Gundred meanwhile was wandering on in a stupor, not thinking, not daring to think. The whole of life seemed to her to be hanging in suspense. The next half-hour was to vindicate her righteousness and make dreadfully manifest the majesty of Heaven. Her brain oscillated in coma, and she was no longer conscious of any pain or any feeling at all. Everything passed from her mind except the actual physical pleasure of the moment, the keen freshness of the air, the lovely colours of life, the myriad little voices that haunted the world. Then suddenly they were all merged in one vehement, rushing murmur. She looked down. She had arrived at the dam that diverted the stream. A bank of turf and stones had been built, and against its barrier the brown water surged and ravened angrily, in a froth of white bubbles and spume, eager to take its old way down into the pothole and the caverns below. Disappointed, however, of its hope, it must needs go foaming and scolding along an unaccustomed course, over green grasses, drenched and streaming in its current, and down a slope of rush and sedge. Soothed unconsciously by its hum, Gundred sat down and idly watched the raging swirl of the water. It was well that the stream had been thus firmly held back and diverted, for a huge mass of water it was that made it so turbulent. After two days’ rain on the Simonstone, all the waters of the mountain were in flood, and the Long Kern should naturally have been filled with a roaring spate. Suddenly Gundred’s human consciousness was vaguely aware of an alteration. Something seemed to be shifting, the noise of the fretted torrent changing its note. Then she saw a filament of water percolating. As she watched, it widened. The dam was not strong enough to bear the surging wrath behind it. The dam was breaking; Gundred awoke with a violent start. She rose and turned impulsively towards the pothole--on the point of running, of shrieking a warning, of doing something helpful or human. Then, in an instant, she understood that she could do nothing--understood what it was that Heaven had achieved for her. Her prayer had been answered. She must give thanks, and stand aside. Firmly, decidedly, with head carried high, and the fanatic’s mad light in her eyes, Gundred turned away from the stream and walked swiftly home across the moor. What came after was the work of Heaven. Heaven must take full responsibility. Heaven had broken the dam; Heaven might easily have ordained that the descent should not yet have commenced. Gundred had done nothing. Heaven had done it all. She could only go quietly home and trust in the wise mercies of Providence. In an hour or so she would hear what had happened.