Polly standing with two farmers' wives,
the only women there.

At first he could not see the water, but, as they pressed into the
crowd, he caught sight of the broad pool, dark even in the moonlight.
It was over the road, now, through the fence, and had crept halfway
across the stretch of grass before John Massey's door. Tom Brighton's
white-clad figure was going back and forth among the men, but it was
Cousin Jasper, standing high above the others on the seat of a wagon,
who was directing operations and getting this confused army of workers
into rapid organization.

"Tom, take half the men to shovel dirt and pile up the sand sacks, and
send the other half back to the sand pits to fill them. Clear the road
so that the wagons can go back and forth. Henry Brook, take out your
horses and join your team with Johnson's, the tractor can pull two
wagons and we need four horses to each of the others. Now, go to it
and bring the sandbags as fast as they can be filled. We can't save
John Massey's house, but we will build a dam to hold the water a
hundred yards back, where the ground begins to rise. And remember, you
can't be too quick if you want to save the valley."

Oliver took off his coat and jumped out of the car.

"Go over where Polly is," he told Janet "I am going into this game
with the others."

He was in every portion of it, as the night wore by, never quite
knowing how he passed from one task to another, but following orders
blindly, hour after hour. He helped to dig, but was not quite so quick
as the others; he carried the sacks of sand that were brought up,
loaded high upon the wagons, but he had not the quick swing of the
more sturdy farmers. He found himself at last on the high, vibrating
seat of the heavy tractor, rumbling down the road with a line of
wagons behind him, stopping at the sand pits to have them filled, then
turning laboriously to haul them back again. The owner sat beside him
on the first trip, directing him how to manage the unfamiliar machine,
but as they made ready for a second he ejaculated, "You'll do," and
jumped down to labor with the diggers. Oliver was left to drive his
clumsy, powerful steed alone.

He saw the broad, semicircular wall of piled sandbags, banked with
earth, rise slowly as the men worked with feverish haste, he saw the
water come up to the foot of it, seem to hesitate, and then creep up
the side. He saw, suddenly, just as they had all stopped to breathe, a
long portio