“Think there'll be danger to the mill?” Jerome asked, quickly.
“No, I guess not, it's built strong; but I wouldn't resk the solid airth long under Niagry. Where you goin'?”
“Down to Robinson's store. I want to get something.”
“Well, I should think you were half-witted to go out in this soak if you could keep a roof over your head,” cried Cheeseman, but Jerome was gone.
He bought strong rope at Robinson's store, and before night the mill was anchored to some stout trees and one great granite bowlder. Cheeseman helped grumblingly. “I shall get laid up with rheumatiz out of it,” he said; “an' this rain can't keep on, it ain't in natur', out of the Old Testament.”
But the rain continued all that day and night, and the next day, with almost unremitting fury. At times it seemed more than rain—there were liquid shafts reaching from earth to sky. By noon of the second day, half the cellars in the village were flooded; coops floated in slatted wrecks over fields; the roads were knee-deep in certain places; the horses drew back—it was like fording a stream. People began to be alarmed.
“If this keeps on an hour longer, there'll be the devil to pay,” Squire Eben Merritt said, when he came home to dinner. He had been down to Lawyer Means's and crossed the Graystone brook, which was now a swollen river.
“What will happen?” asked Abigail.
“Happen? The Main Street bridge will go, and the saw-mill, and the Lord knows what else.”
Lucina turned pale.