mills, thatched roofs, great mill-wheels, went dipping
and swaying and hobbling down. From the upper windows of the Mains,
looking towards the chief current, they saw a drift of everything
belonging to farms and dwelling-houses that would float. Chairs and
tables, chests, carts, saddles, chests of drawers, tubs of linen,
beds and blankets, workbenches, harrows, girnels, planes, cheeses,
churns, spinning-wheels, cradles, iron pots, wheel-barrows--all
these and many other things hurried past as they gazed. Everybody
was looking, and for a time all had been silent.

"Lord save us!" cried Mr. Duff, with a great start, and ran for his
telescope.

A four-post bed came rocking down the river, now shooting straight
for a short distance, now slowly wheeling, now shivering, struck by
some swifter thing, now whirling giddily round in some vortex. The
soaked curtains were flacking and flying in the great
wind--and--yes, the telescope revealed it!--there was a figure in
it! dead or alive the farmer could not tell, but it lay still!--A
cry burst from them all; but on swept the strange boat, bound for
the world beyond the flood, and none could stay its course.

The water was now in the stable and cow-houses and barn. A few
minutes more and it would be creeping into the kitchen. The Daur
and its tributary the Lorrie were about to merge their last
difference on the floor of Jean's parlour. Worst of all, a rapid
current had set in across the farther end of the stable, which no
one had as yet observed.

Jean bustled about her work as usual, nor, although it was so much
augmented, would accept help from any of her guests until it came to
preparing dinner, when she allowed Janet and the foreman's wife to
lend her a hand. "The tramp-wife" she would not permit to touch
plate or spoon, knife or potato. The woman rose in anger at her
exclusion, and leaving the house waded to the barn. There she went
up the ladder to the loft where she had slept, and threw herself on
her straw-bed.

As there was no doing any work, Donal was out with two of the men,
wading here and there where the water was not too deep, enjoying the
wonder of the strange looks and curious conjunctions of things.
None of them felt much of dismay at the havoc around them: beyond
their chests with their Sunday clothes and at most two clean shirts,
neither of the men had anything to lose worth mentioning; and for
Dona