The spring which was approaching at the time when Dixie Maxwell so nearly fell over the edge of things was one which will be long remembered in the river valleys of the Middle West. During the winter there had been heavy snows, well distributed over vast areas, and after the winter was over, the storms continued, only they turned into soaking rains to patter incessantly upon all roofs and to flood the ditches on all roads, making each little ravine and hollow in the land contribute its small torrent to the rising rivers.

It was at the close of the third day of steady rain that Larry came back from his reportorial trip to the Micrometer office dripping like a wet umbrella.

“Woosh! some little old spell of wet weather, I’ll say!” he exclaimed, stripping off his rain coat, and disappearing for a moment while he hung it over the tub in the bath-room.

“River still rising?” asked Purdick, when Larry came back.

“About a mile a minute, you’d say. It’s up within a few feet of the bridge deck right now. They’re saying, over town, that the railroad bridge won’t stand it.”

“The Main Street bridge will go first,” Purdick predicted. “Last year, one time when the water was low, you could see the bottom of the piers sticking out like toes out of a broken boot. Looked to me as if they weren’t founded upon anything but the sand and gravel.”

“If the Main Street bridge goes out it will take the railroad bridge with it,” said Larry. “In the Chronicle office they told me the wires are down in every direction and the whole country’s in trouble.”

“We’ll get it here, too,” asserted Purdick, who seemed to be full of gloomy forebodings. “This town was flooded once before, away back in the early days. I’ve been listening for the bell ever since you went away.”

“To call the fellows out? Most of them are out now. Fellows who own boats are hard at it, dragging them up to higher ground. The boat-houses are all afloat and some of them have been washed away. I’m going out again as soon as I get my descrip.”

“I’d go with you if I had a raincoat,” said Purdick.

“I’ve got an old one that’s too small for me. Pile in and get your work up and we’ll take a whirl at it together.”

Following this there was a silent interval of strenuous study, while the rain, coming in sheets, hissed upon the windowpanes. At the end of it, when Purdick was pushing his chair back and Larry was filling in the last few lines of his demonstration drawings, the big clock bell in the college tower was booming out its call in the “general alarm.”

“That means us,” said Larry, jumping up and leaving his drawing unfinished. “Something’s happening.”

A few minutes later they were “afoot and afloat,” as Purdick put it. The streets were rivers, and in places the sidewalks were under water. The college buildings and suburb, situated upon a reasonably elevated level above the river, were out of danger, and so was the greater part of the town proper on the opposite side of the river. But there were bottom lands on both banks of the stream—protected in some measure, to be sure, by old levees—which were pretty sure to go under if the flood should rise high enough.

As they pushed on toward the river there seemed to be every indication that the flood had already reached the danger line. In the darkness—and there were some localities which the street electrics, which were still going, did not reach—people were abandoning the lowland houses, many of them hurrying to higher ground with only such of their belongings as they could carry in their arms. Autos were coming and going in the downpour, and in the threatened area a little army of Sheddon men was at work, helping the inhabitants to save what they could.

In the lowest part of the district some of the houses were already surrounded by water which had seeped in through the old levee; had seeped in and was now coming in faster than ever as the river rose on the other side of the embankment. Some of the college men, owning canoes and row-boats, had dragged them over the levee to launch them in the flooded bottom, and when Larry and Purdick got on the ground these makeshift ferries were doing good work.

“Great Jehu!” Purdick gasped; “if that old levee should break through it would drown everybody!”

“Work’s the word!” Larry shouted, whereupon they jumped in with the first group of college men they came to and went at it.

That was the beginning of a pretty strenuous night for all concerned. Fortunately, there was a generous supply of willing workers, and after getting the people out to a place of safety, the salvagers turned in to save such of their belongings as could be gotten out of the houses and carried up to the higher ground. It was along about midnight that the rising flood put the electric lights out of commission, but after that, bonfires were built, and by the light of them the salvaging went on as best it could.

In the confusion Larry soon lost little Purdick, and about the time the bonfires were getting themselves built, he found himself working with a gang of the Zeta Omegas captained by Wally Dixon, whose bull-bellow of a voice could make itself heard in anything short of a boiler-shop. Dickie Maxwell was also in this gang, and Larry collared him at once for a team-mate.

“That house down yonder by the lumber pile,” Larry said, pointing; “the woman that lives in it told me just now that she hadn’t saved anything but her children and the clothes they stood in. Let’s get one of the boats and see if we can find something that’s worth carrying out.”

“There wouldn’t be much that we could put into one of these cockleshell canoes,” Dick returned. “But we can go around on the levee and get to the house easy by wading a little.”

That seemed perfectly feasible, so long as the levee was still holding, so they ran stumbling along in the uncertain light of the fires to the main street, which was on a fill, and thus reached the wide embankment bordering on the river. Here they had as good a view as the rain and darkness permitted of the situation, a view which had been hitherto cut off by the levee. On the “seaward” side of the levee, so to speak, the river was running bank-full, a muddy, tumultuous flood carrying wreckage of every description, uprooted trees, rafts of fence posts still linked together by their barbed wire, the gatherings from stream-side sawmills and lumber yards, and now and then a chicken coop or some other out-building bobbing up and down or rolling over as the strong current laid hold of it.

Near at hand was the main bridge connecting the college suburb with the town, substantial steel trusses resting upon stone piers. It was still standing, and was apparently intact, though the water was up to the level of the floor, and the flood was constantly hurling floating drift wreckage against it.

“How about it?” said Dick, with awe in his voice. “Think it’ll hold?”

“Don’t seem as if it could,” Larry doubted. Then: “We’ll have to hurry. If the bridge should go, we’d be cut off. It would take the levee with it, sure.”

It was a rather foolhardy thing to do; to risk their lives for the sake of a trifling property salvage, but in such times of excitement even a pretty level-headed person is likely to do things that wouldn’t stand the test of a little cool reasoning and good judgment. Hurrying along on the inner edge of the wide embankment, they soon came opposite the house they had marked from the other side, but it was only to find that the seepage lake was already lapping half-way up the window openings, and that there was no possible chance of saving anything.

“Hard luck for the poor woman,” said Dick, and then, at a great splash and a shudder that set the solid embankment trembling under their feet: “Look at that, will you?”

“That” was a huge landslide on the river side of the levee; a gigantic bite taken out of the solid earth a short distance from where they were standing. What it meant became instantly apparent. With the flood gnawing hungrily in the gap it would be but a short time until the levee must be breached and the river would pour through.

It was a trying moment for the two who stood alone on the threatened barrier. True enough, their way of escape was still open. All they had to do was to run back to the Main Street bridge and so gain the street and sprint to safety up the hill to higher ground. But, on the other hand, there were people on the lower ground, drenched groups lingering in the hope of still being able to save something from their dwellings. And on the rising lake, paddling to and fro among the slowly submerging houses, were a number of the Sheddon rescuers, all unconscious of the fate that was reaching for them.

“Hi, there, you fellows!” shouted Dick, being the first to find his tongue, “paddle for it and drive those people up the hill!—the levee’s breaking!”

The shouted-out warning didn’t do a bit of good. What with the crackling roar of the bonfires, the shouts of the rescuers, and the growling thunder of the flood, nothing short of a steam siren could have made itself heard from the top of the embankment.

“It’s no use!” Larry bawled in Dick’s ear. “They can’t hear, and we’ve got to get ’em out of there quick. Come on!”

Running quickly down the inner slope of the levee, they yelled the warning to the nearest boat-load. “Levee’s going! Get out—get out and warn the others!” they shouted, running along close to the water’s edge, and as they ran they saw the warned ones turning tail and paddling like mad for the landward shore, spreading the warning as they went. But even so, the pair who had started the thing could not have covered the entire area if they hadn’t had the good luck to find a stranded canoe that had gotten away from its owner and drifted over to the levee shore of the flooded district.

“Here’s what we need!” gasped Larry, fairly falling into the treasure-trove canoe. “Grab that paddle and dig for it! There are more of the fellows up there among those shacks just ahead!”

As he spoke, a row-boat, loaded to the gunwales with refugees and their dunnage and pulled by Welborn and another of the Aggies, came through an opening between two of the houses. Welborn and his partner had already got the warning and were hurrying for all they were worth, but they backed water long enough to shout to the two in the canoe.

“All out but a couple o’ the fellows over in that farther house. Their canoe’s stove. We hadn’t room for ’em: go get ’em!”

At the word, Larry and Dick dipped the paddles and sent their light craft spinning toward the outlying house, a story-and-a-half frame with the water already lapping over the window sills on the main floor. Approaching it from the rear, they saw no signs of the marooned ones. As they backed water at the kitchen door another rumbling slump and a splash told them that more of the levee had been carried away by the river. Their time was frightfully short, and they knew it.

“I don’t hear ’em—they must be around in front,” Dick jerked out; but when they essayed to paddle around the house they found the way blocked by a chicken-wire fence. And the precious seconds of time were racing.

Balked by the fence, they quickly handed the canoe back to the rear entrance, and tying it to a porch post, jumped out to wade through the open door into the kitchen. There was no light save that which came from the distant bonfires, and this was partly cut off by the half-drawn window shades. The water was over knee-deep on the house floor, and Dick stumbled over a floating chair.

“Queer we don’t see or hear anything of ’em,” he said. Then: “Maybe they’re up-stairs—sure, that’s where they’d be, trying to flag somebody from the windows on the street. I believe that’s them you can hear yelling right now.”

The answer to that suggestion, of course, was to try to find the way to the upper story, and to do it swiftly. Larry laid hold of the knob of the first door that he came to, hauled it open against the impending drag of the flood, and plunged blindly ahead, with Dick at his heels. At the first step both of them lost their footing and found themselves floundering in utter darkness and in water over their heads. In his haste and excitement Larry had opened the door leading to the cellar.

Since both were good swimmers there was nothing much to the plunge but a sudden ducking, and as they were both soaked to the skin anyway, this didn’t matter. But when they groped around and got the cellar stair under their feet, old Brother Calamity reached out and grabbed them. By some twist of the rising flood the cellar door had been swung to, and there must have been a spring catch on it. For when they braced themselves as best they could on the steps and tried to open it, it wouldn’t move.

“Gee!” said Dick, with his teeth chattering, “we’re trapped right, this time. When the water fills this stairwell we’ll drown!”

Almost as he spoke they heard thumping footsteps on the house stair over their heads, followed by a great splashing in the room beyond the trapping door. Then, quite distinctly, a voice which they both recognized as that of the sham “lame dog” who had once taken a thrashing at Larry’s hands in Farmer Holdsworth’s stubble field, shouted: “Come on, Bry!—here’s a canoe tied to the back porch. Bring that sack of swag and hop in.” And the splashing stopped abruptly with a double tumble into the boat and a quick dipping of paddles.

“Huh!” Dick shivered; “Bry Underhill and Snitty Crawford. And neither one of them stopped to think that there might be somebody else needing that canoe. Besides that, they were looting!”

“Never mind them,” Larry put in. “We’ve got to get out of this trap someway. Brace your feet against the wall and hold me while I shove.”

Dick braced and Larry shoved. There was a tearing of screws from their holdings and the door swung open. Wading into the kitchen they made their way to the front of the house and got to the porch in time to see their canoe, with two swaying figures in it paddling for dear life, disappear among the half-submerged houses.

Larry slipped out of his rain coat and began to get rid of everything down to shirt and trousers, and Dick quickly followed his example. The flooded area behind the levee was now completely deserted, and there was little hope that they would be missed and sought for in time to do any good.

“What’d we better do?” Dick asked. “Shall we swim for it? Or would it be safer to take a chance with the house when it floats off its foundations?”

They were saved the trouble of making the decision. While they were still stripping to be prepared for the worst there was an earthquake upheaval somewhere in the background, followed instantly by the onsweep of a wall of water that toppled the house sidewise from its underpinning and heaved it over into a street which had suddenly become a seething millrace of mud, water and wreckage, and the catastrophe had climaxed.

Going over it afterward, neither one of them could give any connected account of the battle for life into which the breaking of the levee had flung them. With a thousand chances to one of being overwhelmed in the watery avalanche, they clung to one of the porch pillars of the overturned house; choked, climbed and clung again when the house was dashed against an embankment which they took to be the Main Street fill at the bridge end; had a passing glimpse of the bridge itself shuddering to its fall; were buried and half-drowned once more when the approach fill gave way before the onrushing flood; and finally emerged, gasping, in a tangle of trees, broken buildings and floating dÉbris of all sorts caught against a barrier which they presently realized was the lower railroad bridge.

Cautiously, and in darkness that was almost thick enough to be felt, and also in momentary fear that this second bridge would go out and leave them struggling again, they clambered over the floating islands of wreckage, pulled themselves up to the almost submerged railroad structure, and groped their way on hands and knees over the cross-ties until they found that they were crawling in the mud of the mainland.

Here Dick dropped like a stone, and Larry had to work over him for quite a little while before he was able to get up and stumble on. Luckily, they found themselves on their own side of the river, and by making a long circuit over the railroad track, they got back to the college suburb.

Soaked, bedraggled and thinly clothed as they were, they were still unwilling to quit before they had learned what the broken levee had done to things. Upon reaching the streets of the devastated area; streets now crowded with anxious and curious spectators; they found that while the levee was gone, the big bridge wrecked, and the property damage was immense, there were no lives lost, so far as anybody could tell, though there was a spreading rumor that two of the college men had been last seen going to a house which had been swept away when the levee broke.

“That will b-be us,” shivered Dick, who was too cold and tired to be careful of his English. “They’ll find out by to-morrow or next week that we didn’t get drowned after all. Let’s go hunt us a place where there is a fire and something hot to drink. I’m frozen just about solid.”

That was the wind-up of the night of catastrophes for the “Timanyoni Twins.” But there were consequences which were to bear fruit a little farther along. A grateful citizenry, appreciative of the good work done in the night of peril by the student body of Old Sheddon, held a town meeting and voted to erect a much-needed addition to the college gymnasium as a sort of memorial. On a bronze plate set in the wall were to be inscribed the names of the students who had rendered the most signal service, and Larry, looking over the blue-prints some week or so later with a bunch of the men of his own section in the Mechanical, flamed out wrathfully when he saw the names of Underhill and Crawford included in the list.

Neither he nor Dick had said anything about the discovery they had made in the last of the deserted houses, but this inclusion of the two who had taken the canoe without a thought for what had become of the man or men who had tied it to the porch was the back-breaking straw.

“Fellows,” he broke out hotly, “it’s up to us to see to it that two names are taken off of this thing. Underhill and Crawford were not helping; they were simply looting!”

If things were always done right end to in this world, a charge thus openly made would have been investigated, and the guilty ones, if proved guilty, would have been punished. But, undergraduate human nature being what it is, the charge never got itself formally before the faculty or the student council. What did happen was only a sort of half-measure. A couple of the fellows who had heard Larry’s angry accusation were curious enough to look for evidences of looting in Crawford’s and Underhill’s rooms.

The evidences were not lacking. Since the dwellings in the flooded area were those of the poor, there was little in them to tempt a thief who would steal for the intrinsic value of the things stolen. But both Underhill and Crawford had that distorted sense of humor which is sometimes found in fellows who decorate their rooms with sign-boards and other property stolen from their rightful owners, and among the ornaments in Underhill’s room were several framed mottoes in cheap frames, “God Bless Our Home,” “What Is Home Without a Mother,” things like that, the very nature of which in such surroundings sufficiently betrayed their origin.

So Larry’s indignant charge got itself corroborated in the gossip of the campus, and Merkle and two or three other sober-minded upperclassmen took it up, with the result that the names of the two looters disappeared from the drawings of the proposed memorial bronze.

But there was also another result. Since the truth can sometimes bite through the thickest hide, Larry Donovan was soon to find that he had made an implacable enemy in Old Sheddon. But of that, however, he remained happily ignorant for the time being.