Osborn’s face got red.  “A shabby trick!  Unthinkably shabby, after he forced up the price.”  He paused, and tried to control his anger.  “But why did he buy that second-class lot?”

“There was a Carlside ram.”

“Only fit for mutton; I studied the animal.”

“Oh, well!  Askew, no doubt, thinks he is a judge.  I imagine he bought the others in order to get the ram.”

“He cheated me,” said Osborn, with a savage frown.  “The fellow’s a cunning rogue.  I wish he hadn’t come back—­confound him!” He pulled himself up and added:  “However, about the mortgage.  I suppose I must agree to Fisher’s terms.  See him and arrange the thing as soon as possible.”

Hayes went away and Osborn lighted a cigar.  He had a disturbing feeling that he had been rash.  The money would not last long and if he had not borrowed it, he might have paid the interest on other loans.  Buying the sheep had really decided him to give the mortgage, since it had made him feel keenly the embarrassment of having very little money at command.  There was another thing; Hayes wanted him to borrow the fresh sum, although a prudent agent would try to keep the estate out of debt.  He could not see Hayes’ object and felt suspicious, but while he pondered it began to rain and he went into the house.

It rained all day and at dusk the mist had crept down the hills.  The long grass in the meadow bent before the deluge and slanted from the wind.  The becks began to roar in the gyhlls, and threads of foam glimmered in the mist.  A hoarse turmoil rose from the stream that fed the tarn, and an angry flood, stained brown by peat, rose steadily up the dyke.  There was no promise of better weather when Osborn went to bed, and he had known rain like that last for a week.  In fact, he had known all the hay crop and the most part of the young turnips washed down the valley.

The rain was heavier when, early next morning, Kit went out to move some sheep from a spot where the rising water might cut them off.  He came back along the meadow dyke and stopped for a few minutes when he reached its weakest place.  Reeds and tufts of heather whirled down the brown flood.  Wide patches of turf and soil had fallen away, uncovering the foundation of boulders and gravel, and while Kit looked down a heavy stone rolled out of its place and plunged into the stream.  Others were ready to go; the water was rising ominously fast and would rise for some time after the rain stopped.  There was, however, nothing to indicate that it would stop, and Kit, knowing his native climate, looked about with some uneasiness.

A hollow across the meadow to a hedge, behind which were two large turnip fields, and he knew this marked a former channel of the beck.  It was long since the water had flowed that way, but his father had told him that in heavy floods it had some times spread across the fields and joined the other stream at Allerby.  If this happened again, the bottom of the dale would be covered and the crops ruined.  When he was going away, three or four men with picks and spades came up.