went on,
till poor Steadfast felt as if he had never spent so long a day. As to
reading his Bible and Prayer-book, it was quite impossible, and he never
had so much respect for Patience before as when he found what she did
every day without seeming to think anything of it.

She did not get home till after dark, but the Blanes had taken her to
rest at the friends with whom they spent the time between services, and
they had given her a good meal.

"Somehow," said Patience, "everybody seems kinder than they used to be
before the fighting began--and the parsons said the prayers as if they
had more heart in them."

Patience was quite right. These times of danger were making everyone
draw nearer together, and look up more heartily to Him in Whom was there
true help.

But winter was coming on and bringing bad times for the poor children
in their narrow valley, so close to the water. It was not a very cold
season, but it was almost worse, for it was very wet. The little brook
swelled, turned muddy yellow, and came rushing and tumbling along, far
outside its banks, so that Patience wondered whether there could be any
danger of its coming up to their hut and perhaps drowning them.

"I think there is no fear," said Steadfast. "You see this house has been
here from old times and never got washed away."

"It wouldn't wash away very easily," said Patience, "I wish we were in
one of the holes up there."

"If it looks like danger we might get up," said Steadfast, and to please
her he cleared a path to a freshly discovered cave a little lower down
the stream, but so high up on the rocky sides of the ravine as to be
safe from the water.

Once Patience, left at home watching the rushing of the stream, became
so frightened that she actually took the children up there, and set
Rusha to hold the baby while she dragged up some sheepskins and some
food.

Steadfast coming home asked what she was about and laughed at her,
showing her, by the marks on the trees, that the flood was already going
down. Such alarms came seldom, but the constant damp was worse. Happily
it was always possible to keep up a fire, wood and turf peat was
plentiful and could be had for the cutting and carrying, and though the
smoke made their eyes tingle, perhaps it hindered the damp from hurting
them, when all the walls wept, in spite of the reed mats which they had
woven and hung over them. And then it was so dark, Patience's rushes did
not give light enough