On a certain Saturday it rained all the morning heavily, but toward the afternoon cleared a little, so that many hoped the climax had been reached, while the more experienced looked for worse.  After sunset the clouds gathered thicker than before, and the rain of the day was as nothing to the torrent descending with a steady clash all night.  When the slow, dull morning came Glaston stood in the middle of a brown lake, into which water was rushing from the sky in straight, continuous lines.  The prospect was discomposing.  Some, too confident in the apparent change, had omitted needful precautions, in most parts none were now possible, and in many more none would have been of use.  Most cellars were full, and the water was rising on the ground-floors.  It was a very different affair from a flood in a mountainous country, but serious enough, though without immediate danger to life.  Many a person that morning stepped out of bed up to the knee in muddy water.

With the first of the dawn the curate stood peering from the window of his dressing-room, through the water that coursed down the pane, to discover the state of the country; for the window looked inland from the skirt of the town.  All was gray mist, brown water, and sheeting rain.  The only things clear were that not a soul would be at church that morning, and that, though he could do nothing to divide them the bread needful for their souls, he might do something for some of their bodies.  It was a happy thing it was Sunday, for, having laid in their stock of bread the day before, people were not so dependent on the bakers, half whose ovens must now be full of water.  But most of the kitchens must be flooded, he reasoned, the fire-wood soaking, and the coal in some cellars inaccessible.  The very lucifer-matches in many houses would be as useless as the tinderbox of a shipwrecked sailor.  And if the rain were to cease at once the water would yet keep rising for many hours.  He turned from the window, took his bath in homoeopathic preparation, and then went to wake his wife.

She was one of those blessed women who always open their eyes smiling.  She owed very little of her power of sympathy to personal suffering; the perfection of her health might have made one who was too anxious for her spiritual growth even a little regretful.  Her husband therefore had seldom to think of sparing her when any thing had to be done.  She could lose a night’s sleep without the smallest injury, and stand fatigue better than most men; and in the requirements of the present necessity there would be mingled a large element of adventure, almost of frolic, full of delight to a vigorous organization.

“What a good time of it the angels of wind and flame must have!” said the curate to himself as he went to wake her.  “What a delight to be embodied as a wind, or a flame, or a rushing sea!—­Come, Helen, my help!  Glaston wants you,” he said softly in her ear.

She started up.