“Help! help! for the love of Hiven, help!”
“That’s the voice of Terry Hurley,” said Dick, who recalled that the Irishman lived with his family a short distance away, and in the path of the flood. In the whirl of events young Halliard had forgotten this man and his wife and their two little girls.
But that cry showed they were in imminent extremity, and possibly aid might reach them in time. McGovern, since his own rescue, was as anxious as the brave Dick to extend assistance to whomsoever were in peril.
The calamity had come with such awful suddenness that not the least precautionary step could be taken. It was too early for neighbors to arrive, but all Piketon and the vicinity would be on the spot in the course of a few hours.
A brief run brought the boys in sight of the imperiled family. The humble home of Terry Hurley did not stand in the centre of the valley, like the tent of the Piketon Rangers, but well up to one side. Thus it escaped the full force of the current, which, however, was violent enough to fill the lower story in a twinkling, and threaten to carry the structure from its foundations.
The two little girls, Maggie and Katie, had just said their prayers at their bedside in the upper story, and Terry was in the act of lighting his pipe when the shock came. The husband and wife might have escaped by dashing out of the door and fleeing, but neither thought for an instant of doing so. Both would have preferred to perish rather than abandon the innocent ones above them.
Calling to his wife to follow, Terry bounded up a few steps and dashed to the bedside. At the same instant that he seized one in his arms, his wife caught up the younger.
“Whither shall we go, Terry?” asked the distracted mother, starting to descend the stairs.
“Not there! not there!” he called, “but to the roof!”
By standing on a chair the trap-door was easily reached and the covering thrown back. Then he pushed Maggie through, warning her to hold fast, and the rest would instantly join her.