on
the second floor, such of the inmates as had survived huddled together
in their night-clothes, unable to get down. These, Ransome and his men
speedily relieved from their situation.

And now came in word that the whole village of Poma Bridge had been
destroyed.

Little, with Ransome and his men, hurried on at these sad tidings as
fast as the mud and ruins would allow, and, on the way, one of the
policemen trod on something soft. It was the body of a woman imbedded in
the mud.

A little further they saw, at some distance, two cottages in a row,
both gutted and emptied. An old man was alone in one, seated on the
ground-floor in the deep mud.

They went to him, and asked what they could do for him.

"Do? Why let me die," he said.

They tried to encourage him; but he answered them in words that showed
how deeply old Shylock's speech is founded in nature:

"Let the water take me--it has taken all I had."

When they asked after his neighbors, he said he believed they were all
drowned. Unluckily for HIM, he had been out when the flood came.

Little clambered into the other cottage, and found a little boy and girl
placidly asleep in a cupboard upstairs.

Little yelled with delight, and kissed them, and cuddled them, as if
they had been his own, so sweet was it to see their pretty innocent
faces, spared by death. The boy kissed him in return, and told him the
room had been full of water, and dada and mamma had gone out at the
window, and they themselves had floated in the bed so high he had put
his little sister on the top shelf, and got on it himself, and then they
had both felt very sleepy.

"You are a dear good boy, and I take you into custody," said Ransome, in
a broken voice.

Judge if this pair were petted, up at the Town Hall.

At Poma Bridge the devastation was horrible. The flood had bombarded a
row of fifty houses, and demolished them so utterly that only one arch
of one cellar remained; the very foundations were torn up, and huge
holes of incredible breadth and depth bored by the furious eddies.

Where were the inhabitants?

Ransome stood and looked and shook like a man in an ague.

"Little," said he, "this is awful. Nobody in Hillsborough dreams the
extent of this calamity. I DREAD THE DAWN OF DAY. There must be scores
of dead bodies hidden in this thick mud, or perhaps swept through
Hillsborough into the very sea."

A little further, and they came to the "Reindeer," where he had heard
the