"MUSTERING ALL HIS STRENGTH, ANDY PLUNGED INTO THE FLOOD."

[See page 580.]

THE peculiarity of the Steele family lay in the fact that all their individual names began with the letter A.

Anthony Steele lived on the hill that stretched away from Mad River, in a long, bare, lonely lift of land, that looked, when you were below, as though it might be the very topmost height in the universe. His home was a red, roomy farm-house, and he was the venerable A. Steele, who had stood face to face with Indians, on the same spot, years before. Under the hill, near the river, was a storyand-a-half cottage, white and snug, where Albert Steele, the miller, lived.

Lastly, there was, close to the river, the brown grist-mill, with its biggest-in-the-region waterwheel, to which all the folk came, from far and from near, fetching their rye, wheat, corn, oats, and buckwheat to be ground.

March came, and the mill was full of grain. The earth began to stir and move uneasily beneath her snowy wraps, as though weary of her attire, and anxious for a change. First, she trimmed her garments with icicle-fringe. But that was stiff, and creaked and rattled to pieces when the wind blew, and made one feel as though things in general were about to break up.

Nature has spasms, and one was coming on. The water-wheel had been out of order, and the winter had been so cold that very little had been ground in the mill; but now the wheel was as good as new, and so much grain was at hand that the heart of Albert Steele, miller, beat high with hope. The miller had four children. Andrew Steele VOL. VIII.-37.

(sixteen) looked at the length of wrist and arm below his coat-sleeve, and hoped that now a longer sleeve in a new coat would soon cover up his year's growth. Ann Steele, pretty as the May-flower, made the spinning-wheel fly, and had visions of a white dress for the next Fourth of July. Augustus Steele just hoped that now father would feel rich enough to let him have on his sled the iron runners that he had been waiting for pretty much ever since he could remember. Abby Steele, in the cradle, wanted her dinner, and cried for it, which cry drew Ann from her vision and the wheel, to lift up her motherless little sister; for there was no Mrs. Albert Steele to hope or wish for anything from the old mill on Mad River.

Nature's spasm was very near now. Sun, clouds, rain caused it.

"It'll be the biggest freshet that ever was," said the sage of the red house, when the rain began. "I don't feel quite easy about the mill," said the owner of it, when ten hours' rain had fallen. The snow could accommodate ten hours' rain very well, in its many-crystalled chambers on a thousand hillsides, and it did hold it without moving.

The next morning, everybody thereabout thought of bridges and of wash-outs-although there was not, at that time, a railroad within ninety miles of Mad River-and of taxes; for taxes began when the "Mayflower" paid wharfage to the Indians at Plymouth Rock, and have gone steadily on, beginning without ending, from that day to this.

Below the mill, a few hundred feet, there was a foot-bridge, the delight of boys and of daring girls,

but the terror of persons with nerves, whether young or old. It was like the half of an immense barrel-hoop, rising over the river, with its ends set into the banks. The rise and the round of this bridge were such that cleats were nailed up and down its sides, and a very shaky hand-rail had been provided to climb by. These cleats were constantly getting loose, helped oftentimes by small lads.

And to think that on this rainy March morning, of all mornings in that year, Albert Steele should be taken down with rheumatism!-the effect of his efforts of yesterday in getting home the sheep from across the river, in case of a freshet, which now seemed inevitable. He had driven them through the snow-water, and around by the wagon-bridge, above the fall a half-mile, and had been out until after the night came, making things snug at the mill, and so, as has been written, he was on this morning helpless. Before any one was up in the house, there came a thundering knock at the side-door, and a voice sang out: "Ho! miller!-Ho!"

"Father wants to know if Mr. Cook helped you shut the gates."

"Oh my!" whispered Andrew. "Don't tell Father, but the gates are both wide open. Come on, Gus, and we 'll get 'em down."

Away went the boys. They darted under the door-way and ran through the mill to the race and the upper gate. The current was very strong; the race itself could not hold all the water that came to it. The force of it resisted the lads' united strength, for the water was full now of slush.

Ann stood in the door-way, baby Abby in her arms, and watched the boys at work.

"There's something wrong at the mill, Father," she said. "I'm going to run down and see, if you'll hold Abby."

The poor miller sat there, helpless, and groaning away his troubles to the baby, while Ann appeared at the race, sledge-hammer in hand.

"You must stop it at once," she cried, " or the wheel will break, and then what would become of us?"

Andrew spoke from the little four-paned window, just beneath the point where the roofs joined.

"Call your father, quick! I want to get corn ground in a hurry, before the river breaks up. Must be done!" answered a breezy voice.

But, as we know, Mr. Albert Steele could grind no corn that day; he had been suffering terribly all night from the pain of his rheumatism, and Andrew so told the man.

"Come along yourself, then, and I'll help you, for my critters 'll starve to death, unless, indeed, I should give 'em whole corn," said the young man.

Andrew had never run the mill in his life, but he had helped often enough to know what should be done. The upper gate and the lower gate were raised, and the big wheel felt the stir of the water in its every bucket. In tumbled the corn from bag after bag into the hopper, and the upper millstone ground on the nether millstone, and the yellow corn became yellow meal, and was poured into the bags, and away went their owner, happy over his success. When he was gone, Andrew ate breakfast, and down came the water faster and in greater volume every instant; and the old mill thundered at every swift revolution of the great wheel, that actually groaned on its axis, as the water plunged and splashed, filling the wheel-race with foam.

Meanwhile, honey and buckwheat cakes kept Andrew busy at the table, until Augustus, who had breakfasted while his brother played miller, opened a door and called out:

"The river is breaking up! The ice is coming over the fall! The water is up to the mill-floor!" cry one and another in horror.

"Out, out with the meal! Let us save all we can," shouts Andrew. "I can manage one bag, and you two can carry another. Take these

first."

One, two, ten, twenty, forty bags of corn and rye the young Steeles saved before the water drove them out of the mill. And the wheel worked faster than ever all the time, and the air was full of the rush and the roar of Mad River at its breaking up.

Meanwhile, the miller himself set the baby a-crying out of pure sympathy with her papa's lamentations (but children did not say "papa" in those days), for he verily believed that he should be compelled to sit there until the flood came and carried him away-so long were the children gone, and so alarmed was he at the thundering noises.

He was about to do something desperate with Abby, when the arbutus face-a little poppy-like now, it must be owned-appeared in the door-way with:

"Oh, Father! I'm afraid the mill will go down, but we 've saved every bit of John Lathrop's rye, and Mr. Holmes's wheat. We thought we'd get theirs, 'cause they'd need it most, and the river is rising so fast that you can see it come up, and—