And still the rain poured down like another deluge, and still the waters roared and the waters rose, and dark night hung over the dawn.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE GREAT VALLEY FLOOD.
| The rearing river, backward pressed, |
| Shook all her trembling banks amain, |
| Then madly at the eygre's breast |
| Flung up her weltering walls again. |
| Then banks came down with ruin and rout, |
| Then beaten foam flew round about, |
| Then all the mighty floods were out.—Jean Ingelow. |
Meanwhile the worried and angry prison guard had barred up the doors for the last time that night, to remain barred, as they said, against all comers until the usual hour of opening next day; and then they went to bed, and to sleep, little dreaming of the mighty power that would force an entrance before the light.
Left alone in the prison cell to watch her sleeping patient, Miss Tabby sat and whimpered over the baby, which she still held in her lap.
Sometimes she listened to the roaring of the river outside, and sometimes she muttered to herself after the manner of lonely old ladies.
"Oh, indeed I do wish they would come. One on 'em, at any rate! Oh, it's horrid to be left alone here in this dissolute place, with a dying 'oman, and she my own dear nurse child," she whined, wringing and twisting her fingers, and looking from the face of the sleeping babe to that of the unconscious mother.
"Oh, to think of my own dear father a-dying at a distance, and I never to see him alive no more in this world!" she burst forth, sobbing and crying.