aye, the water that’s oot! Whiles I couldna get forrit.’
The smith looked up from the hairy foot gripped between his knees.
‘Queer times, queer times,’ he said. ‘Weel, we canna change it, ye see.’
‘How’s a’ wi’ you, Ake?’ said the carrier, turning to the horseman.
‘Whoa. S-ss-ss!’ cried the latter, for the horse, feeling the smith’s movement, tried to release its foot.
‘I was thinkin’ Thievie wad be drooned,’ continued the carrier, grinning from ear to ear and remembering the days when they had been rivals on the road.
‘And is he no?’ inquired the horseman, roused to interest at last.
‘No him. I’m tae hae a word wi’ some o’ they folk by the brig. I saw the river-watcher’s boat gaein’ oot nae lang aifter it was licht, an’ I cried on him, whaur was he gaein’? Dod, when he tell’t me he was awa tae seek Thievie, I was fair angert. “Let him be,” I says, “wad ye cast awa’ the Lord’s maircies yon way?” But there’s the auld thrawn stock safe an’ soond, and folk lossin’ their guid cocks an’ hens. Fie!’
The horseman gave a loud shout of laughter and relapsed immediately into gravity.
‘Aye, the ways o’ Providence,’ observed the smith.
‘Weel, I maun be movin’,’ said the carrier. ‘Thievie’ll be on the pairish yet. There’s mair water tae come doon frae the hills afore it’s finished. There’ll be naething left o’ the sma’ hoosies on the bank. A’thing ‘ll just gang traivellin’ tae the sea. There was naebody believed it wad be sae bad the morn, airly, when I was doon by the auld ferry, but lord! they tellt me an hour syne that there’s no been onything like it this aichty year past. An’ the tide’s comin’ in, ye ken.’
He called the last sentence over his shoulder as he turned from the door.
Janet had all but cried out aloud during the carrier’s speech. Her father was gone – sitting safe now under some sheltering roof above the reach of the insurgent river!
But it was not the thought of this which overwhelmed her. She knew from long experience that there was hardly anything he would not do to prevent anyone, even herself, from seeing his precious box, and she could swear that he would never consent to expose it to a strange human eye while there was the smallest possibility of keeping it hidden. At that hour, soon after daybreak, when the carrier had seen the boat go for him, the torrential rain which was to follow had not yet turned the ordinary spate into something unknown for half a century. That being so, it was plain to her that, sooner than disclose the box to his rescuer, Thievie would leave it in what had been, at other spate-times, the perfect security of the upper storey. So completely was she convinced of this that she would have staked everything she had on it. But she had nothing; and all that she had a prospect of having was surely lying in the rickety upper room waiting for the abnormal torrent to wreck the little house and carry its precious contents to the fathomless recesses of the sea.
She sprang up, the frantic idea banishing all else; and she had dashed boldly out of the smithy under the astonished gaze of the two men before it struck her with measureless relief that she had now nothing to fear from the most suspicious eye. Her father was safe; her secret design thwarted by the river-watcher; the reason for anything she did was of interest to no one. She saw now how futile her fears had been; the outcome of disorganised nerves. Conscience had almost made her believe that she carried her thoughts outside her body like her clothes.
At last, breathless, the perspiration on her face mingled with the wet, she reached the diverging road that led to the river, and as she turned into it the mist began to lift. It grew brighter behind the cloud-wrappings that veiled the world. She stopped, listening for the river’s voice. The noonday gleam had strengthened and she came out suddenly from a belt of vapour into comparative clearness and saw the submerged levels lying some little way before her. The broken water above them was all that told her where the banks were, and here and there she could recognise certain tall clumps of alder above the swirl. She redoubled her pace till, at the place in the road from which Thievie’s cottage could be seen, she noted with rising hope that the flood had not yet reached the tops of the ground-floor windows. The outside stair was still practicable.
At the water’s edge, at the nearest spot to the little house, she stood still. She had hung her bundle and her umbrella on a stout thorn-tree growing on a knoll by the wayside. She would need both hands for what she was going to do. The boat-shed was safe, but she would have to wade almost to the knees to reach it. She drew up her skirts and walked into the chilly water.
She felt its steady push against her legs, and her riverside knowledge told her that the tide at the estuary’s mouth had turned and was coming in. It was thrusting the overflow out from the banks on either side and the area of dry fields was diminishing. She looked up apprehensively, for the gleam of brightness had paled in the last few minutes and she dreaded lest the mist should close in again before her task was done.
At last she reached the shed. The oars were afloat inside, kept from sailing away by the pressure of the incoming tide on the flood-water. She waded through the doorway and mounted, hampered by the weight of her soaking boots, on a projecting wooden ledge; then as she clung to an iron hook in the wall, she stretched out her foot and drawing the old craft towards her, stepped in. When she had secured the oars, she loosed the painter from its ring and guided herself out between the narrow walls.
It was easy work rowing, in spite of the slight current against her. The boat was not a heavy one, and only built to carry a few people at a time across fifty yards of water. She rowed as fast as she could, for the damp vapour was drifting in again, and the sun’s face, which had looked like a new shilling above her, had now withdrawn itself, leaving a blurred, nebulous spot in its place. Pulling across the shallows on the skirts of the spate, she refused to picture what might happen should she find, on emerging from the cottage with the box, that all landmarks were lost in the mist. Her only guide would then be the sound of that menacing rush from which it would take all the strength of her arms to keep clear.
When the boat’s nose bumped against the outside stair she made the painter fast to the railings and stood up, wringing the water from her petticoats. As she clambered out and ascended to the stairhead, small streams trickled down the stone steps from her boots. The door of the upper room was locked inside, but she was not much perturbed by this, having expected it, and moreover she knew the old crazy wood could not stand much ill-usage. Its thin boards were gaping inside and had been pasted up with brown paper by her own hands. She drew back to the outer edge of the stairhead and flung her whole weight against them. The door cracked loudly, and though the lock held, she saw that another couple of blows would split it at one of its many weak places. Again and again she barged into it, and at last the wood parted in a long, vertical break. She was down the steps in a moment and dragging one of the short, stout oars from the boat. She stood on the stairhead, looking round. She could still see the boathouse, a dark blur, no more, but from the south-east there came a splash of rain. She struck the door with the butt end of the oar, once, twice. It gave suddenly, almost precipitating her into the room. She recovered her balance, and then, with that boatman’s prudence which never left her, carried her weapon down and threw it into its place.
In another minute she had thrust her way in and was face to face with her father.
Thievie was sitting crouched under the tiny window with his box in his arms. His nostrils were dilated, his eyes looked as though he would strike, though his hand was still. He had sat listening to the bumping of the boat below and to the blows that burst in the rotten door; humanity seemed to have gone from
