The Glen at Break of Day 347

wool, half of which eventually went down the
waters, with the wool-shed on top of it.

The schoolhouse stands too high to fear any
flood, but there were moments when I thought
the rain would master it. Not only the windows
and the roof were rattling then, but all the walls,
and I was like one in a great drum. When the
rain was doing its utmost, I heard no other
sound; but when the lull came, there was the
wash of a heavy river, or a crack as of artillery
that told of landslips, or the plaintive cry of the
peesweep as it rose in the air, trying to entice
the waters away from its nest.

It was a dreary scene that met my gaze at
break of day. Already the Quharity had risen
six feet, and in many parts of the glen it was two
hundred yards wide. Waster Lunny’s corn field
looked like a bog grown over with rushes, and
what had been his turnips had become a lake
with small islands in it. No dyke stood whole
except one that the farmer, unaided, had built
in a straight line from the road to the top of
Mount Bare, and my own, the further end of
which dipped in water. Of the plot of firs
planted fifty years earlier to help on Waster
Lunny’s crops, only a triangle had withstood
the night.

Even with the aid of my field-glass I could not
estimate the damage on more distant farms, for
the rain, though now thin and soft, as it con-
tinued for six days, was still heavy and of a
brown colour. After breakfast, — which was in-
terrupted by my bantam cock’s twice spilling my
milk, —I-saw Waster Lunny and his son, Mat-