ON THE FLOOD. 
DPESk the snow the rain, and after the 
rain the flood. 
Yesterday there had been fields spotted with 
cattle, hedges dotted with birds, a railway, 
roads, a scene of quiet civilisation. 
To-day there was a lake, an inland sea, a 
vast, gleaming, glistening shimmer in the dull 
eye of a watery sun, far as the gaze of mortal 
man could reach. 
Came then an uprooted willow, in progress 
slow and uncertain. Mostly it was broadside 
on, and if it didn’t hit anything it did not 
turn over. This was important, because it 
bore fruit, this tree—animate fruit; and a 
strange assortment they were. 
There was the weasel, immaculate in the 
sweet brown and the white shirt-front; there 
were the bank-vole and his sister, who each 
clung to an uncertain branch, and devoutly 
hoped the weasel’s hunger would not lead him 
to venture too far along it. 
There was also the red and bristly squirrel, 
aloof and beady-eyed, on a main bough; there 
was the water-rat astride the main trunk, 
cleaning his whiskers, and ready to dive at the 
weasel’s slightest move; and there was the 
