“Lie doon on yer bed like a clever lass,” said her aunt gently.  “There’s naebody there.”

“Or gin there be,” said Aunt Barbara from her bed, “e’en let them cry.  Is this a time for decent fowk to be gaun play-actin’ aboot?”

So the daylight came, and the evening and the morning were the second day.  And Grace Allen went about her work with clack of gripper-iron and dip of oar.

Late on in the gloaming of the third day following, Aunt Annie went down to the broad flat boat that lay so still at the water’s edge.  Something black was knocking dully against it.

Grace had been gone four hours, and it was weary work watching along the shore or going within out of the chill wind to endure Barbara’s bitter tongue.

The black thing that knocked was the small boat, broken loose from her moorings and floating helplessly.  Annie Allen took a boathook and pulled it to the shore.  Except that the boat was half full of flowers, there was nothing and no one inside.

But the world span round and the stars went out when the finder saw the flowers.

When Aunt Annie Allen came to herself, she found the water was rising rapidly.  It was up to her ankles.  She went indoors and asked for Grace.

“Save us, Ann!” said Barbara; “I thocht she was wi’ you.  Where hae ye been till this time o’ nicht?  An’ your feet’s dreepin’ wat.  Haud aff the clean floor!”

“But Gracie!  Oor lassie Grade!  What’s come o’ Gracie?” wailed the elder woman.

At that instant there came so thrilling a cry from over the dark waters out of the night that the women turned to one another and instinctively caught at each other’s hands.

“Leave me, I maun gang,” said Aunt Annie.  “That’s surely Grace.”

Her sister gripped her tight.

“Let me gang—­let me gang.  She’s my ain lassie, no yours!” Annie said fiercely, endeavouring to thrust off Barbara’s hands as they clutched her like birds’ talons from the bed.

“Help me to get up,” said Barbara; “I canna be left here.  I’ll come wi’ ye.”

So she that had been sick for twelve years arose, like a ghost from the tomb, and with her sister went out to seek for the girl they had lost.  They found their way to the boat, reeling together like drunken men.  Annie almost lifted her sister in, and then fell herself among the drenched and waterlogged flowers.

With the instinct of old habitude they fell to the oars, Barbara rowing the better and the stronger.  They felt the oily swirl of the Dee rising beneath them, and knew that there had been a mighty rain upon the hills.

“The Lord save us!” cried Barbara suddenly.  “Look!”

She pointed up the long pool of the Black Water.  What she saw no man knows, for Aunt Annie had fainted, and Barbara was never herself after that hour.

Aunt Annie lay like a log across her thwart.  But, with the strength of another world, Barbara unshipped the oar of her sister and slipped it upon the thole-pin opposite to her own.  Then she turned the head of the boat up the pool of the Black Watery Something white floated dancingly alongside, upborne for a moment on the boiling swirls of the rising water.  Barbara dropped her oars, and snatched at it.  She held on to some light wet fabric by one hand; with the other she shook her sister.