The water was now in the stable and cow-houses and barn. A few minutes more and it would be creeping into the kitchen. The Daur and its tributary the Lorrie were about to merge their last difference on the floor of Jean’s parlour. Worst of all, a rapid current had set in across the farther end of the stable, which no one had as yet observed.
Jean bustled about her work as usual, nor, although it was so much augmented, would accept help from any of her guests until it came to preparing dinner, when she allowed Janet and the foreman’s wife to lend her a hand. “The tramp-wife” she would not permit to touch plate or spoon, knife or potato. The woman rose in anger at her exclusion, and leaving the house waded to the barn. There she went up the ladder to the loft where she had slept, and threw herself on her straw-bed.
As there was no doing any work, Donal was out with two of the men, wading here and there where the water was not too deep, enjoying the wonder of the strange looks and curious conjunctions of things. None of them felt much of dismay at the havoc around them: beyond their chests with their Sunday clothes and at most two clean shirts, neither of the men had anything to lose worth mentioning; and for Donal, he would gladly have given even his books for such a ploy.
“There’s ae thing, mither,” he said, entering the kitchen, covered with mud, a rabbit in one hand and a large salmon in the other, “we’re no like to sterve, wi’ sawmon i’ the hedges, an’ mappies i’ the trees!”
His master questioned him with no little incredulity. It was easy to believe in salmon anywhere, but rabbits in trees!
“I catched it i’ the brainches o’ a lairick (larch),” Donal answered, “easy eneuch, for it cudna rin far, an’ was mair fleyt at the watter nor at me; but for the sawmon, haith I was ower an’ ower wi’ hit i’ the watter, efter I gruppit it, er I cud ca’ ’t my ain.”
Before the flood subsided, not a few rabbits were caught in trees, mostly spruce-firs and larches. For salmon, they were taken everywhere—among grass, corn, and potatoes, in bushes, and hedges, and cottages. One was caught on a lawn with an umbrella; one was reported to have been found in a press-bed; another, coiled round in a pot hanging from the crook—ready to be boiled, only that he was alive and undressed.
Donal was still being cross-questioned by his master when the strange woman re-entered. Lying upon her straw, she had seen, through the fanlight over the stable door, the swiftness of the current there passing, and understood the danger.
“I doobt,” she said, addressing no one in particular, “the ga’le o’ the stable winna stan’ abune anither half-hoor.”
“It maun fa’ than,” said the farmer, taking a pinch of snuff in hopeless serenity, and turning away.