All the time he had been gone, Elder Holloway had been asking Mary very particularly about the Crofield Academy. "I don't wonder she says what she does about the trustees," remarked Aunt Melinda. "She took the primary room twice, for 'most a month each time, when the teacher was sick, and all the thanks she had was that they didn't like it when they found it out." The gutter in front of the house had now become a small torrent. "All the other gutters are just like that," said Jack. "So are the brooks all over the country, and it all runs into the Cocahutchie!" "Father," said Jack, after supper, "I'm going down to the creek." "I wish you would," said his father. "Come back and tell us how it's looking." "Could a freshet here do any damage?" asked Mr. Murdoch. "There's a big dam up at Four Corners," said the blacksmith. "If anything should happen there, we'd have trouble here, and you'd have it in Mertonville, too." Jack heard that as he was going out of the door. He carried an umbrella; but the first thing he noticed was that the force of the rain seemed to have slackened as soon as he was out of doors. It was now more like mist or a warm sleet, as if Crofield were drifting through a cloud. "The Washington House needs all the rain it can get," said Jack, as he went along; "but half the roof is caved in. I'm glad Livermore's insured." When Jack reached the creek he felt his heart fairly jump with excitement. The Cocahutchie was no longer a thin ribbon rippling along in a wide stretch of sand and gravel. It was a turbid, swollen, roaring flood, already filling all the space under its bridge; and the clump of old trees was in the water instead of on dry land. "Hurrah!" shouted Jack. "As high as that already, and the worst is to come!" He could not see the dam at first, but the gusts of wind were making openings in the mist, and he soon caught glimpses of a great sheet of foaming brown water. "I'll go and take a look at the dam," he said; and he ran to the mill. "It's just level with the dam," he said, after one swift glance. "I never thought of that. I must go and tell old Hammond what's coming." The miller's house was not far away, and he and his family were at supper when there came a bang at the door. Then it opened and Mrs. Hammond exclaimed: "Why, John Ogden!" "I'm out o' breath," said Jack excitedly. "You tell him that the water's 'most up to the lower floor of the mill. If he's got anything there that'd be hurt by getting wet--" "Goodness, yes!" shouted the miller, getting up from the table, "enough to ruin me. There are sacks of flour, meal, grain,--all sorts of stuff. It must all go up to the second floor. I'll call all the hands." "But," said his wife, "it's Sunday!" "Can't help it!" he exclaimed; "the Cocahutchie's coming right up into the mill. Jack, tell every man you see that I want him!"