“I wanted our little ranch to be just as compact as possible,” he said, “so that I might offer to you the best I could in this distant land. As for myself, I am perfectly well, now you’ve come out to me: only I am always wishing that I could have made a home for you in the old country. I never forget it whatever I am doing.” He seemed to be waiting for an answer, but Hilda was silent, and when at last she spoke, it was about her seven callers, and the next moment there was a terrible blast of wind, and the door was blown in and hurled with a crash to the ground. After that, their whole attention was taken up in trying to keep out the rain, and in securing the windows, until at last, worn out with their long watch, they slept. Hilda dreamed of England, and of everything she had left there. She dreamed that she heard Robert saying: “_And next year there will be the lemons to be cured._” “_Next year_,” she answered, and her heart sank. Robert dreamed of the eight acres of olives ruined by the floods three years ago, and of his own ranch situated so safely on the hill-slope, and of his reservoir. He dreamed he was still working at it, still strengthening the earth dam, and still scraping out the cañon so as to have room for about five hundred thousand gallons of water. [Illustration: “HE LIFTED A PIECE OF IRON PIPING.”] “_It’s nearly done_,” he said; “_about three weeks more, and then I’m through with it_.” At six o’clock he woke up with a start, and found the storm unabated in strength and fury. Suddenly he remembered about his reservoir, and, seized with a sudden panic, he flung out of the house, and, fighting his way through the rain and wind, crossed the ranch, and tore up the trail which led to the reservoir. For one second he stood paralysed. The water was just beginning to flow over the earth dam. He had come too late, and he knew it. He lifted a piece of iron piping which lay there at hand, and he tried to knock out the flood-gate, but the mischief was done. In less than ten minutes, the water had cut a hole five feet deep in the dam, and was rushing down the ranch, carving for itself a gully which widened and deepened every second.