delicious meals. Timmy was angelic.
They unearthed halma, puzzles, fortune-telling cards. The rain fell
steadily; the eaves dripped; the paths were sheets of water.

"It certainly gets on your nerves--doesn't it?" said Miss Carter, when
the darkness came on Thursday night. Belle, from the hall, came and
stood beside her at the fireplace.

"Our 'phone is cut off," said she, uneasily. "The water must of cut
down a pole somewheres. Let's look at the river."

Suddenly horror seemed to seize upon them both. They could not cross
the floor fast enough and plunge fast enough into the night. It was
dark out on the porch, and for a moment or two they could see nothing
but the swimming blackness, and hear nothing but the gurgle and drip of
the rain-water from eaves and roof. The rain had stopped, or almost
stopped. A shining fog seemed to lie flat--high and level over the
river-bed.

Suddenly, as they stared, this fog seemed to solidify before their
eyes, seemed curiously to step into the foreground and show itself for
what it was. They saw it was no longer fog, but water--a level spread
of dark, silent water. The Beaver Creek had flooded its banks and was
noiselessly, pitilessly creeping over the world.

"It's the river!" Belle whispered. "Gee whiz, isn't she high!"

"What is it?" gasped Miss Carter, from whose face every vestige of
color had fled.

"Why, it's the river!" Belle answered, slowly, uneasily. She held out
her hand. "Thank God, the rain's stopped!" she said under her breath.
Then, so suddenly that Miss Carter jumped nervously, she shouted:
"Hong!"

Big Hong came out, and Little Hong. All four stood staring at the
motionless water, which was like some great, menacing presence in the
dark--some devil-fish of a thousand arms, content to bide his time.

The bungalow stood on a little rise of ground in a curve of the river.
On three sides of it, at all seasons, were the sluggish currents of
Beaver Creek, and now the waters met on the fourth side. The garden
path that led to the Emville road ran steeply now into this pool, and
the road, sloping upward almost imperceptibly, emerged from the water
perhaps two hundred feet beyond.

"Him how deep?" asked Hong.

"Well, those hollyhocks at the gate are taller than I am," Belle said,
"and you can't see them at all. I'll bet it's ten feet deep most of the
way."

She had grown very white, and seemed to speak with difficulty. Miss
Carter went into the house, with the