onsidered. The water had sunk so as to show a few
inches of the top of the entrance-door and lower windows. It was not
high enough to allow of his getting in at the upper window, as he did
yesterday; and too high for entrance below. The stream appeared to be
as rapid and strong as ever; and it shot its force through the carr as
vehemently as at first; for it was almost, or quite as deep as ever. It
had worn away soil at the bottom of its channel, to nearly or quite the
same depth as it had sunk at the surface; so that it was still working
against the walls and foundation of the house, and the soil of the hill,
with as much force as during the first hour. When Roger examined the
red precipice from which he looked down upon the rushing stream, he
perceived that not a yard of Linacres' garden could now be in existence.
That garden, with its flourishing vegetables, its rare, gay, sweet
flowers, and its laden fruit trees,--that garden which he and Stephen
could not help admiring, while they told everybody that it had no
business in the middle of their carr,--that garden, its earth and its
plants, was all spread in ruins over the marsh; and instead of it would
be found, if the waters could be dried up, a deep, gravelly, stony
watercourse, or a channel of red mud. Roger wondered whether the boy
and girl were aware of this fate of their garden; or whether they
supposed that everything stood fast and in order under the waters. He
wanted to point out the truth to them; and looked up to the chamber
window, in hopes that they might be watching him from it. No one was
there, however. On glancing higher, he saw them sitting within the
balustrade on the roof. They were all looking another way, and not
appearing to think of him at all. He watched them for a long while; but
they never turned towards the Red-hill. He could have made them hear by
calling; but they might think he wished to be with them, or wanted
something from, instead of understanding that he desired to tell them
that their pretty garden was destroyed. So he began to settle with
himself which of his dead game he would have for supper, and then fed
his fire, in order to cook it. He now thought that he should have liked
a bird for supper,--a pheasant or partridge instead of a rabbit or
leveret; of which he had plenty. He felt it very provoking that he had
neither a net nor a gun, for securing feathered game, when there was so
much on the hill; so that he must