Out of doors it was inky black, very silent, very oppressive. Joan called Mary twice before departing, but received no answer. Indeed the house was empty, though she did not know it. Finally, thrusting the letter into her bosom, taking her hat and cloak from a nail in the kitchen and putting on a pair of walking shoes, the girl went abroad. Her present medley of thoughts begot a state of exceeding nervous excitation. For the letter touched the two poles of extreme happiness and utmost possible sorrow. "Mister Jan" was calling her to him indeed, but only calling her that she might see him die. Careless of her steps, soothed unconsciously by rapid motion, she walked from the farm, her mind full of joy and grief; and the night, silent no longer for her, was full of a voice crying "Come to me, Joan, love, come!" CHAPTER SIX THE FLOOD In the coomb beneath Drift, flashing as though red-hot from a theater of Cimmerian blackness, certain figures, flame-lighted, flickered hurriedly this way and that about a dark and monstrous pile which rose in their midst. From the adjacent hill, superstitious watchers might have supposed that they beheld some demoniac throng newly burst oat of the bowels of earth and to be presently re-engulfed; but seen nearer, the toiling creatures, fighting with all their hearts and souls to save a haystack from flood, had merely excited human interest and commiseration. Farmer Chirgwin and his men were girt as to the legs in old-fashioned hay-bands; some held torches while others toiled with ropes to anchor the giant rick against the gathering waters. There was no immediate fear, for the pile still stood a clear foot above the stream on a gentle undulation distant nearly two yards from the present boundary of the swollen river. But, on the landward side, another danger threatened, because in that quarter the meadow sank in a slight hollow which had now changed to a lake fed by a brisk rivulet from the main river. The great rick thus stood almost insulated, and much further uprising of the flood would place it in a position not to be approached by man without danger. Above the stack, distant about five-and-twenty yards, stood a couple of stout pollarded willows, and by these Uncle Chirgwin had decided to moor his hay, trusting that they might hold the great mass of it secure even though the threatened flood swept away its foundations. Nine figures worked amain, and to them approached a tenth, appearing from the darkness, skirting the lake and splashing through the streamlet which fed it. Mary Chirgwin it was who now arrived--a grotesque figure with her gown and petticoats fastened high and wearing on her legs a pair of her uncle's leather gaiters. Mary had been up to the farm for more rope, but the clothesline was all that she could find, and this she now returned with. Already three ropes had been passed round the rick and made fast to the willows, but none among them was of great