But some months must elapse before that eventful day was due in the ordinary progress of the leaden-footed months. The Christmas of 1851 was for all in whose fortunes we are concerned, but a cheerless and anxious season. Work continued fairly good, and on that score there was nothing much to complain of. The winter months were open and depressing. The old adage that a green Yule makes a fat churchyard was amply verified. Low fevers were rife. The strains of the waits on Christmas Eve failed to arouse the sense of Christmas in the heart. Plum pudding and roast beef failed to stimulate to cheerfulness when all around was a damp, drizzly, clinging blanket of rain-charged atmosphere. For days together a pall of moisture settled over the Valley. The moors were soaked, and oozed like surcharged sponges. Every rill became a rivulet, every rivulet a river. The lower lands contiguous to the Holme were flooded. The dams were charged to the brinks, and in the mill-races the pressing waters strained the stoutest shuttles. From the hillsides the swollen streams brought rocky fragments rolling, tumbling, splashing. It was a man's work to watch the river immediately below the tail-goits of every mill, to prevent the goit being blocked by the flotsam of the stream, and the water-wheel thrown into back-water. It was an anxious time for Tom and Ben on more than one account. The apprehensions that had long possessed Tom as to the safety of Bilberry reservoir did not leave him. Rather he saw daily reasons for the more concern. The new year of 1852 saw little improvement in the weather, Almost daily Tom made his way to the banks of the great dam, surveying it with anxious eye. When he spoke his fears to old residents, they were pooh-poohed. It was the old cry of "Wolf." The people in most immediate danger had been told so often that something was wrong with Bilberry embankment, and for so long had the gloomy predictions of the local Cassandras come to nought, that Tom spoke to deaf ears. None heeded him. Even Ben accorded him only the attention of politeness. The people lower down the Valley based their indifference to his suggestions of possible peril upon the indifference of those nearer the reservoir. If the people who lived cheek by jowl as it were with the big dam could afford to laugh at Tom's dismal forebodings, why should they put themselves about. They recommended Tom to permit the Commissioners to know something about their business, and more than hinted that he had enough to do to look after his own particular concerns without worrying himself about what was after all a matter for the public authorities. It did not occur to them to reflect that if a man is drowned it does not matter much to him whether he has met his death through public or private defeasance.