The High Binder and the seven other callers gave three ringing cheers and cantered off to their homes. Long before they reached their destinations, the storm broke forth with unbridled fury. The rain poured down in torrents, gaining in force and rage every moment. The wind suddenly rose, and all but swept away the riders and their horses, and shook to its very foundation the frail little frame-house where Robert and Hilda were watching by the log-fire, listening to the cracking and creaking and groaning of the boards. The wind rose higher and higher. It seemed as though the little house must assuredly be caught up and hurled headlong. Now and then Nellie got up and howled, and Hilda started nervously. “It’s all right,” Robert said reassuringly. “The wind will soon drop, and as for the rain, we have wanted it badly. We should all have been ruined this year, if the wet season had not set in. It’s all right, Nell. Lie down, old girl.” But the wind did not drop. Hour after hour it raged and threatened, and together with the tremendous downpouring of the rain, and the rushing of the water in streams over the ground, made a deafening tumult. “I wish we had kept those boys,” Robert said once or twice. “It is not fit for any one to be out on such a night. When these storms come,” he added, “I always feel so thankful that Ben urged me to buy land on the hill-slopes rather than in the valley. Three years ago there was fearful damage done in the valley. One of the ranchers had eight acres of olives completely ruined by the floods from the river. You must see the river to-morrow. You saw it yesterday, didn’t you? Well, you will not recognise it after a day or two if the rain continues. And from the verandah you will hear it roaring like the ocean.” Later on he said: “I rather wish I hadn’t filled up my reservoir so full with flume-water. It never struck me to make allowances for the rain coming, idiot that I am. But there is a good deal of seepage going on, and I thought I might as well fill it up to just below the overflow.” “You are not anxious about it?” she asked kindly. “No, no,” he said, cheerfully; “but I shall go out early to-morrow morning, and raise the flood-gate, just to be well on the safe side. One can’t be too careful about reservoirs. They are the very devil if the dam bursts. But mine is as solid as a fortress. I’d stake my life on that. I worked like ten navvies over that earth dam. I used to feel rather like that man in Victor Hugo’s ‘Toilers of the Sea.’ Do you remember how he slaved over his self-imposed task?” “Poor old Bob,” she said, bending over him, and speaking in a gentler voice than was her wont, “and you are not in the least fit for such hard work. I believe you have worn yourself out; and all for me, and I, if you only knew, so little worthy of it.”