We had been digging out the rock, and carrying it to the cliff, for a matter of two days when a terrible storm of rain came on in the night, and when we got up in the morning and went to the cliff, we saw that all the rock we had so toiled in collecting had spent itself, and left a black desolation all around the spot where it had lain. This gave us a great deal of annoyance, as much at our thoughtlessness as at the thing itself; but we did not give up our design, resolving rather to be the more careful in our preparations. It took us a very long time to assemble as much material as we had before, because we had to dig deeper into the side of the mountain for it, and when we got it we covered it over very scrupulously, so that the rain could not touch it. Billy remarked that of course, after our taking all that trouble, there would be no more rain for a month, and he was right; but I pointed out to him that we should have been very foolish if we had not taken these precautions, and he said it was a pity you could not tell things beforehand, adding, as if it had never struck him before, that you never could tell what might have been, because all we knew was what was. And then he was silent for a time, and when he spoke again, he said: "Ain't it terrible, master, to think you never can catch a minute what's gone?" Billy so seldom said anything of a reflective nature that I looked at him in some alarm, with a kind of superstitious fear that he was sickening for something; but I was relieved in a moment when, in the same breath, he said: "It do make you eat hearty, though."