Under the Storm

by Charlotte M. Yonge

She did not get home till after dark, but the Blanes had taken her to rest at the friends with whom they spent the time between services, and they had given her a good meal.

"Somehow," said Patience, "everybody seems kinder than they used to be before the fighting began—and the parsons said the prayers as if they had more heart in them."

Patience was quite right. These times of danger were making everyone draw nearer together, and look up more heartily to Him in Whom was there true help.

But winter was coming on and bringing bad times for the poor children in their narrow valley, so close to the water. It was not a very cold season, but it was almost worse, for it was very wet. The little brook swelled, turned muddy yellow, and came rushing and tumbling along, far outside its banks, so that Patience wondered whether there could be any danger of its coming up to their hut and perhaps drowning them.

"I think there is no fear," said Steadfast. "You see this house has been here from old times and never got washed away."

"It wouldn't wash away very easily," said Patience, "I wish we were in one of the holes up there."

"If it looks like danger we might get up," said Steadfast, and to please her he cleared a path to a freshly discovered cave a little lower down the stream, but so high up on the rocky sides of the ravine as to be safe from the water.

Once Patience, left at home watching the rushing of the stream, became so frightened that she actually took the children up there, and set Rusha to hold the baby while she dragged up some sheepskins and some food.

Steadfast coming home asked what she was about and laughed at her, showing her, by the marks on the trees, that the flood was already going down. Such alarms came seldom, but the constant damp was worse. Happily it was always possible to keep up a fire, wood and turf peat was plentiful and could be had for the cutting and carrying, and though the smoke made their eyes tingle, perhaps it hindered the damp from hurting them, when all the walls wept, in spite of the reed mats which they had woven and hung over them. And then it was so dark, Patience's rushes did not give light enough to see to do anything by them even when they did not get blown out, and when the sun had set there was nothing for it, but as soon as the few cattle had been foddered in their shed and cave, to draw the mat and sheepskins that made a curtain by way of door, fasten it down with a stone, share with dog and cat the supper of broth, or milk, or porridge which Patience had cooked, and then lie down on the beds of dried leaves stuffed into sacking, drawing over them the blankets and cloaks that had happily been saved in the chest, and nestling on either side of the fire, which, if well managed, would smoulder on for hours. There the two elder ones would teach Rusha her catechism and tell old stories, and croon over old rhymes till both the little ones were asleep, and then would hold counsel on their affairs, settle how to husband their small stock of money, consider how soon it would be expedient to finish their store of salted mutton and pork to keep them from being spoilt by damp, and wonder when their hens would begin to lay.

It could hardly be a merry Christmas for the poor children, though they did stick holly in every chink where it would go, but there were not many berries that year, and as Rusha said, "there were only thorns."