"Why, it's shaking now!" said the blacksmith to Mr. Murdoch. "It'll go down with the first log that strikes it. You drive your best home to Mertonville and warn them. You may be just in time."
Away went the editor, carrying with him an extraordinary treasure of news for the next number of his journal. Jack dismounted, and her owner took the sorrel to her stable; she was very muddy but none the worse for the service she had rendered.
The crowd stood waiting for what was sure to come. Miller Hammond was anxiously watching his threatened and already damaged property. Jack came and stood beside him.
"Mr. Hammond," he said, "all the gravel that you were going to sell to father is lying under water."
"More than two acres of it," said the miller. "The water'll run off, though. I'll tell you what I'll do, Jack. I'll sell it for two hundred dollars, considering the flood."
"If father'll take it, will you count in the fifty you said you owed me?" inquired Jack.
The miller made a wry face for a moment, but then responded, smiling:
"Well! After what you've done to-night, too: saved all there was on the first floor,—yes, I will. Tell him I'll do it."
They all turned suddenly toward the dam. A high ridge of water was sweeping down across the pond. It carried a crest of foam, logs, planks, and rubbish, shining white in the moonlight, and it rolled on toward the mill and the dam as if it had an errand.
Crash—roar—crash—and a plunging sound,—and it seemed as if the Crofield dam had vanished. But it had not. Only a section of its top work, in the middle, had been knocked away by the rushing stroke of those logs.