proposed to be safe; so she went and opened the sluiceway to reduce the pressure on the dam.  The result was almost immediate.  The water gushed through, lowering the current and lessening the fall.  George grumbled all day, threatening half a dozen times to shut the sluice; but Kate and the carpenter were against him, so he waited until he came slipping home after midnight, his brain in a muddle from drink, smoke, and cards.  As he neared the dam, he decided that the reason he felt so badly was because he had missed hearing it all day, but he would have it to go to sleep by.  So he crossed the bridge and shut the sluice gate.  Even as he was doing it the thunder pealed; lightning flashed, and high Heaven gave him warning that he was doing a dangerous thing; but all his life he had done what he pleased; there was no probability that he would change then.  He needed the roar of the dam to quiet his nerves.

The same roar that put him to sleep, awakened Kate.  She lay wondering at it and fearing.  She raised her window to listen.  The rain was falling in torrents, while the roar was awful, so much worse than it had been when she fell asleep, that she had a suspicion of what might have caused it.  She went to George’s room and shook him awake.

“Listen to the dam!” she cried.  “It will go, as sure as fate.  George, did you, Oh, did you, close the sluice-gate when you came home?”

He was half asleep, and too defiant from drink to take his usual course.

“Sure!” he said.  “Sweesish mushich ever hearsh.  Push me shleep.”

He fell back on the pillow and went on sleeping.  Kate tried again to waken him, but he struck at her savagely.  She ran to her room, hurried into a few clothes, and getting the lantern, started toward the bridge.  At the gate she stepped into water.  As far as she could see above the dam the street was covered.  She waded to the bridge, which was under at each end but still bare in the middle, where it was slightly higher.  Kate crossed it and started down the yard toward the dam.  The earth was softer there, and she mired in places almost to her knees.  At the dam, the water was tearing around each end in a mad race, carrying earth and everything before it.  The mill side was lower than the street.  The current was so broad and deep she could not see where the sluice was.  She hesitated a second to try to locate it from the mill behind her; and in that instant there was a crack and a roar, a mighty rush that swept her from her feet and washed away the lantern.  Nothing saved her but the trees on the bank.  She struck one, clung to it, pulled herself higher, and in the blackness gripped the tree, while she heard the dam going gradually after the first break.