All men hoped that the full moon would bring cessation of this rainfall; but another gray dawn faced them on the morrow and a thousand busy rills murmured and babbled down the lanes round Drift. Here and there unsuspected springs burst their hidden chambers and swept by steep courses over the green grass to join these main waters which now raced through the valley. The light of day was heavy and pressed upon the sight. It acted like a telescope in the intervals of no rain and brought distant objects into strange distinctness. The weather was much too warm even for "Western Cornwall. A few leaves still hung on the crown of the apple trees, and such scanty peach and nectarine foliage as yet remained was green. The red currants flaunted a gold leaf or two and the remaining leaves of the black currant were purple after his fashion. Joan marveled to see sundry of her favorites thrusting forth tokens of spring almost before autumn was ended. Lilac buds swelled to bursting; a peony pushed many pink points upward through the brown ruins of the past; bulbs were growing rapidly; Nature had forgotten winter for once, thought Joan. Thus the sodden, sunless, steaming days followed each on the last until farming folk began to grow grave before a steady increase of water on the land. Much hay stood in danger and some ricks had been already ruined. Many theories were rife, Uncle Chirgwin's being, upon the whole, the most fatuous. "Tis a thunder-planet," he told his nieces, "an' till us get a rousin' storm o' crooked forks an' heavy thunder this rain'll go on fallin'. But not so much as a flap o' the collybran [Footnote: _Collybran_--Sheet lightning.] do us get for all the heat o' the air. I should knaw, if any, for I be out turnin' night into day an' markin' the water in the valley every evenin' long after dark now. I'm fearin' graave for the big stack; an' theer's three paarts o' last year's hay beside, an' two tidy lil mows of the aftermath. So sure's the waters do rise another foot and a half, 'tis 'good-by' to the whole boilin'. Not but 'twill be a miracle for the stream to get much higher. The moor's burstin' wi' rain, but the coffins [Footnote: _Coffins_--Ancient mining excavations.] do hold it up, I s'pose, an' keep it aloft. A penn'orth o' frost now would save a pound of produce from wan end o' Carnwall to t'other." Joan spent many long days in the house at this time and practiced an unskillful needle, while her thoughts wandered far and near through the sullen weather to this old cross and that. Then came a night of rainless darkness through which past augmentations of water still thundered. Nature rested for some hours before her final, shattering deluge, but the brief peace was more tremendous than rain or wind, for a mighty foreboding permeated it, and all men felt the end was not yet, though none could say why they feared the silence more than storm.