Jack unhooked his water-proof from a nail behind the door—­he had began putting on his rubber boots again before MacFarlane finished speaking.

“He will have to pay the bills, sir, if anything gives way—­” Jack replied in a determined voice.  “Garry told me only last week that McGowan had to take care of his own water; that was part of his contract.  It comes under Garry’s supervision, you know.”

“Yes, I know, and that may all be so, Breen,” he replied with a flickering smile, “but it won’t do us any good,—­or the road either.  They want to run cars next month.”

The door again swung wide, and a man drenched to the skin, the water glistening on his bushy gray beard stepped in.

“I heard you were here, sir, and had to see you.  There’s only four feet lee-way in our culvert, sir, and the scour’s eating into the underpinning; I am just up from there.  We are trying bags of cement, but it doesn’t do much good.”

MacFarlane caught up his hat and the two hurried down stream to the “fill,” while Jack, buttoning his oilskin jacket over his chest, and crowding his slouch hat close to his eyebrows and ears strode out into the downpour, his steps bent in the opposite direction.

The sight that met his eyes was even more alarming.  The once quiet little stream, with its stretch of meadowland reaching to the foot of the steep hills, was now a swirl of angry reddish water careering toward the big culvert under the “fill.”  There it struck the two flanking walls of solid masonry, doubled in volume and thus baffled, shot straight into and under the culvert and so on over the broad fields below.

Up the stream toward the boulevard on the other side of its sky line, groups of men were already engaged carrying shovels, or lugging pieces of timber as they hurried along its edge, only to disappear for an instant and reappear again empty-handed.  Shouts could be heard, as if some one were giving orders.  Against the storm-swept sky, McGowan’s short, squat figure was visible, his hands waving wildly to other gangs of men who were running at full speed toward where he stood.

Soon a knife-edge of water glistened along the crest of the earth embankment supporting the roadway of the boulevard, scattered into a dozen sluiceways, gashing the sides of the slopes, and then, before Jack could realize his own danger, the whole mass collapsed only to be swallowed up in a mighty torrent which leaped straight at him.

Jack wheeled suddenly, shouted to a man behind him to run for his life, and raced on down stream toward the “fill” a mile below where MacFarlane and his men, unconscious of their danger, were strengthening the culvert and its approaches.

On swept the flood, tearing up trees, cabins, shanties, fences; swirling along the tortuous bed only to leap and swirl again, its solid front bristling with the debris it had wrenched loose in its mad onslaught, Jack in his line of flight keeping abreast of its mighty thrust, shouting as he ran, pressing into service every man who could help in the rescue.