“Did you feel that, Peegwish?”
Yes, Peegwish had felt “that,” and said so in an awful whisper without moving.
“Surely—no, it cannot have been the—”
He stopped short. There was a low, grinding sound, accompanied by a strange tremor in the planks on which they stood, as if the house were gradually coming alive! There could be no mistake. The flood had risen sufficiently to float the house, and it was beginning to slide from its foundations!
“Peegwish,” he said, quickly dropping the things with which he had been busy, “is there a stout rope anywhere? Oh, yes; I forgot,” he added, springing towards the attic. “Blessings on you, Beauty, for having guided me here!”
In a few seconds a stout rope or cable was procured. The end of this Ian ran out at the main doorway, round through the parlour window, and tied it in a trice. The other end he coiled in the punt, and soon made it fast to a stout elm, under whose grateful shade Angus Macdonald had enjoyed many a pipe and Martha many a cup of tea in other days. The tree bent slowly forward; the thick rope became rigid. Ian and Peegwish sat in the boat anxiously looking on.
In that moment of enforced inaction Ian conceived an idea! Thought is quick, quicker than light, which, we believe, has reached the maximum of “express speed” in material things. By intermittent flashes, so rapid that it resembled a stream of sparks, the whole plan rushed through his mind, from conception to completion. We can only give a suggestive outline, as follows. The knoll, the smoking-box, the smoker, his words, “Mark what I say. I will sell this knoll to your father, and give my daughter to you, when you take that house, and with your own unaided hands place it on this knoll!” The impossible had, in the wondrous course of recent events, come just within the verge of possibility—a stout arm, a strong will, coupled with a high flood—“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,”—immortal and prophetic bard! There could be no chance of Elsie now, but even to win the right to claim her if she had been willing was better than nothing. In any case old Angus and the knoll would be united!
“Peegwish!” shouted Ian, turning on the unfortunate ex-brewer with a flushed face and blazing eyes that caused him to shrink in alarm, “can you sit still and do nothing?”
“Eh?” exclaimed Peegwish, in surprise.
“Bah!” said Ian, seizing the sculls.