oy, accustomed
to take great care of his things; and it did not occur to him to let his
cap go, when he had to run for his life. He had to part with it,
however. He was flying after it, when another shout from his father
made him look round; and then he saw the wall of water, as he called it,
rolling on directly upon the house. He gave a prodigious spring across
the garden ditch, and up the hill-side, and but just escaped; for the
wind which immediately preceded the flood blew him down; and it was
clinging to the trunk of a tree that saved him, as his sister had been
saved just before. As it was, his feet were wet. Oliver panted and
trembled like his sister, but he was safe.

Every one was safe. Ailwin appeared at an upper window, exhibiting
little George. Mr Linacre stood, with folded arms, in the doorway of
his mill; and his wife was (he was thankful to remember) on the side of
a high hill, far away. The children and their father knew, while the
flood was roaring between them, what all were thinking of; and at the
same moment, the miller and his boy waved, the one his hat, and the
other a green bough, high and joyously over their heads. Little George
saw this from the window, and clapped his hands, and jumped, as Ailwin
held him on the window-sill.

"Look at Geordie!" cried Mildred. "Do look at him! Don't you think you
hear him now?"

This happy mood could not last very long, however, as the waters,
instead of going down, were evidently rising every moment. From the
first, the flood had been too deep and rapid to allow of the miller
crossing from his mill to his house. He was a poor swimmer; and no
swimmer, he thought, could have avoided being carried away into the wide
marsh, where there was no help. Then, instead of the stream slackening,
it rushed more furiously as it rose,--rose first over the wall of the
yard, and up to the fourth--fifth--sixth step of the mill-ladder, and
then almost into the branches of the apple-trees in the garden.

"I hope you will not mind being hungry, Mildred," said her brother,
after a time of silence. "We are not likely to have any dinner to-day,
I think."

"I don't mind that, very much," said Mildred, "but how do you think we
are to get away, with this great river between us and home?"

"We shall see what father does," said Oliver. "He is further off still,
on the other side."

"But what is all this water? When will it go away?"

"I am afraid the embankments