("Look at that now!” again commented Mrs. Mangan to herself.  “How well they never told me he’d gone to see her!  Aren’t men a fright the way they’ll hide things!”)

“She’s a sweet girl, my Pidgie,” she resumed, to her son, “And Pappy’s always said the same thing.”

Barty looked at her like a horse prepared to shy.  Had his father said anything to her?  The longing to speak of Christian had mastered him, but if his mother knew—­

“I think I’d better go for Tishy now,” he said abruptly, “It might be a job to get down the town later on.”

He left the room, and Mrs. Mangan, in her husband’s big chair, by his big fire, fell into tired yet peaceful ease of body and mind.  How wonderful was Francis!  Who but he would have dared to aspire for his children as he had?  He had secured for Tishy the very pick of the country; and now, her own darling Barty!  Was it possible?  Yes!  It was, if Francis said so!  But what was “the argument he had up his sleeve?” Never mind!  Francis would tell her when he came home.  There was no hurry.  But again, how wonderful was Francis!

She fell asleep.  Barty woke her, coming into the room, dripping and shining in oilskins and sou’wester, like a lifeboat man.

“I couldn’t get further than West Street, Mammie,” he said, still breathless.  “I had on my waders, but the water was up over them.  They had boats going about, I believe, but I couldn’t get hold of one.  Tishy’ll have to stay the night at the Whelplys’.  I met a man that told me there was a big flood in the river, and haystacks, and cattle, and all sorts, coming down in it.  It was up over the line, and the train hardly got out.  It was near putting out the engine fires.”

“Oh, my God!” said Mrs. Mangan, with her big eyes that were so like Barty’s fixed on his, “the Riverstown road!  Oh!  Francis!—­” she groped at the front of her blouse for her Rosary, her lips moving in hasty supplication, her eyes wild, roving from her son’s face to the blackness of the window.  Suddenly she thrust back the Rosary.

“Why do you tell me these things?” she cried, furiously, “you great omadhaun!  Is it to frighten me into my grave you want?  Is it nothing to you that your father’s out alone?  Oh God!  Oh God!  Why couldn’t he think of me as well as of that damned woman away at Riverstown!” She began to cry, wildly, her forehead pressed against one of the streaming panes of the window.  “Oh Francis, Francis!—­”

There were many more than Mrs. Mangan and her son that sat up all through that night in the Valley of the Broadwater.  Trembling people in little low-lying cottages, with thatched roofs held in place with ladders, and ropes, and stones, with doors and windows barricaded against the wind.  But of what avail are barricades against the creeping white lip of water, crawling in under the doors over the earthen floors, soaking in, through mud-built walls, coming against them at first as a thief in the night, falling upon them later as a strong man armed?