It was nearly twelve o’clock when she at last lay down in her clothes.  How long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke with a dreadful choking in her throat, and found herself standing, trembling all over, in the middle of the room, with her baby clasped to her breast, and she was “saying something.”  The baby cried and sobbed, and she walked up and down trying to hush it when she heard a scratching at the door.  She opened it fearfully, and was glad to see it was only old Pete, their dog, who crawled, dripping with water, into the room.  She would like to have looked out, not in the faint hope of her husband’s coming, but to see how things looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she could hardly hold it.  Then she sat down a little while, and then walked up and down a little while, and then she lay down again a little while.  Lying close by the wall of the little cabin, she thought she heard once or twice something scrape slowly against the clapboards, like the scraping of branches.  Then there was a little gurgling sound, “like the baby made when it was swallowing”; then something went “click-click” and “cluck-cluck,” so that she sat up in bed.  When she did so she was attracted by something else that seemed creeping from the back door toward the center of the room.  It wasn’t much wider than her little finger, but soon it swelled to the width of her hand, and began spreading all over the floor.  It was water.

She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing but water.  She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw nothing but water.  She ran to the side window, and throwing that open, she saw nothing but water.  Then she remembered hearing her husband once say that there was no danger in the tide, for that fell regularly, and people could calculate on it, and that he would rather live near the bay than the river, whose banks might overflow at any time.  But was it the tide?  So she ran again to the back door, and threw out a stick of wood.  It drifted away toward the bay.  She scooped up some of the water and put it eagerly to her lips.  It was fresh and sweet.  It was the river, and not the tide!

It was then—­O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither faint nor fall; it was then—­blessed be the Saviour, for it was his merciful hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful moment—­that fear dropped from her like a garment, and her trembling ceased.  It was then and thereafter that she never lost her self-command, through all the trials of that gloomy night.

She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a table upon it and on that she put the cradle.  The water on the floor was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice moved so perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet doors all flew open.  Then she heard the same rasping and thumping against the wall, and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree, which had lain near the road