“Wherever does all the water come from and how could they manage to trap it like this?”
“Oh, this reservoir is almost made by Nature. Yonder is Hoobrook Hill and there is Lum Bank. It needed but to throw a bank across the intervening space, and behold, the reservoir was made. The water comes from Holme Moss and the hills running up to Saddleworth. You would scarce think that this huge dam contains nigh a hundred million gallons of water, and that there is a pressure of several hundred thousand ton weight on the bank on which we stand.”
“Oh! Tom! if it were to burst!”
Pinder looked very grave. “I have often thought of that. It would be a calamity such as daunts the heart but to think of. I come here often of a moonlight night when I have made up my books for the day. It is sweet to be alone with God, and thoughts that come from God and turn to Him. But there seems some weird fascination that draws my steps hitherwards. Had I ever contemplated suicide….”
Dorothy’s hand sought his involuntarily “Never that Tom, never that.”
“I should have thought there was an unseen hand beckoning, me hither. This great expanse of water, so still, when the clouds brood over it, so sullen, so seeming peaceful confined, so terrible for infinite woe if it should I o’erleap its barrier, has cast its spell over me.”
“How gloomily you talk, Mr. Pinder!”
“It was ‘Tom’ but a moment gone.”
“Well, Tom, then—as we are such old friends.”
“Yes, Miss Dorothy, my heart misgives me about this slumbering giant. I doubt the strength of his chains. See here”—and he led toward the centre of the embankment. “Where we stand the surface is nearly a yard lower than the mouth of the culvert.”