“I asked Tip Lange who he was, and he said it was a boy named Hugh Hardy, or something like that, from over in Oakvale.”
“It would be a good thing for Lawrence if he came here to live. I never felt so much like kissing a boy in all my life as when I saw him drag that foolish Tug Wilson off the dreadful bridge. I only wish my nephew was built like that brave boy.”
It was perhaps fortunate that Hugh did not hear the old maid say this, or even catch the remarks exchanged between the others. He had managed to reach the side of the white-haired old man who was bending over a marked stick which he had fastened to a post that stood deep in the yellow water.
“What do the marks show, sir?” asked Hugh.
The old man glanced up at him. Perhaps he, too, suspected that this manly looking young chap in the khaki suit and with the raincoat over his arm was the same boy who had so recently performed that gallant deed. At any rate he replied without the least hesitation:
“Now a foot and two inches above the highest record made in forty years. I know, because I’ve been keeping tally that long.”
“But how fast is it rising now?” continued Hugh.
“At a terribly rapid pace, I am sorry to tell you. In the last hour it has come up almost a foot. There will be great woe and desolation all through the valley. I feel sorry for the people living further away from Lawrence. It is bad enough here; but we are a community, and no one need suffer while others are able to lend a helping hand. But the isolated farmers and the little hamlets will be in desperate straits.”
It did the old veteran’s heart credit, this concern for others. Hugh, too, was thinking of those who had no one to lean upon. He wished some means could be found whereby he could start out on the flood that ran for many miles back up the valley, so as to rescue those helpless ones caught in the sea of raging waters.
Once again he and Billy went back to the place where they had promised to wait for the coming of the local scouts. All the while Hugh’s active brain was trying to lay plans, although until he knew just what the nature of their resources might be it was next to impossible to settle on these definitely.