'Tell Elaine I shall stay with Llwyd to-night,' said William to Davy. It was his first note of apprehension. Towards midnight he said, 'If the rain ceases there can be no danger.'
But the rain did not cease. As the night fled and the morning hours advanced, the winds came howling and tearing like demons down the Taff Valley, driving the pelting rain before them in a mad hurricane, fighting for mastery alike with tall green pines and the bare boughs of elms and gnarled oaks.
Gradually, as lapping waters undermined rocks and rugged banks, already loosened by frost and melting snows, along many a swollen mountain stream the surging torrent bore down their tributary reeds and shrubs and earth, along with riven boughs and uptorn trees, that beat like battering-rams against the good stone piers, holding their trust so sturdily. Then, eddying, the mighty current of the mocking Taff swung the tall fir-trees round and barred the still open arches cross-wise, one by one. Here, as in a net, the lamentable wreckage of the moors, of ruined cots and devastated farms, was caught and built up into a dam the turbid water could neither pass nor wash away. And rising, still rising, rising swifter than the rising sun, like a gigantic monster playing with boulder stones for bowls, the resistless river hammered with them against the parapet, and beat it in. Then, with a tumultuous roar as of triumph, and a deafening crash that startled sleepers in their beds more than a mile distant, the bridge that was built for centuries was swept away into irreparable ruin.
A shriek, as of mortal horror, rose as an echo from the crowded banks. The three brothers and their friends looked in each other's whitened faces as the cost of the catastrophe cut keenly into their souls.
Rhys groaned aloud.
'There does never have been such an awful flood since I was born; no masonry whatever could be standing against it,' cried grey-headed Owen Griffith, as he leant upon his staff to bear up against the wind.
He had seen the darkening glances cast on the luckless architect, and interposed to spare him the reproaches of coarse tongues.
'Keep that consolation for those who have run no risk. It will not be saving Cate and the rest from ruin and beggary, through this braggart brother of mine and his bridge,' burst from ungovernable Rhys.
'It may save me and you all from ruin,' retorted William defiantly. 'I have discovered what a flood can do, and what must be guarded against. Before the term of our guarantee expires, I will span this river with a bridge no flood shall wash away. 'Deed I will.'
A crowd had gathered. There were mocking voices heard beside Rhys'. A quarrel and a tumult threatened; for fierce as the war of the elements was the tempest raging in the breasts of men who had been closest friends.