Page:Moving Picture Boys and the Flood.djvu/65

Rh as being lost, but the two boys thought most of Miss Birdie Lee. It was almost as though their own sister were lost, so near and dear did they feel toward the little actress.

Rain, rain, and still more rain! The big drops splashed on the car windows, and on either side of the track were to be seen wet and sodden fields, many of them almost out of sight under sheets of water. They passed through miles of dripping forest, to come out perhaps near the bank of some stream that was filled to overflowing. Once the tracks were partly under water, at a point where a small river had overflowed the banks, and the engineer had to slow down for fear of spreading rails.

It was a dreary outlook, and when they stopped at a station where they could get newspapers, the printed reports of the flood were most alarming.

"Isn't it ever going to let up raining?" asked Blake, as he wiped the moisture from a window and looked out for a possible sign of a break in the clouds.

"It'll rain for forty days—or longer," said Christopher Cutler Piper, in still more gloomy tones.

A passenger in the seat ahead of the comedian turned around, gave one look at the actor, and