But she felt upon her the critical eyes of the neighbor women and
refused to surrender to emotion. After a little period of respite she
let herself out of the door into the rain that had begun falling with a
sobbing fitfulness, and went through the starkness of the woods.
Back of the house was the "spring-branch" of which she had spoken as a
gauge to the stage of the flood. By some freakish law of
co-ordination, which no one had ever been able to explain, that small
stream gave a reading of conditions across the ridge, as a pulse-beat
gives the tempo of the blood's current. One could look at it and
estimate with fair accuracy how fast and how high the river was rising.
When a rotting stump beside the basin of the spring had water around
its roots it meant that the arteries of the hills were booming into
torrential fury. When the basin overflowed, the previous maximum of
the river's rise had been equaled. It was overflowing now.
Alexander stood for a moment gazing with widened and terrified eyes.
She had now no time to lose. The lapping waters of a tiny brook were
calling her to prompt and hazardous action.
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