The long drought ended with a cloud-burst in the western mountains,
which tore a new slide down the flank of Lynx Peak and scarred the
Gilded Dome from summit to base. Then storm followed storm, bursting
through the mountain-notch and sweeping the river into the meadows,
where the haycocks were already afloat, and the gaunt mountain cattle
floundered bellowing.
The stage from White Lake arrived at noon with the mail, and the driver
walked into the post-office and slammed the soaking mail-sack on the
floor.
"Gracious!" said the little postmistress.
"Yes'm," said the stage-driver, irrelevantly; "them letters is wetter
an' I'm madder 'n a swimmin' shanghai! Upsot? Yes'm--in Snow Brook.
Road's awash, meadders is flooded, an' the water's a-swashin' an'
a-sloshin' in them there galoshes." He waved one foot about carelessly,
scattering muddy spray, then balanced himself alternately on heels and
toes to hear the water wheeze in his drenched boots.
"There must be a hole in the mail-pouch," said the postmistress, in
gentle distress.
There certainly was. The letters were soaked; the wrappers on newspaper
and parcel had become detached; the interior of the government's
mail-pouch resembled the preliminary stages of a paper-pulp vat. But the
postmistress worked so diligently among the debris that by one o'clock
she had sorted and placed in separate numbered boxes every letter,
newspaper, and parcel--save one.