“I thought I should have died more’n once, for sure as you live it went on three mortal days, and of all miser’ble creeters I was the miser’blest. Then I see how wicked and ungrateful I’d been; how I’d shirked my bounden duty and scorned my best blessins. There warn’t a hard job that ever I’d hated but what grew easy when I remembered who it was done for; there warn’t a trouble or a care that I wouldn’t have welcomed hearty, nor one hour of them dear fractious babies that didn’t seem precious when I’d gone and left ’em. I’d got time to rest enough now, and might go pleasuring all day long; but I couldn’t do it, and would have given a dozin bunnets trimmed to kill ef I could only have been back moilin’ in my old kitchen with the children hangin’ round me and Lisha a comin’ in cheerful from his work as he used to ’fore I spoilt his home for him. How sing’lar it is folks never do know when they are wal off!” “I know it now,” said Christie, rocking lazily to and fro, with a face almost as tranquil as little Vic’s, lying half asleep in her lap. “Glad to hear it, my dear. As I was goin’ on to say, when Saturday come, a tremenjus storm set in, and it rained guns all day. I never shall forgit it, for I was hankerin’ after baby, and dreadful worried about the others, all bein’ croupy, and Florindy with no more idee of nussin’ than a baa lamb. The rain come down like a reg’lar deluge, but I didn’t seem to have no ark to run to. As night come on things got wuss and wuss, for the wind blowed the roof off Mis Bascum’s barn and stove in the butt’ry window; the brook riz and went ragin’ every which way, and you never did see such a piece of work. “My heart was most broke by that time, and I knew I should give in ’fore Monday. But I set and sewed and listened to the tinkle tankle of the drops in the pans set round to ketch ’em, for the house leaked like a sieve. Mis Bascurn was down suller putterin’ about, for every kag and sarce jar was afloat. Moses, her brother, was lookin’ after his stock and tryin’ to stop the damage. All of a sudden he bust in lookin’ kinder wild, and settin’ down the lantern, he sez, sez he: ‘You’re ruthern an unfortinate woman to-night, Mis Wilkins.’ ‘How so?’ sez I, as ef nuthin’ was the matter already. “‘Why,’ sez he, ‘the spilins have give way up in the rayvine, and the brook ’s come down like a river, upsot your lean-to, washed the mellion patch slap into the road, and while your husband was tryin’ to git the pig out of the pen, the water took a turn and swep him away.’ “‘Drownded?’ sez I, with only breath enough for that one word. ‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ sez Moses, ‘nothin’ ever did come up alive after goin’ over them falls.’