And the strokes of bad luck were so many and so heavy.  The elements seemed to be making war against him—­such wet days as made it impossible to deliver hay without damage to it, and an accusation from somebody’s stables that the last lot was poisoned; then frost, and two horses seriously injured on the ice-clothed roads; then February gales, wrecking the barn roofs, entailing costly repairs; then floods; and last of all rats.  The unusual amount of land water had driven them to new haunts, and Dale’s granaries were suddenly invaded.  “Oh, William,” said Mr. Bates, horror-stricken, “beware of rats.  They are the worst foe. One rat will mess up a mountain of grain.”

About the time of the vernal equinox there came a tempest in comparison with which all previous wind and rain were but a whispering and a sprinkling.  Every door was being rattled as if by giant hands, the glass sang in the latticed windows, and the whole house seemed swaying, when Mary told her mistress that something had gone wrong with the big straw stack and that the master was attempting to climb to the top of it on the long ladder.

Mavis instantly pulled up her skirt in true country fashion to make a cloak, and told Mary to help her open the kitchen door.

“You bide where you be, Mrs. Dale,” said the old charwoman.  “You ben’t goin’ to be no use of any kind out there, and you may bring yourself to a misfortune.”

But Mavis insisted on struggling through the doorway, into the rude embrace of the weather.  Great branches of the walnut tree were waving wildly, while little twigs and buds flew from apple trees like dust; the rain, not in drops but as it seemed in solid packets, struck her face and shoulders with such force that she could scarcely stand against it; a shallow wooden tub came bounding to her along the flagged path and passed like a sheet of brown paper; and just as she got to the corner of the buildings from which she could obtain a view of the rick-yard, thirty feet of pale fencing lay down upon the beehives and the rhubarb bed without a sound that was even faintly audible above the racket of the storm.

But she had no eyes for anything except her husband, and no other thought than of the horrible peril in which he was placing himself.  Four men clung to the bottom of the ladder, and yet, with Dale’s weight half-way up to help them, could not for a moment keep it steady.  On top of the rick one of the tarpaulin sheets had broken loose; the cruel wind was tearing beneath it, wrenching out pegs and cordage, snatching at thatch-hackle, and making the stout ropes that should have held the sheet hiss and dart like serpents.

It seemed to her that the rick was as high as Mont Blanc, and that even on a placid summer day no one but a lunatic would want to scale it.  Then she screamed, and went rushing forward.

Dale, in the act of clambering from the top rung of the ladder, had been blown off, and was hanging to a rope over the edge of the stack.  With extreme difficulty the men moved the ladder, and he succeeded in getting on it again.