along the race. The great wheel
creaked and swung over, and with a shudder the old mill awoke from its
long sleep. The cogs clenched their teeth, the shafting shook and
rattled, the stones whirled merrily round.

"Now she goes it!" cried Shep, as the humming increased to a tremor,
and the tremor to a wild, unsteady din, till the timbers shook and the
bolts and windows rattled. "I just wish _father_ could hear them old
stones hum."

"Oh, this is awful!" said Dorothy. She was shivering, and sick with
terror at this unseemly midnight revelry of her grandfather's old mill.
It was as if it had awakened in a fit of delirium, and given itself up
to a wild travesty of its years of peaceful work.

Shep was creeping about in the darkness.

"Look here! We've got to stop this clatter somehow. The stones are hot
now. The whole thing'll burn up like tinder if we can't chock her
wheels."

"Shep! Does thee _mean_ it?"

"Thee'll see if I don't. Thee won't need any lantern either."

"Can't we break away the race?"

"Oh, there's a way to stop it. There's the tip-trough, but it's
down-stairs, and we can't reach the pole."

"I'll go," said Dorothy.

"It's outside, thee knows. Thee'll get awful _wet_, Dorothy."

"Well, I'd just as soon be drowned as burned up. Come with me to the
head of the stairs."

They felt their way hand in hand in the darkness, and Dorothy went down
alone. She had forgotten about the "tip-trough," but she understood its
significance. In a few moments a cascade shot out over the wheel,
sending the water far into the garden.

"Right over my chrysanthemum bed!" sighed Dorothy.

The wheel swung slower and slower, the mocking tumult subsided, and the
old mill sank into sleep again.

There was nothing now to drown the roaring of the floods and the steady
drive of the storm.

"There's a lantern," Shep called from the door. He had opened the upper
half, and was shielding himself behind it. "I guess it's Evesham coming
back for us. He's a pretty good sort of a fellow, after all; don't thee
think so, Dorothy? He owes us something for drowning us out at the
sheep-washing."

"What _does all_ this mean?" said Dorothy, as Evesham swung himself
over the half-door, and his lantern showed them in their various phases
of wetness.

"There's a big leak in the lower dam! I've been afraid of it all along;
there's something wrong in the principle of the thing."

Dorothy felt as if he had called her grandfather a fr