Coventry uttered a yell of dismay.  Grace opened her window, and looked out, with a face full of terror.

At sight of her, Coventry cried to her in abject terror, “Mercy! mercy!  Don’t let him shoot me!”

Grace looked round, and saw Henry aiming at Coventry.

She screamed, and Little lowered the rifle directly.

Coventry crouched directly in the fork of the tree.

Grace looked bewildered from one to the other; but it was to Henry she spoke, and asked him in trembling tones what it “all meant?”

But, ere either could make a reply, a dire sound was heard of hissing thunder:  so appalling that the three actors in this strange scene were all frozen and rooted where they stood.

Then came a fierce galloping, and Ransome, with his black hair and beard flying, and his face like a ghost, reined up, and shouted wildly, “Dam burst!  Coming down here!  Fly for your lives!  Fly!”

He turned and galloped up the hill.

Cole and his mate emerged, and followed him, howling; but before the other poor creatures, half paralyzed, could do any thing, the hissing thunder was upon them.  What seemed a mountain of snow came rolling, and burst on them with terrific violence, whirling great trees and fragments of houses past with incredible velocity.

At the first blow, the house that stood nearest to the flying lake was shattered and went to pieces soon after:  all the houses quivered as the water rushed round them two stories high.

Little never expected to live another minute; yet, in that awful moment, his love stood firm.  He screamed to Grace, “The houses must go!—­the tree!—­the tree!—­get to the tree!”

But Grace, so weak at times, was more than mortal strong at that dread hour.

“What! live with him,” she cried, “when I can die with you!”

She folded her arms, and her pale face was radiant, no hope, no fear.

Now came a higher wave, and the water reached above the window-sills of the bedroom floor and swept away the ladder; yet, driven forward like a cannon-bullet, did not yet pour into the bed-rooms from the main stream; but by degrees the furious flood broke, melted, and swept away the intervening houses, and then hacked off the gable-end of Grace’s house, as if Leviathan had bitten a piece out.  Through that aperture the flood came straight in, leveled the partitions at a blow, rushed into the upper rooms with fearful roar, and then, rushing out again to rejoin the greater body of water, blew the front wall clean away, and swept Grace out into the raging current.

The water pouring out of the house carried her, at first, toward the tree, and Little cried wildly to Coventry to save her.  He awoke from his stupor of horror, and made an attempt to clutch her; but then the main force of the mighty water drove her away from him toward the house; her helpless body was whirled round and round three times, by the struggling eddies, and then hurried away like a feather by the overwhelming torrent.