They tried to encourage him; but he answered them in words that showed how deeply old Shylock's speech is founded in nature:

"Let the water take me--it has taken all I had."

When they asked after his neighbors, he said he believed they were all drowned. Unluckily for HIM, he had been out when the flood came.

Little clambered into the other cottage, and found a little boy and girl placidly asleep in a cupboard upstairs.

Little yelled with delight, and kissed them, and cuddled them, as if they had been his own, so sweet was it to see their pretty innocent faces, spared by death. The boy kissed him in return, and told him the room had been full of water, and dada and mamma had gone out at the window, and they themselves had floated in the bed so high he had put his little sister on the top shelf, and got on it himself, and then they had both felt very sleepy.

"You are a dear good boy, and I take you into custody," said Ransome, in a broken voice.

Judge if this pair were petted, up at the Town Hall.

At Poma Bridge the devastation was horrible. The flood had bombarded a row of fifty houses, and demolished them so utterly that only one arch of one cellar remained; the very foundations were torn up, and huge holes of incredible breadth and depth bored by the furious eddies.