Methusalem waded stolidly towards the river, his cart nearly floating in places. On the drier artificial slope leading up to the bridge she drew rein, and, jumping down, walked cautiously over the two still standing arches to hail Ephraim Bidlake, now some hundred yards down the opposite bank. As she put her horn to her lips to summon him, she saw, quanted up-stream, another barge with a reinforcement of sacks, and as it must pass under the bridge she moved to the other side to send her message by it as it came along. But the posse of mud-grimed men with a last push of their submerged poles fell prostrate before her, as in some Oriental obeisance, and she heard the tops of the gault-sacks scraping against the brickwork of the arch as the boat passed under it, so high was the water. It reminded her again of her nightmare. But no heads came crack as they glided through, and running to the other side, she spoke the rising crew.

Turning, she became aware of Bundock standing, bag-bowed, on the dyke, amid a mass of sodden straw, gazing in horror at the ruins and the dead horse bashing against them, swathed in yellow weed. She advanced to the edge of the void and hailed him across some fifteen feet of eddying water.

“Ahoy, Bundock!”

“For God’s sake, Jinny!” he cried, startled. “Go back! That’ll give way.”

“Not with my weight!” she laughed. “You going across?”

“How can I?”

“There’s boats, barges, wherries, lighters, punts, and swimming,” called Jinny, “and you’ve got to do your duty to the Queen.”

“And haven’t I done it?” he said pathetically, exhibiting his soused leggings. “But there’s only three letters for Little Bradmarsh and all for the same man.”

“I can guess who that is,” she said. “And yet you won’t kill three frogs with one stone.”

Bundock burst into laughter. “So you’ve heard my joke,” he said happily. “I do liven folks up, don’t I, though few have the brains to appreciate aught beyond the Bellman’s silly puns.” Then his ruddy, pitted countenance resumed its melancholy mien. “But I can’t joke about the flood, Jinny, you mustn’t expect me to. There’s poor Charley Mott!”

“Why, what’s he got to do with water?” Jinny jested.

“Haven’t you heard? He’s drowned.”

Jinny’s laugh froze on her lips. Charley had obstinately gone to fish in the troubled waters of the Brad, the postman related, despite the weather. All the Sunday morning he had fished from the dyke, and was just walking off to dine with some pals at “The King of Prussia” when the bank burst, and he was caught by the torrent and smashed among the whirling blocks. It was exactly like the moral of the Spelling-Book, and Jinny saw before her as on a scroll of judgment the grey blurred type of Lesson XV: “Harry’s Downfall.” True, Harry had been torn by wild beasts as well as shipwrecked on the coast of Barbary, but in a country without the larger carnivora a complete analogy could not be expected.

“Poor Mr. Mott,” she sighed. And then, remembering the case put by Uncle Lilliwhyte, had the luckless young man indeed gone straight from water to fire, she wondered. “It’ll be a relief for Mrs. Mott anyhow,” she said.

“A relief?” gasped Bundock. “Why, she’s carrying on like mad. Says it’s all her fault for trying to drive him to chapel. And that it was Deacon Mawhood that egged her on to drive him on the curb. And that he was worth a dozen Deacons, and she won’t have any more to do with you Peculiars. Why, when I brought her the letters this morning, if she hadn’t kept me such a time pouring out all Charley’s virtues, I might have got across before this bridge broke down. Not that I could have delivered my letters anyhow.”

“I think it broke in the night,” said Jinny. Then she fell silent, disconcerted by these illogical manifestations of human nature, and she did not remember where she was till she found Nip tugging at her dress and cowering on the brink of the abyss, as if afraid she would be walking on. The wherry, she perceived too, was now coming up, and young Ravens’ voice was floating melodiously across the waters:

“There’s your ferry, Bundock!” she called.

“And what’s the good of going across?” he asked. “By what I see I couldn’t possibly get to Frog Farm.”

“But I’m going there!”

“What!” He gazed towards her side of the river, the willows surging from which alone marked the former bank. Plover were flying with dismal cries over the unseen pastures.

He shook his head: “One inquest’s enough for Chipstone.”

“I’ll take your letters,” she said with a sudden thought that made her happier.

Bundock resisted the offer. His repugnance to seeing the Queen’s mail sacrilegiously carried by a member of Her Majesty’s sex was deep-seated, and it was only because he took seriously Jinny’s threat to write to his sovereign that he finally handed the three letters by a compromise to Ephraim Bidlake. Needless to say that as soon as Bundock’s pouched back was turned, that faithful henchman transferred them to Jinny.

When he took her little horse and cart on board his broad-built wherry, he imagined she only wanted to be ferried across, but she had soon spurred him to the great adventure across the “drowned” meadows. It was a question of life-saving, she said, and for the British Navy as embodied in Bidlake and Ravens, this was enough. Fortunately the females were now lodged on shore, awaiting Mrs. Bidlake’s annual event. Moreover the wherry, relieved by the other barge, had a slack moment, and with Jinny to guide them from the vantage-point of her driving-board over hidden snags in the shape of submerged stiles, sheds, mounds or bushes, the two men punted boldly over the left bank. The mast had been lowered, for apart from the danger of boughs catching in the sail, the trees made a wind-screen to the pastures.

It was odd as the barge passed between two willows on the margin of the river, to see these trees reflected doubly, at once in stream and in flood. There was no difficulty in avoiding the larger flotsam, though one of Farmer Gale’s haystacks was only staved off with Bidlake’s pole, and it was not till they had quanted to the farmhouse itself that the steering became troublesome, for there were no windows at the back, at which they were arriving, there were farm-buildings and floating stacks waiting to embarrass them at the front, the so-called Frog Cottage presented a blank black wall at one side, while the windowed side-wall, from which Martha had once beheld Bundock marching through morasses, was encumbered, not only by the wreckage of the stable and the mangled body of the coach, but by Caleb’s wild “orchard,” in whose mystically rising oak-branches and pear-tree-tops poultry, to which fear had restored wings, were seen to be roosting. But by taking a wide course over the wheat-patch so as to avoid the stacks, the barge was able to double Frog Cottage safely, to glide triumphantly into dock, and lie alongside Frog Farm. The exciting manoeuvre had been accomplished in grim silence—even Ravens forgetting to sing as they bumped over the chaotic remains of the old log-dyke and raised wagon-road—and it was not till it was over that Jinny found breath to blow her horn. And as she did so, she was startled to see behind the diamond panes of the closed casement of the central bedroom—now on a level with her driving-board and almost opposite it—a head that vaguely recalled Mr. Duke’s.

But the next instant she recognized Maria, and the old black sow was pushed aside, the casement flung open and a red-haired head flung out. And if Jinny had stared incredulously at the sight of the pig, what word can convey the dilatation of Will’s eyes as they now beheld the little Carrier perched on her accustomed seat, whip in hand, as though on the solid road! It was some seconds before he even perceived the barge sustaining her cart.

“What do you want?” broke harshly from his lips.

Such ungraciousness after the perils of her voyage jarred upon her. “Don’t you want anything from Chipstone?” she asked, with a malice she had not intended.

“No,” he barked.

“Well, here’s your letters I’ve carried,” she said demurely. “The postal service, like the coach service, has broken down.” She hurled the letters through the window just as he was banging it to, but ere it could close it was thrown open again, and Elijah, Maria, Martha, and Caleb were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to greet her.

“Jinny!” came from all their mouths, even, it seemed, from Maria’s, and she saw through dimming eyes that the bedroom was a chaos of furniture and fowls.

“Here, catch hold of that rope, one of ye,” cried Ephraim Bidlake. “Tie it to a bedpost.” He had already fastened the stem of the boat to an oak, but the current was swinging out the stern.

It was with a thrill that Jinny found herself gazing for the first time into Will’s bedroom, though its normal character was disturbed by its emergency use as a sitting-room, poultry-run, pigsty, and salvage store. The wet crinkled motto: “When He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?” was lying as if in ironic questioning atop a pile of parlour ornaments, and Martha’s silk sampler lay stained and sodden on the very chair on which Mr. Flippance had sat admiring it. “Unstable as water,” human destinies seemed to Jinny as she surveyed the jumble in the whitewashed attic. But there was too much bustle for reflection, nor could she even see clearly what Will himself was doing, for Maria and Elijah were jostling each other at the window in their efforts to get through, and the vet.’s cap fell on the deck in his agitation.

“Pigs first!” called Jinny, and as though obediently, Elijah clutching at the edge of her tilt scrambled on the foot-board of the cart and thence to the deck. “Nice behaviour, leaving us to starve,” he grumbled in the same pachydermatous spirit, as he clapped his cap on his chilled cranium.

“How could you starve with all those fowls?” said Jinny.

“They weren’t for weekday eating, the old woman said. Nothing since Sunday but dry bread!”

“As long as it was dry,” Jinny laughed.

“It wasn’t even that! Simply sopping.”

“Well, all prisoners get bread and water,” said Jinny in mock consolation. Ravens had hastened to pull out a greasy package. Elijah waved it aside with a sniffy air. “Thanks—I’ll wait till we land now.”

“Elijah not fed by Ravens,” laughed Jinny. Outwardly she was in the gayest of moods, bandying words again in quite her old vein. But it was a feverish gaiety—underneath, every nerve was astrain for Will’s reappearance with all it forboded of ecstasy and conflict. “Come along, Maria,” she called, for the barge had drifted out a little on its window-rope, and the sow’s eagerness was damped. Now encouraged, she allowed herself to be helped into the cart by Caleb above and Bidlake below. After the fowls had been chivied beside her, there was a delay.

“The missus be in our bedroom packin’ some things for the night,” apologized Caleb, returning to the window. “She can’t sleep without her nightcap, it wouldn’t be decent, and she likes me to change my red shirt for bed.”

“But where will you sleep?” Jinny now asked, feeling suddenly responsible as for an eviction.

“Mr. Skindle’s kindly offered to put us all up till we looks round,” said Caleb.

“It’s the big house I’m furnishing for my wedding regardless,” Elijah explained. “And I’m going to give them their food, too, and it isn’t the sort of food they’ve given me either. But when you’re cooped up with folks in danger of your life, you get closer to them and don’t grudge expense, especially when they’re in low water.”

“In low water?” echoed Jinny. “Oh, Mr. Skindle!”

“You know what I mean,” Elijah replied. “Poor Will’s lost his horses—such a come-down. Not that he ever had enough to appeal to a girl brought up to be a lady. In my new house now there’s three spare bedrooms—I’ll get my mother to make ’em all ready—that’ll be one apiece for ’em if they care to spread themselves.”

“But then how about Maria?” Jinny jested.

“Maria!” he grunted. “It’s all her fault. I always said she was the fussiest pig I ever attended. A mere cramp, through not taking exercise all this rainy weather; fright cured her in a jiffy. But think of the valuable time she’s cost me! I wouldn’t have come but to oblige Will. No wonder they call the place Frog Farm.”

“I don’t hear any croaking but yours,” flashed Jinny. “Why, if time is all you’ve lost, you’re lucky. Where’s your horse?”

“You didn’t think I’d risk Jess on these roads in the weather we’ve been having? I only agreed to come in the coach Saturday night and go back Sunday morning with Farmer Gale and his wife when they drove in to chapel. Poor Blanche! She must have been in a terrible twitter when I didn’t turn up at the Sunday dinner!”

“I wonder she didn’t come out for you in a boat?” said Jinny slyly.

“She’d be thinking I’d been called to another patient. We medical gents can never call our time our own,” he explained, but there was a tremor of uneasiness in his words. He pulled out his empty pipe and stuck it between his blackened teeth. Caleb here appeared with uncouth bundles, and Martha (embellished by sudden Sunday clothes) with a last frightened chicken, and as the barge had now quite tautened its window-rope and left a watery gap, Martha’s descent was a fluttering episode.

“Not so easy as the New Jerusalem coming down,” gasped Caleb, when she was safely installed inside the cart with Maria and the poultry and the dazed Nip.

Ephraim Bidlake, intimating he could not wait on this jaunt to lower any of the furniture, had gone off—in a little dinghy he carried—to rescue the fowls in the orchard branches, and their fearful cackling and the excitement of his perilous quest now drew all eyes, except Jinny’s, which remained furtively bent on the window, from which the drifting of the barge had carried her away. It was with relief that she heard Martha suddenly exclaim:

“But where’s the boy?”

“Oi count he’s got such a mort o’ new-fangled things,” scoffed Caleb. “Tooth-brushes and underclothes and shavin’-strops—happen he’ll want a whole portmantle. Oi offered to help him with his poor arm, but he’s that fiery and sperrited—ye remember, Jinny, how he lugged his great ole box all the way Chipstone!”

“But what’s the matter with his arm?” Jinny asked anxiously.

“Didn’t you see his sling?” called Elijah proudly.

“Broken?” Jinny murmured, paling.

“Only a simple fracture.” He puffed complacently at his pipe, forgetting it was empty.

“You’ve got to go back, Caleb, and help the poor lad,” said Martha, with renewed agitation.

“Then you might as well get my hand-bag from my room,” Elijah added. “I didn’t think of it in the rush.”

Ravens, labouring mightily with his pole to larboard, pushed the barge back to the window, and as Caleb obediently clambered in again, Martha, growing calmer, began telling Jinny how Will had swum out to the stable to save the horses, but had only got his arm kicked for his pains. And then, of course, he couldn’t help her in carrying any of her furniture upstairs—it was a mercy he got back at all—and, it being Sunday, “Flynt” would help only to save life, though you’d have thought from Maria’s squeals, as she was haled upstairs, that she was being slaughtered rather than saved. As for Mr. Skindle, he seemed stricter with the Sabbath than even the Peculiars, and would do nothing but try to light the fire.

“You were at home. I hadn’t got but the clothes I stood in,” Elijah explained. “What should I have done if I’d gone up to my neck in water?”

“Here’s your bag,” Caleb’s voice broke in from the window, “but Will won’t come, Martha!”

“Won’t come?” shrilled Martha, and before Jinny could stop her, she was on the footboard and had disappeared through the casement.

“He’s an ungrateful, ill-tempered fellow,” Elijah commented, picking up his bag, and changing his collar as he talked. “I don’t call him a gentleman. He can’t forgive that his arm was set by a vet., and he sits about like a broody hen. Asked me not to mention it, which, of course, as a gentleman, I won’t. What good do you suppose it would do me to have it known—I said to him—seeing I’ve already got the family connexion with Maria? But he got very cross,” Elijah wound up innocently, “though I said I wouldn’t even charge pig’s price, but would swap the fee and Maria’s too against his horses, provided I could recover the carcases.”

“I’ve got to stay here,” cried Martha, reappearing hysterically at the window. “He won’t come.”

“What nonsense!” cried Jinny, losing her temper. “We’ll all go and pull him out.”

“He’s locked himself in my bedroom—the one with the side window—you can’t get in from here.” She wrung her hands; these days of durance and danger had evidently told upon her nerves.

“I’ll smash the door in and his head too!” growled Ravens, his foot on the window-sill.

“No, no,” Jinny commanded, swinging herself suddenly past him. “You take your wife down, Mr. Flynt. She’s too excited. I’ll rout him out.”

Martha protested shrilly that where she had failed, a stranger could not succeed. No, she must stay with her boy, tend his poor arm! But the men overruled her and were returning her gently but firmly to the footboard of the cart when she cried desperately:

“Wait! Wait! I’ve forgotten something under my pillow.” “I’ll get it!” Jinny promised. “What is it?”

But Martha refused to say. It was very precious. It was in an envelope. It wasn’t for Jinny to see. In vain Jinny declared she wouldn’t open the envelope. Martha’s hysteric protests mingled with the frenzied cackling of the fowls that Ephraim Bidlake was still chasing.

Leaving the males to pacify Martha and deposit her in the cart, Jinny stooped under the barge-rope and threaded the litter betwixt the bed and the right-hand door—the other door, she knew, gave on the bedroom bisected by Frog Cottage. Pausing but a moment to look down the now literal well of the staircase, in which dead mice floated, she rapped imperiously at the connubial chamber under the gable.

“Go away, mother!” came the fretful answer.

“I’m not your mother—if I were I’d slap you. A nice state you’ve got her into!”

“What do you want?” he said in a changed tone.

“Your mother’s left something precious in an envelope under her pillow.”

“I thought you said you’d never cross my doorstep.”

“I didn’t—I came by the window-sill.” But even as her lips gave the obvious repartee, her mind beheld her grandfather scrambling into the room of the Angel-Mother, and it all seemed ineffably silly in view of the tragic realities of life. As if she would not have crossed even an enemy’s threshold to bind up a broken arm!

“Well, suppose you return the same way,” he retorted.

“That’s what I mean to do,” she said, angry again. “I’ve got my rounds.”

“What! In the barge?”

“I don’t want a boat. Long Bradmarsh has kept its head above water and Methusalem’s going just as strong as before the flood.” Then, afraid she had recalled his own dead horses, she added hurriedly: “How’s your arm?”

“That’s nothing, thank you. Good-bye.”

“Not without the envelope.”

Their words came muffled through the door-panels, and a barrier as obstructive seemed to divide their spirits, though they yearned dumbly towards each other.

“I’ll put it under the door,” he said surlily.

“I don’t wonder you’re ashamed to look me in the face.”

Jinny was thinking of his behaviour to his mother. But it was an unfortunate remark. Will was ashamed, mortally ashamed of his defeat. He had come along from over the seas, he felt, swelling and strutting and jeering! Poor little Jinny! Poor, comical little village carrier! Oho, he’d soon crush her! Oho, he’d soon make an end of her! And now! His coach smashed up, his horses drowned, his capital gone, his savings—the bulk spent on his fine clothes—barely sufficient to carry him along while seeking some new employment, even his parents impoverished by the flood, their very roof perhaps about to collapse over his head! While she—! Here she was with her invincible old cart, walking the waters, posing as the saviour of the whole family, carrying on the postal service and the coach service, blowing her triumphant trumpet on her immemorial Tuesday round, her old clients doubly at her mercy! What humiliation could be more bitter?

And the worst of it all was that the ache of passion, nourished by her rejection of his new advances, had become intolerably poignant. Jinny! Jinny! He seemed to hear it all around him, Jinny! Jinny! from morning to night—and even all through the night, floating through his dreams like a strain of music. And Jinny herself was ever before him night and day, with her eyes laughing and her tongue stinging.

But now that she was there in the flesh, with only a door between them, he felt he could not open it. He must never look in her face again till he had rehabilitated his fortunes. No word of love had ever been spoken between them. But could he see her, stand near her now, and not speak it? And a fine story it would sound, even if his lips proved spiritless enough to attempt it. He had loved her from the first moment he had seen her in the courtyard of “The Black Sheep,” nay, from childhood, and had tried to steal her business! Had loved her and might have driven her, with the grandfather she supported, to die in a ditch! And now that it was he who was in the ditch, could he come prating of love, add her enhanced scorn to his self-contempt? No, he had missed his opportunities! A nice hand to offer her—even if there was any chance of her taking it—a hand swathed in a sling, symbol of his crippled fortunes! He must set out on his travels again—that was clear—work his passage—as soon as his bones had grown together—to those new Australian goldfields that everybody was talking of, and then, when his self-respect had grown together too, he would write to her and ask her to wait for him. And if she still said “No”—or had already said “Yes” to a better man—why what else had he deserved, monkeying around with a flirt who was not worthy even of Elijah!

As Jinny now heard him moving speechlessly to get the envelope, the voice of Ravens carolling the popular “Gipsy King,” told her that Martha had been quieted down—unlike the fowls, which were still squawking under Bidlake’s coaxings.

“I confess I am but a man,

My feelings, who pleases may know,

I am fond of my girl and my can,

And jolly companions a row!”