"I want to get a note from him to this effect: 'Dear Tug: For the sake of old acquaintance, send me a drop of water.' Whereupon I will take my iron pen in hand, and reply: 'Uncle Ponsonboy: Drink your tears.' Then I will instruct one of my devilish assistants to lock him up, and never let him see the cheerful light of the fires again. As the door closes, I will say to him, as I now say to you,--Good-night." Tug and Silas walked toward the hills, and Dorris and his wife toward the town, but the shadow no longer followed them; it had disappeared. In case the shadow came back that night to prowl around The Locks, and peer in at the windows, it found a determined-looking man on guard, carrying a wicked-looking gun. Had the eyes of the shadow followed the feet of the man, it would have noted that they walked around the stone wall at regular intervals, and that they stopped occasionally, as if listening; it would have seen them strolling leisurely away at the first approach of dawn, carrying the gun and Tug's burly body with them. CHAPTER XVIII. THE RISE IN THE RIVER. The rain had been falling at intervals for weeks, and the sluggish river, which usually crawled at the foot of the town in quiet submission, had become a dangerous torrent. Long since out of its banks, its waters poured through the bottoms with an angry roar, and at night those who gathered on the brink in the town to mark its steady rising could hear cries of distress from the heavy timber, the firing of guns, and other alarms. For two days parties had been out with boats of every description, rescuing those who believed that the waters would soon go down, and remained until escape was impossible, imprisoned in the upper rooms of their houses; and each returning party brought the most distressing news yet heard of the havoc wrought by the flood. Reaching from hill to hill, the angry waters ploughed up fair fields like heavy shot fired in battle, and crept into pretty homes to destroy in a night the work of years, wresting treasures from their fastenings with remorseless fury, and hurrying away with them like living thieves.