Throughout the day Brent had felt himself an ineffective. He had done what he could but his activities had always seemed to be on the less strenuous fringe of things like a bee who works on the edge of a honey comb. Now as the replenished fire leaped high and the hills resounded to an occasional peal of unseasonable thunder the figure of the woman who had assumed a man's responsibility became a pattern of action. In the flare and the shadow he watched it, fascinated. It was always in the forefront, frequently in actual but unconsidered peril, leading like the white plume of Navarre. It was all as lurid and as turgid a picture as things seen in nightmare or remembered from mythology--this turmoil of emergency effort through a fire-lit night of storm and flood; figures thrown into exaggeration as the flames leaped or dwindled--faces haggard with weariness. To Brent came a new and keener spirit of combat. The outskirts of action no longer sufficed, but with an elemental ardor and elation his blood glowed in his veins. When at last all that could be done had been done, the east was beginning to take on a sort of ashen light--the forerunner of dawn. Alexander had held to the sticking-point the quailing energies of spent men for more than six agonized hours. Below them the river bed that had been almost dry forty-eight hours ago was a madly howling torrent. Men with faces gray and hollow-eyed laid down their crow-bars and pike-poles. Brent, reeling unsteadily as he walked, looked about him in a dazed fashion out of giddy eyes. He saw Alexander wiping the steaming moisture from her brow with the sleeve of her shirt and heard her speak through a confused pounding upon eardrums that still seemed full of cumulative din. "Unless ther flood carries ther river five foot higher then hit's ever gone afore, we've done saved thet timber," she said slowly. "An' no men ever worked more plum slavish ner faithful then what you men have ternight." "That hain't nothin' more left ter do now," said Parson Acup, "unless hit be ter go home an' pray." But Alexander shook her head with a vigorous and masculine determination. "No, thar's still one thing more ter do. I want thet when you men goes home ye send me back a few others--fresh men. I'm goin' back ter see how my daddy's farin' an' whether he's got a chanst ter live, but----" she paused abruptly and her voice fell, "thar's a spring-branch over thar by my house. Ye kin mighty nigh gauge how ther water's risin' or fallin' hyar by notin' ther way hit comes up or goes down over yon. I aims ter keep a watchin' hit, whilst I'm over thar." The parson nodded his head. "That's a right good idee, Alexander, but wharfore does ye seek ter hev us send more men over hyar? All thet kin be done, has been done." The girl's eyes snapped. In them were violet fires, quick-leaping and hot.