“Of course it can,” said Tucker, “and I’ll measure it as I come back.”

He then started for the wear, and Carter accompanied him.

They crossed the embankment, and got to the wear.

Ives went home, and the workmen withdrew to the side, not knowing exactly what might be the effect of the explosion.

By-and-by Ransome looked up, and observed a thin sheet of water beginning to stream over the center of the embankment and trickle down:  the quantity was nothing; but it alarmed him.  Having no special knowledge on these matters, he was driven to comparisons; and it flashed across him that, when he was a boy, and used to make little mud-dams in April, they would resist the tiny stream until it trickled over them, and from that moment their fate was sealed.  Nature, he had observed, operates alike in small things and great, and that sheet of water, though thin as a wafer, alarmed him.

He thought it was better to give a false warning than withhold a true one; he ran to his horse, jumped on him, and spurred away.

His horse was fast and powerful, and carried him in three minutes back to Emden’s farm.  The farmer had gone to bed.  Ransome knocked him up, and told him he feared the dam was going; then galloped on to Hatfield Mill.  Here he found the miller and his family all gathered outside, ready for a start; one workman had run down from the reservoir.

“The embankment is not safe.”

“So I hear.  I’ll take care of my flour and my folk.  The mill will take care of itself.”  And he pointed with pride to the solid structure and granite pillars.

Ransome galloped on, shouting as he went.

The shout was taken up ahead, and he heard a voice crying in the night, “It’s coming!  It’s coming!” This weird cry, which, perhaps, his own galloping and shouting had excited, seemed like an independent warning, and thrilled him to the bone.  He galloped through Hatfield, shouting, “Save yourselves!  Save yourselves!” and the people poured out, and ran for high ground, shrieking wildly; looking back, he saw the hill dotted with what he took for sheep at first, but it was the folk in their night-clothes.

He galloped on to Damflask, still shouting as he went.

At the edge of the hamlet, he found a cottage with no light in it; he dismounted and thundered at the door:  “Escape for your lives! for your lives!”

A man called Hillsbro’ Harry opened the window.

“The embankrncnt is going.  Fly for your lives!”

“Nay,” said the man, coolly, “Ouseley dam will brust noane this week,” and turned to go to bed again.

He found Joseph Galton and another man carrying Mrs. Galton and her new-born child away in a blanket.  This poor woman, who had sent her five children away on the faith of a dream, was now objecting, in a faint voice, to be saved herself from evident danger.  “Oh, dear, dear! you might as well let me go down with the flood as kill me with taking me away.”