“I have no doubt I should,” answered Mr Stoddart, “if I thought I were going to do any good; but as it is, to tell the truth, I would rather be by my own fire with my folio Dante on the reading desk.” “Well, I would rather help the poorest woman in creation, than contemplate the sufferings of the greatest and wickedest,” I said. “There are two things you forget,” returned Mr Stoddart. “First, that the poem of Dante is not nearly occupied with the sufferings of the wicked; and next, that what I have complained of in this expedition—which as far as I am concerned, I would call a wild goose chase, were it not that it is your doing and not mine—is that I am not going to help anybody.” “You would have the best of the argument entirely,” I replied, “if your expectation was sure to turn out correct.” As I spoke, we had come within a few yards of the Tomkins’s cottage, which lay low down from the village towards the river, and I saw that the water was at the threshold. I turned to Mr Stoddart, who, to do him justice, had not yet grumbled in the least. “Perhaps you had better go home, after all,” I said; “for you must wade into Tomkins’s if you go at all. Poor old man! what can he be doing, with his wife dying, and the river in his house!” “You have constituted yourself my superior officer, Mr Walton. I never turned my back on my leader yet. Though I confess I wish I could see the enemy a little clearer.” “There is the enemy,” I said, pointing to the water, and walking into it. Mr Stoddart followed me without a moment’s hesitation. When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was a small stream of water running straight from the door to the fire on the hearth, which it had already drowned. The old man was sitting by his wife’s bedside. Life seemed rapidly going from the old woman. She lay breathing very hard. “Oh, sir,” said the old man, as he rose, almost crying, “you’re come at last!” “Did you send for me?” I asked. “No, sir. I had nobody to send. Leastways, I asked the Lord if He wouldn’t fetch you. I been prayin’ hard for you for the last hour. I couldn’t leave her to come for you. And I do believe the wind ’ud ha’ blown me off my two old legs.” “Well, I am come, you see. I would have come sooner, but I had no idea you would be flooded.” “It’s not that I mind, sir, though it IS cold sin’ the fire went. But she IS goin’ now, sir. She ha’n’t spoken a word this two hours and more, and her breathin’s worse and worse. She don’t know me now, sir.” A moan of protestation came from the dying woman. “She does know you, and loves you too, Tomkins,” I said. “And you’ll both know each other better by and by.” The old woman made a feeble motion with her hand. I took it in mine. It was cold and deathlike. The rain was falling in large slow drops from the roof upon the bedclothes. But she would be beyond the reach of all the region storms before long, and it did not matter much.