The recollection that his brother had been with them at first, and that he had seen nothing of him since the water began to enter the house, turned him quite cold with misgivings. How could he have so entirely forgotten the boy all this time?
Not that it was really surprising in the sudden excitement and bustle of such an unexpected disaster. And besides, the Kayll boys were so accustomed to taking care of themselves, that it was not natural to anyone to trouble about them, or inquire where they were when absent.
“Oh, he’ll turn up,” was the family feeling if a boy were missing. But now Bob was aghast at the thought that Jem might not turn up. He waded towards the house with pale face and staring eyes. His brother must be somewhere within, yet he was at neither window;—where could he be?
The rain had ceased to fall at last, and the depth of the flood was not increasing, even though as yet there was no evidence of its growing less. As people began fast to collect, now that the worst was over, and to make some attempts to clear away the rubbish that was choking up the gratings over the drains, so that the water might run through more quickly, he asked of several if they had seen Jem; but no one remembered anything of him since the beginning of the storm. As Bob explained his fear that the boy must be still in the house, which it was now impossible to enter except by the bed-room windows, a ladder was quickly fetched and laid across from the road to the sill of that which Jem, on his discovery that he was left behind, had thrown open.
Another minute, and Bob was in the little bed-room, lifting up his brother, who still lay in a dead faint on the floor. As he raised him he heard the people shouting to him from the outside to be quick, and without knowing the meaning of their excited cries he carried Jem with all speed to the window, passed him out to a man who was half-way up the ladder ready to receive him, slid down closely after them, and was seized by several hands and dragged across to the other side of the road, just as with a rumbling sound, and then a terrible crash, the little old house and the one adjoining it fell forward, a heap of ruins.
CHAPTER XIII.
RETURNING KINDNESS.
ON this stormy Sunday—while Mr. Kayll in his solitude was wondering how it fared with his wife and children, and never dreaming that it was a happy thing for him that he did not know; and while Jack and his two little sisters were walking homewards from church, after waiting in the porch of an empty house until the rain was over, without a suspicion of what was in store for them—three people at least were happier than they had been for years.
These were Mrs. Coleson and her children. They were still in the same lodgings, but their poverty was a thing of the past. Mr. Coleson’s mother, the hard and cold woman who had never helped them while she was alive, had at her death, a few days ago, left everything she possessed to her son’s widow and her little grandchildren.
And now the rent was paid, and they were all full of plans for the future. The youngest child, who was already better, lay on the bed with one hand in her mother’s, and a smile lighting up her small pinched face, as Amy drew a wonderful picture of the beautiful life that was before them.