Cousin Tom was giving rapid directions as they went out to the waiting automobiles1. "I will go on with Jasper and we will pick up some men from the farms as we pass. Anthony, you had better come with Oliver, we shall want to crowd in all the farmers we can. What is it, Polly? You want to come with me? I suspect you think you are going to keep your father out of danger and I think the same of you. There is room in front here, between us; jump in!"
The engine grumbled2 and roared and the first car slid away into the shadows.
"Get in," said Oliver curtly3 to Anthony Crawford, while Janet opened the door of the second motor and slipped to the far side to give him room. None of the three spoke4 as they went down the drive behind Cousin Tom. As they came through the gate they could hear, faintly, the wild clanging of the bell in the valley below.
Oliver was too much occupied with his driving to have any other thought, Janet was awed5 into silence by the alien presence at her side, but Anthony Crawford, in that same husky, broken voice, suddenly began to speak as though he were following his thoughts out loud.
"I don't know why I came back to Medford Valley," he said. "I had lived through every sort of thing since I went away, but I was making good at last. Martha—that's the girl I married, she was a miner's daughter—had helped me to go straight. I was working in a mine, harder work than I had ever dreamed of in my life. It was good for me, yet I kept telling myself that it was being in prison. Perhaps it was, but I had forgotten that prison was the place where I ought to be."
Oliver tilted6 back his head that he might hear better, but his only answer was an inarticulate sound like a mutter of agreement. To reach the valley as soon as possible and without mishap7, was more important to him, at that moment, than explanations. But Janet looked up with round, wondering eyes, eager to hear the rest.
"I kept thinking how it was here at home, so green and clean and peaceful, not like that stark8, bare mountain country where I seemed to be working my whole life away. I told myself that a certain portion of Medford Valley belonged to me, that I could come back and live a life of dignified9 idleness, if only I had my rights, if only Jasper would give me what was my own."
"But it wasn't true. You knew that he wouldn't keep what belonged to you," burst out Janet.
"I knew it wasn't true, but people love to deceive themselves, and I had to explain to Martha. She would never have come if she had known how things really stood; she was unwilling10, even as it was. But I was so sure, I thought I knew Jasper so well, exactly how I could threaten him, just where I could hurt him most. Had I not learned, when I was a boy, how proud and sensitive and generous he could be? I was as successful as I had hoped to be, but I wanted more and more, and see where it has brought me in the end!"
It seemed a relief to him to confess the very whole of his wrong-doing, to leave hidden no single meanness or small-souled thought. It was as though, in the clean night air, in the face of two just and clear-seeing companions, he wished to cast aside all the wrong of the past before making a new beginning.
"I am going away," he said. "It isn't because I found that my plan didn't pay as I had hoped it would. It is because I was happier back there in the West, serving out a sentence at hard labor11, learning to live by the work of my hands rather than by my dishonorable wits. I can look back over my life and see just where my honesty began to waver, just when I first compromised with my own conscience and persuaded myself that something was fair and honest when I knew it was not. We had all the same chance, Jasper and Tom and I; look at them and look at me. You may wonder why I say all this to you. Perhaps it is because you alone saw through me, dared to tell me that I had no confidence even in my own claims, called me a man of straw and a bogy. Well, after to-night I am going back, to be a real man again."
For the first time Oliver slackened the speed of the car and nearly stopped in the road.
"Do you want to go now?" he inquired shortly. "We can take you to the station if you do. They don't need us down there, as they do the others."
"No, not now. I must know what my criminal bungling12 has amounted to, first. When I have seen the flood go down, then it will be time to go. I want to see this thing through."
They had straightened out into the level road and were forced to drive more slowly, for the highway was no longer empty. A big tractor was lumbering13 ahead, farm wagons15 turned out for them to pass, and hastily dressed men were thronging16 alongside. Two of them jumped upon the running board, but, seeing who sat in the car, muttered some imprecation and dropped off again. Anthony Crawford stood up and opened the door.
"I'll walk," he announced briefly17. "Load in all the men you can carry. You will need every one."
Janet climbed over to the place beside her brother, and the tonneau filled up with men, who crowded the seats, clung to the step and the fenders, and sat in a row across the back of the car. They came to the end of the road at last where, in that place that had been so empty and quiet half an hour ago, there was now gathered a surging crowd of men, of horses, tractors, automobiles, and wagons. Oliver could see, on a knoll18 above the others, Polly standing19 with two farmers' wives, the only women there.
At first he could not see the water, but, as they pressed into the crowd, he caught sight of the broad pool, dark even in the moonlight. It was over the road, now, through the fence, and had crept halfway20 across the stretch of grass before John Massey's door. Tom Brighton's white-clad figure was going back and forth21 among the men, but it was Cousin Jasper, standing high above the others on the seat of a wagon14, who was directing operations and getting this confused army of workers into rapid organization.
"Tom, take half the men to shovel22 dirt and pile up the sand sacks, and send the other half back to the sand pits to fill them. Clear the road so that the wagons can go back and forth. Henry Brook23, take out your horses and join your team with Johnson's, the tractor can pull two wagons and we need four horses to each of the others. Now, go to it and bring the sandbags as fast as they can be filled. We can't save John Massey's house, but we will build a dam to hold the water a hundred yards back, where the ground begins to rise. And remember, you can't be too quick if you want to save the valley."
Oliver took off his coat and jumped out of the car.
"Go over where Polly is," he told Janet "I am going into this game with the others."
He was in every portion of it, as the night wore by, never quite knowing how he passed from one task to another, but following orders blindly, hour after hour. He helped to dig, but was not quite so quick as the others; he carried the sacks of sand that were brought up, loaded high upon the wagons, but he had not the quick swing of the more sturdy farmers. He found himself at last on the high, vibrating seat of the heavy tractor, rumbling24 down the road with a line of wagons behind him, stopping at the sand pits to have them filled, then turning laboriously25 to haul them back again. The owner sat beside him on the first trip, directing him how to manage the unfamiliar26 machine, but as they made ready for a second he ejaculated, "You'll do," and jumped down to labor with the diggers. Oliver was left to drive his clumsy, powerful steed alone.
He saw the broad, semicircular wall of piled sandbags, banked with earth, rise slowly as the men worked with feverish27 haste, he saw the water come up to the foot of it, seem to hesitate, and then creep up the side. He saw, suddenly, just as they had all stopped to breathe, a long portion of the dike28 begin to tremble, then cave in with a hideous29, sucking crash that shook the ground under them, he saw the flood of muddy water come roaring in and sweep against the painfully built rampart which swayed and crumbled31 to its fall.
In a wild turmoil32 of running, shouting men, backing wagons and rearing horses, he managed to extricate33 the clumsy monster that had been put under his care, brought it laboring34 and snorting out on higher ground and fell to work again. The barrier they had set up with so much toil35 was tumbling and collapsing36 in great gaps where the hungry current flung against it, but it held just long enough for them to raise another wall, longer, higher, firmer than the other and built with the frantic37 haste of desperate men.
The hours went by, it was long after midnight, with the sky growing pale for the morning. Once or twice Oliver had seen Anthony Crawford working among the rest, carrying sacks of sand, jostled and cursed by the men about him, but in spite of their abuse, toiling38 steadily39 onward40. When the dike collapsed41 and the men ran for their lives, one wagon lurched off the road; its driver was flung from the seat and caught under the wheel, while the horses, having jammed the tongue against the bank, reared and plunged42 helplessly. Oliver saw Anthony Crawford run out, with the swift, muddy water flowing knee-deep around him, watched him extricate the man, drag him to the seat, and back the frantic horses away from the bank to bring them struggling through the water to safety. There was no time for words of commendation. Both men at once went back to their task of carrying sacks as the slow building of another wall began.
Some one had built a fire on the knoll, and here the farmers' wives, with Janet and Polly among them, were boiling coffee, frying bacon, and serving out food to the hungry, worn-out men. Oliver had munched43 a generous sandwich as he drove down the road. As he came back again he noticed a strange lull44 and observed that the men were leaning on their shovels45 and that the work had ceased. Tom Brighton, wet and muddy from head to foot, motioned him to come near.
"We've done all we can," the big farmer beside them was saying, "the sacks are nearly gone and the men are dead beat. If she breaks through now, the whole valley will have to go under."
The water was halfway up the side of the earth-banked wall and was still rising. Here and there a muddy trickle46 came oozing47 through, to be stopped by a clod of earth, but otherwise there was nothing to do. To Oliver it seemed that they stood for hours, staring, waiting as the water lifted slowly, rose half an inch, paused and rose again. It was three-fourths of the way up; it was a foot below the lip of the wall. The space of a foot dwindled48 to six inches.
"If there should be a wind, no............