ge of
the accident to Dave, for intense preoccupation and a rampart of clay
had kept her in happy ignorance of it, but because the water had broken
bounds and Noah's flood had come with a vengeance. Questioned as to
Dave's whereabouts, she embarked on a lengthy stuttered explanation of
how Dave had dode round there--pointing to the clay heap--to det some of
the new mud the men had spoyded up with their spoyds. She reproduced his
words, of course. Uncle Moses was trying to detect her meaning without
much success, when he became aware that the old man in the fur cap who
had shouted more than once, "I say, master!" was addressing him.

"Is that old cock singing out to one of we, Jerry?" said Uncle Moses.
And then replied to the old cock:--"Say what you've got to say, mate!
Come a bit nigher."

Thereupon Old Sam crossed the bridge, slowly, as Uncle Moses moved to
meet him. "Might you happen to know anything of this little boy?" said
old Sam.

Uncle Moses caught the sound of disaster in his accent, before his words
came to an end. "What's the little boy?" said he. "Where have you got
him?" And Dolly, startled by the strange sound in her uncle's voice,
forgot Noah's flood, and stood dumb and terrified with outstretched
muddy hands.

"I may be in the wrong of it, master"--thus Old Sam in his slow way, a
trial to impatience--"but maybe this little maid's brother. They've took
him across to the Hospital." Old Sam did not like to have to say this.
He softened it as much as he could. Do you not see how? Omit the word
"across," and see how relentless it makes the message. Do you ask why?
Impossible to say--but it _does_!

Then Uncle Moses shouted out hoarsely, not like himself: "The
Hospital--the Hospital--hear that, Bob! Our boy Dave in the Hospital!"
and, catching his friend's arm, "Ask him--ask more!" His voice dropped
and his breath caught. He was a bad subject for sudden emotions.

"Tell it out, friend--any word that comes first!" says Mr. Alibone. And
then Old Sam, tongue-freed, gives the facts as known to him. He ends
with:--"Th' young child could never have been there above a minute, all
told, before the engine come along, and might have took no warning at
twice his age for the vairy sudden coming of it." He dwells upon the
shortness of the time Dave had been on the spot as though this minimised
the evil. "I shouldn't care to fix the blame, for my own part," says he,
shaking his head in venerable refusal of judicial