THE WOULDBEGOODS
So we went home. Denny and H. O. had thought better of it, and they were fishing in the moat. They did not catch anything.
Oswald is very weather-wise—at least, so I have heard it said, and he had thought there would be rain. There was. It came on while we were at dinner—a great, strong, thundering rain coming down in sheets—the first rain we had since we came to the Moat House.
We went to bed as usual. No presentiment of the coming awfulness clouded our young mirth. I remember Dicky and Oswald had a wrestling match, and Oswald won.
In the middle of the night Oswald was awakened by a hand on his face. It was a wet hand and very cold. Oswald hit out, of course, but a voice said, in a hoarse, hollow whisper:
"Don't be a young ass! Have you got any matches? My bed's full of water; it's pouring down from the ceiling."
Oswald's first thought was that perhaps by opening those sluices we had flooded some secret passage which communicated with the top of Moat House, but when he was properly awake he saw that this could not be, on account of the river being so low.
He had matches. He is, as I said before, a boy full of resources. He struck one and lit a candle, and Dicky, for it was indeed he, gazed with Oswald at the amazing spectacle.
Our bedroom floor was all wet in patches. Dicky's bed stood in a pond, and from the ceiling
100
