Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/199

Rh bags to stop the flood. To get here is a mile by the road and there was no time to lose." He pressed his question mercilessly. "Why did you come to us?"

Anthony Crawford moistened his dry lips, but he did not speak. There was a pause, though all of them knew that every second the waters of Medford River were sweeping higher and higher. It was finally Tom Brighton who answered his own question.

"You were afraid to go elsewhere. It was your doing, this flood; you took the land, you neglected the dikes, you sent John Massey away who would have watched against such a disaster as this. You were afraid to face those men, below, and tell them what you had done."

The other nodded.

"I haven't a friend in Medford Valley to help me—except you. Yes, I was afraid to face them; the break is in just the place where it may flood the whole bottom land. I thought they wouldn't move to help me until it was too late. And, on my life, Tom Brighton, if we can stop the flood I do not care what becomes of me."

It was quite true, as they could all see, that the man's desperate terror was not all for himself, that the situation was far too bad for that. He was picturing how the whole torrent of Medford River might soon be sweeping across those fields of ripening grain, those comfortable barns with their cows