Read "A Bit of Rough Road" by Amy Le Feuvre online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
STILL the water mounted. Would Brian never come, and would the night never end? After a time, Hope began to fear lest something had happened to her brother. She eyed the window nervously and apprehensively. That, and that only, was their means of exit now, unless the water sank as quickly as it had risen. She went once more to the stairs, and found it was nearly to the top. Then she feared that the old walls of the cottage might be so undermined with the water that it would all collapse. She shook the casement window. Brian had brought up his toolbox, so she very deliberately began to loosen the hinges and the frame. She was thankful the wood was so old and rotten that it gave away under her blows. Her father seemed unconscious of the noise, and indeed the storm of wind and rain that still shrieked down the chimneys and round the cottage drowned everything else.
"They must come to our rescue," she repeated to herself; and then, as she raised her eyes for the hundredth time, she saw lanterns flashing in the distance. She caught her breath in suspense.