erywhere was moving water, a sound of waters.

"Tom!" she cried, standing in her nightdress with the candle,
calling into the darkness and the flood out of the doorway.

"Tom! Tom!"

And she listened. Fred appeared behind her, in trousers and
shirt.

"Where is he?" he asked.

He looked at the flood, then at his mother. She seemed small
and uncanny, elvish, in her nightdress.

"Go upstairs," he said. "He'll be in th' stable."

"To--om! To--om!" cried the elderly woman, with a
long, unnatural, penetrating call that chilled her son to the
marrow. He quickly pulled on his boots and his coat.

"Go upstairs, mother," he said; "I'll go an' see where he
is."

"To--om! To--o--om!" rang out the shrill,
unearthly cry of the small woman. There was only the noise of
water and the mooing of uneasy cattle, and the long yelping of
the dog, clamouring in the darkness.

Fred Brangwen splashed out into the flood with a lantern. His
mother stood on a chair in the doorway, watching him go. It was
all water, water, running, flashing under the lantern.

"Tom! Tom! To--o--om!" came her long, unnatural
cry, ringing over the night. It made her son feel cold in his
soul.

And the unconscious, drowning body of the father rolled on
below the house, driven by the black water towards the
high-road.

Tilly appeared, a skirt over her nightdress. She saw her
mistress clinging on the top of a chair in the open doorway, a
candle burning on the table.

"God's sake!" cried the old serving-woman. "The cut's burst.
That embankment's broke down. Whativer are we goin' to do!"

Mrs. Brangwen watched her son, and the lantern, go along the
upper causeway to the stable. Then she saw the dark figure of a
horse: then her son hung the lamp in the stable, and the light
shone out faintly on him as he untackled the mare. The mother
saw the soft blazed face of the horse thrust forward into the
stable-door. The stables were still above the flood. But the
water flowed strongly into the house.

"It's getting higher," said Tilly. "Hasn't master come
in?"

Mrs. Brangwen did not hear.

"Isn't he the--ere?" she called, in her far-reaching,
terrifying voice.

"No," came the short answer out of the night.

"Go and loo--ok for him."

His mother's voice nearly drove the youth mad.

He put the halter on the horse and shut the stable door. He
came splashing back through the water, the lantern swinging.

The unconscious, drowning body was pushed past