The two men rolled over and over, colliding with the legs of a chair, knocking the chair against the wall. Someone ran to the doorway. There were shouts and more screams. Gideon shoved Garth away with his knee, but Garth, his face a bright hideous red, managed to throw himself down again, his fingers outstretched. He was babbling that he would kill his uncle-that nothing was going to stop him.

Somehow they struggled to their feet. Gideon's nose was bleeding freely, there was blood-his, or Garth's-smeared on Garth's face and shirt; their chests rose and fell convulsively. Though people were yelling for them to stop they did not hear. They were staring at each other, circling each other. Garth's mother hurried into the room, with grandmother Cornelia close behind. "Oh, what are you doing!" the women screamed. "Oh, stop! Garth! Stop!"

Garth rushed his uncle, who caught him in his arms, and, grunting like animals, the two of them staggered backward, crashing through the French doors (so that glass flew and there were more terrified screams). Then both fell backward against a low balcony railing; and over the railing, and into the rose garden six feet below. The fall did not appear to hurt either of them-perhaps they did not notice it-for their struggle increased in intensity.

Noel came limping over, in his work clothes, shouting for them to stop. He carried a hoe and was accompanied by the farm overseer, and several hired hands, who gaped stupidly at Garth and Gideon. But the fighting men (for Garth was a man, nearly as heavy as his uncle) paid no attention.

Now Gideon was on top, slamming his fist into Garth's face; now Garth was on top, shrieking, trying again to close his fingers (which were bleeding) around his uncle's throat. They rolled over and over in the desiccated rosebushes, unheedful of the thorns and the innumerable scratches on their faces and hands that had begun to bleed. From an upstairs window aunt Aveline shrieked: "Turn the fire extinguishers on them! Quickly! Quickly before one of them is murdered!" Vernon appeared, his straggly beard blowing, and made the mistake of approaching them-and suddenly he was propelled violently backward, the book he was carrying thrown out of his hand. (He fell in one of the open trenches, where a new pipe was in the process of being laid, and badly sprained his ankle. But in the excitement no one noticed.) Several Bellefleur dogs ran over, barking hysterically.

"Oh, where is Ewan," Lily cried, leaning over the railing, "where is Ewan-Ewan is the only one who can stop them-"

But Ewan was nowhere to be found. (He had taken one of the pick-up trucks into the village.) Nor was Leah home: she and Germaine were in Vanderpoel for the weekend. Hiram appeared, shaking his cane, shouting for order; order, or he would call the sheriff; but naturally the men paid no attention, and would even have knocked him to the ground as they rolled in his direction, had he not danced quickly aside.

"Help me, you idiots," Noel cried to his workers, and though he boldly seized Gideon by the hair they did not dare come near: and he soon lost his grip on his son. He was panting convulsively: he stumbled backward, his hand pressed against his chest. (So Cornelia cried, "You, down there, take care of that foolish old man! Don't let him near those two!") The dogs barked and yipped and whined, circling the men, their ears laid back.

On the balcony, stepping on the shattered glass, Little Goldie stared at the struggling men, her small fist pressed against her mouth. Her pale arched eyebrows were brought sharply together, in a look of horror; her skin had gone white, so that her innumerable pale freckles appeared to darken; her blond hair was all atangle. It might have been noted, from the rose garden especially, that she was, in that stance, particularly beautiful-a prematurely adult young girl, with small, hard breasts, a tiny waist, slender hips and legs. "Oh no oh no oh no," she whimpered; but the men took no heed of her either.

Garth lay back, panting, and Gideon stumbled to his feet, dripping blood from his nose. For five or six seconds they rested: and then Gideon ran at his nephew, and the two of them again scuffled, and the women screamed. Albert appeared. And young Jasper. Hiram was trying to break up the fight by prodding the men with his cane, but to no avail; both were oblivious of his timid blows. Jasper and Albert tried to grab hold of Garth, futilely; Noel tried again to seize his son by the hair, but one of Garth's wild fists caught him in the mouth. (And cracked the poor man's dentures.) A shoe flew loose-it was Gideon's-and shreds of Garth's shirt-and skeins of blood.

"Stop! You must stop! I command you to stop!" Grandmother Cornelia shouted, her wig askew.

In the end, however, they stopped only because-instinctively, unconsciously-they felt it was time to stop. Garth crawled away, sobbing; Gideon remained on his side, propped up by one elbow. It might have been the case, since Garth was the one to crawl away, that he had been defeated (and so most of the witnesses argued), but Gideon's blood-streaked face showed no triumph.

But what was the fight about?-what on earth had happened?

Garth hid away in his room, and wouldn't answer; Gideon, though looking a bloody wreck, and so exhausted he could hardly walk, staggered to his Aston-Martin and drove away, ignoring the shouts of incredulity that were raised behind him.

How did it begin?-weren't Garth and his uncle usually on good terms?-didn't they like each other?-what had gone wrong?-why did they suddenly want to kill each other?

So the family asked; but no answers were forthcoming.

Great-Grandmother Elvira's Hundredth Birthday Celebration.

On the day before great-grandmother Elvira's hundredth birthday, in honor of which a large celebration had been planned by the family, it was observed by Leah and others that Germaine was uncommonly nervous, and even rather cranky-the usually happy little girl refused to be drawn into the others' excitement (most of the children, and many of the adults, were in a near-frenzy of excitement over the party-for not since Raphael Bellefleur's time had so ambitious a social event been planned at Bellefleur Manor); she kept to herself in the nursery, or in her mother's boudoir, or in Violet's drawing room, staring anxiously out the window, with a concentration that seemed adult, at the November sky (which was perfectly cloudless); she was so distracted that a footstep behind her or a gentle "Germaine . . . ?" or one of her favorite kittens, flying across the floor, was enough to frighten her into a little scream. Leah sought her out and knelt before her, framing her face, gazing into her evasive eyes. "What is wrong, dear? Don't you feel well?" she asked. But the little girl answered disjointedly, squirming out of her mother's embrace. The sky tasted muddy, she said. Muddy-black. There were eels in it. The cellar smelled: rubber and skunk and something burnt on the stove. Tiny spiders were crawling up her legs and stinging. . . .

"She must be coming down with something," grandmother Cornelia said, approaching the child but not touching her. "Just look at her eyes. . . ."

"Germaine," Leah said, trying to hug her, "there certainly aren't spiders crawling up your legs! You know better! Those are just goose-bumps, you're cold, you can't seem to stop shivering, can you . . . ? Are you getting sick? Is it your stomach? Please tell me, dear."

But she pushed Leah away and ran to the window, pressing her cheek against the pane so that she could peer up, anxiously. Her forehead was furrowed and her lips, which were unusually pale, were drawn back from her baby teeth in an ugly grimace.

"She's such a strange child," Cornelia whispered, shuddering.

". . . Are you coming down with a cold, Germaine? Please tell me. At least look at me. There's nothing up there to look at!" Leah cried. She caught hold of Germaine again, and again framed her face, this time holding it rather roughly between her hands. "I don't want you to babble such nonsense. Do you hear? Not in front of me and certainly not in front of anyone else. And certainly not tomorrow when our guests arrive. Eels in the sky, skunks in the cellar, spiders, what nonsense!"

"You'll be frightening her, Leah," Cornelia said.

But Leah paid no attention to her mother-in-law. She was staring into her daughter's face, holding her squirming head still. The eyes were dilated, the skin was pale and clammy, there was an aura of-of what?-something dank, wet, sour, brackish about the child. After a long moment Leah said, "Something is going to go wrong, isn't it. Something is going to go wrong after all my work. . . ." But then, with a little cry of disgust, "But you don't always know. You don't always know."

She pushed Germaine away and straightened, and said to her mother-in-law in a vexed, tearful voice, "She doesn't always know, does she!"

THE PARTY TO celebrate great-grandmother Elvira's hundredth birthday was to have been, at first, a family party: and then Leah hit upon the idea of inviting Bellefleurs from other regions, and even other states (Cornelia and Aveline were drawn into her enthusiasm, each supplying lists of names, in some cases of Bellefleurs no one had seen for decades, in such distant places as New Mexico, British Columbia, and Alaska, and even Brazil): and then Hiram hit upon the idea of inviting people from outside the family, since it had been so long since the manor had been open to a number of important, influential guests: and naturally Leah responded to his suggestion with zeal. Meldroms . . . Zunderts . . . Schaffs . . . Medicks . . . Sanduskys . . . Faines . . . Scroons . . . Dodders . . . Pyes . . . Fiddlenecks . . . Bonesets . . . Walpoles . . . Cinquefoils . . . Filarees . . . Crockets . . . Mobbs . . . Pikes . . . Braggs . . . Hallecks . . . Whipples . . . Pepperells . . . Cokers . . . Yarrows . . . Milfoils . . . Fuhrs (though of course they probably would not even acknowledge the invitation) . . . Vervains . . . Rudbecks . . . Governor Grounsel and his family . . . Lieutenant-Governor Horehound and his family . . . Attorney General Sloan and his family . . . Senator Tucke . . . Congressman Sledge . . . the Caswells and the Abbots and the Ritchies and . . . and perhaps even Mr. Tirpitz (though it was unlikely that he would come). . . .

Leah hired a male calligrapher to write out the invitations, which were sent out on oyster-white cards with the Bellefleur coat of arms embossed in silver on them; if the celebration is to be held, she declared, everything should be done perfectly. A Vanderpoel caterer was retained. More domestic help was hired. Since guests were coming from so far away they would have to spend the night, or even several nights: so the castle's innumerable guest chambers would have to be aired and cleaned and polished and perhaps even repainted and in some cases fumigated. Furniture would have to be reupholstered. Rugs would have to be cleaned. Old stained varnish would have to be scraped off, and new varnish applied. More china must be bought; and more crystal; and silverware. Paintings, statues, frescoes, tapestries, and other ornamental objects would have to be cleaned and switched around from room to room. (How odd, how very odd, Leah thought, studying for the first time certain of the things Raphael Bellefleur had acquired, presumably by way of dealers and buyers in Europe. She wondered if he had actually looked at them before he had them hung: for what could one possibly make of these copies of Tintoretto, Veronese, Caravaggio, Bosch, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Rosso . . . ? There were enormous cracked oils and ten-by-fifteen faded tapestries and frescoes and altarpieces of The Rape of Europa, The Triumph of Bacchus, The Triumph of Silenus, Venus and Adonis, Venus and Mars, Deucalion and Pyrrha, Danae, The Marriage of the Virgin, The Annunciation, Cupid Carving His Bow, Diana and Acteon, Jupiter and Io, Susannah and the Elders, there were Olympian feasts and battles and orgies, in which lecherous satyrs leered, and thick-buttocked "graces" clutched wisps of diaphanous clothing comically inadequate to cover their nakedness, and gods with ludicrously tiny phalluses were being stripped by putti who were really dwarves with comically foreshortened legs and bulging foreheads. . . . On one wall of Leah's and Gideon's own bedchamber was an immense time-darkened oil depicting Leda and the Swan, in which Leda was an obscenely plump maiden with a dazed expression, reclining upon a much-rumpled couch, and starving off, with a feeble arm, a stunted but ferocious swan with a phallic neck so meticulously rendered it must have been a joke. . . . Leah stared at these things, shining a flashlight on them, feeling lightheaded, and occasionally even nauseous, wondering if she was imagining their satirical bizarrerie; wondering if Raphael had intended to purchase such grotesque art, or whether the poor man, for all his money, had been hoodwinked. They would have to come down someday. But there was no time, now, to replace them with other works of art; nor would there be enough money.) She even wanted to open the Turquoise Room, about which she had heard so much, but was dissuaded, not by the other Bellefleurs' pleas, but by the extraordinary sensation that coursed through her when she laid her hand upon the doorknob. . . . (But someone had nailed the door shut, in addition to locking it. Nailed it shut with six-inch spikes. "A pretty sight, in the corridor for any guest to see!" she said.) A week before Elvira's birthday Leah realized that the estate must smell. It was a farm, there were farm animals, how could it not smell? So, over Noel's weak protests, she arranged for an entire herd of Holsteins, what remained of the horses, and a number of hogs and sheep to be shifted by truck to other parts of the estate. (The family had just acquired, at rather a bargain, some seven hundred acres of fairly good land along the Nautauga River, adjacent to the land once farmed, and poorly farmed at that, by the tenant farmer Doan and his idle family.) "I don't see any reason to advertise the fact that we are farmers," Leah said. "And anyway we aren't, really-most of our income comes from other sources."

Domestic help began to arrive, and were housed in the old coachman's lodge: cooks, butlers, maids, groundsmen, even a lampman, even several page boys (who were Hiram's idea: he remembered liveried page boys from his youth, or claimed he did, and had always associated them with the aristocracy). Three seamstresses; two hairdressers; a "floral artist"; a Hungarian gypsy band from Port Oriskany; a string quartet specializing in nineteenth-century Romantic music. A team of electricians came to arrange strings of brightly burning electric lights indoors and out, strung along the battlements and from tower to tower, so that they would be visible for many miles, across the entire width of Lake Noir. "How lovely," Leah murmured. "How lovely everything is. . . ." Two truckloads of flowers were delivered: roses, gloxinias, lilies of the valley, carnations, orchids. Leah and Cornelia and Aveline helped arrange them, in every part of the house; a great basket of orchids was brought to Elvira's suite where the old woman, wearing a wrinkled floor-length houserobe, and pretending to be somewhat peeved by all the attention, claimed there was no logical place for them. "Cut flowers are a shameful waste," she said. "We have more flowers than we know what to do with in the summer."

"But this isn't summer, Mother Elvira!" Cornelia said lightly.

"I'm not even certain it is my birthday, this week."

"Of course it's your birthday!"

". . . or that I'm really the age you say," the old woman murmured, shivering in her gown. "Bellefleurs always exaggerate."

A pity, Leah thought, gazing at great-grandmother Elvira, that her husband wasn't still alive; or that no one of her generation had survived. How lonely it must be, to have outlived everyone. . . . Elvira was said to have been an extremely beautiful young woman when she became betrothed to the luckless Lamentations of Jeremiah, more than eight decades previously; and with her fine white hair, her unusually soft complexion, and her slender, almost girlish frame she was still an attractive woman. She might have been sixty-five years old, or seventy. Hardly more than eighty. Ah, but one hundred . . . ! It seemed impossible. She, Leah, would never grow so old.

"Why are you staring at me, miss?" Elvira said sharply.

Leah blushed. She realized that the old woman had forgotten her name.

"I was thinking-I was thinking-"

"Yes?"

"That this will be a birthday for us all to remember, and to cherish," Leah said weakly.

"Yes, I don't doubt that." Great-grandmother Elvira laughed. Leah spent a sleepless night, her mind reeling with last-minute plans. So many guests had accepted invitations. . . . So much food had been delivered. . . . (Several truckloads of choice beef and lamb; Cornish game hens; red snapper, sole, salmon, and sea bass; crabmeat and lobster.) There was a hideous tapestry in one of the third-floor guest rooms that she must take down, after all: it showed a naked potbellied drunken Silenus on a swaybacked ass, being led in a riotous procession of nymphs, satyrs, and fat little cupids. Quite possibly the ugliest thing she had ever seen. . . . And what if Germaine were ill, in the morning? And what if Gideon disappeared as he had threatened? (But he wouldn't dare betray the family.) And suppose old Elvira stubbornly refused to come downstairs, to open her presents. . . .

Near dawn Leah had a confused waking dream. She was back at the Powhatassie penitentiary (which she had visited twelve days earlier), being led once again through the five locked gates, one after another after another, in her fox coat and her black silk shantung suit. She tried not to notice the high granite walls, the crumbling concrete, the stench. . . . In the high-vaulted visitors' room she was led to an elderly man said to be her uncle Jean-Pierre Bellefleur II. Silvery-haired, diminutive, with small rheumy colorless eyes; his skin dry and flaking, and dead-white; thin lips stretched in a mock-courteous smile; a hump, small but prominent, between his shoulders. As she approached he raised his eyes to her and his gaze pierced her like a blade: for it was obvious that he was a Bellefleur. Even in his ill-fitting gray-blue prison uniform he was a Bellefleur, one of her people. . . .

"Uncle Jean-Pierre! At last! Oh, at last! I'm so grateful to be allowed to see you!" she cried.

The courtly old man (who looked far older than Noel or Hiram) acknowledged her words with a slight nod of his head.

She sat on the very edge of her uncomfortable chair, and began to speak. There was so much to say! So much to explain! She was Leah Pym, his sister Della's daughter; she was his nephew Gideon's wife; she had come to bring him hope. After so many years, after so many years of the vilest injustice. . . .

As she talked, more and more rapidly, the silver-haired old gentleman merely gazed at her. From time to time he nodded, but without conviction.

He had been falsely accused and falsely found guilty, but his case had not been forgotten, and she and her attorneys were in the process of reviewing it, and soon, very soon, they might have encouraging news. . . .

Around them, other visitors and prisoners were shouting at one another. There was a considerable din. A heavyset young woman beside Leah merely stared at her husband, through the scratched glass partition, and the two of them wept. Ah, Leah thought with a thrill of terror, how awful!

The skin of her uncle's face was like an aged palimpsest. His eyes, close-set and watery, struck her as very beautiful. We haven't forgotten you, we haven't betrayed you, Leah said, speaking more and more quickly, her own eyes filling with tears. It amazed her, that she should be facing, after so long, her uncle Jean-Pierre: that after having refused to see her for so many months, he should suddenly have relented. His expression was slightly mocking; yet wise; kind; good. She could see that he had suffered. She could see that he half-pitied her, for her idealism. He thought she was a fool-perhaps. A silly goose of a girl. But she would show him! She wouldn't give up so easily as the others had.

Because I know you are innocent, she whispered.

His lips twitched in a smile. He raised one liver-spotted hand, and drew it slowly beneath his nose.

. . . I know, I know you are innocent, she said.

The visitors' room was a great concrete cavern lurid with voices and echoes. Somewhere, far away, rain pelted against windows. But the windows were opaque. Leah, squinting, could not see the sky-could not see where the angry rain struck.

"The Innisfail Butcher!" This gentle broken-spirited old man with the kindly pitying eyes and the dry wrinkled skin that seemed to lie against his bones in layers, like the skin of an onion. . . .

Leah talked and talked. Perhaps he heard. Perhaps he understood. At any rate he did not try to dissuade her. He said only two things during the course of their ninety-minute visit, and Leah, though straining, could not hear them precisely. The first sounded like If old Raphael gets in office I think he might pardon me. Leah, surprised, managed to smile faintly, and to explain that there was a man named Grounsel in the governor's office-and that she and her attorneys had already begun petitioning him. The second remark of Jean-Pierre's was made in response to Leah's spirited statement, that she wished-ah, how she wished!-Jean-Pierre might be a free man by the time of his mother's birthday; it would be, he must know, his poor mother's hundredth birthday. The old man, gazing at her with his mild rheumy eyes, frowned for a moment, and said what sounded like My mother-do I have a mother- The rain interrupted them, slamming against the windows.

And Leah awoke, her heart pounding-and it was raining-the morning of the birthday celebration, and pouring rain-vicious pouring rain.

TOWARD 9:00 A.M. THE rain stopped, and the sky appeared to open. But how queer, how alarming it looked-as if, Leah thought, one were gazing into a bottomless chasm. But the rain had stopped.

The Bellefleur women hurried about the house, giving orders to the help, frequently contradicting one another. Leah wanted The Triumph of Silenus taken down at once from the guest room reserved for W. D. Meldrom, but Cornelia insisted that it remain: wasn't it one of the treasures of the estate, an oil attributed to Caravaggio? Aveline wanted most of the furniture in the main drawing room moved about, so that the atmosphere was less casual; she preferred, she said, the original formality of the house, before Leah had gone changing everything around. Della, who had been pressed into a visit, who had, as she said, far more important things to do at home, found fault with the gloxinia plants. They were already dying: sent up from the Falls at such absurd expense, and already dying . . . ! Lily followed the maids about, uncharacteristically critical, stooping to sniff at cushions (she was convinced-it had become one of her obsessions, since the party was planned-that the manor's many kittens had fouled these wonderful old pieces of furniture), ordering floors repolished, sighting strands of cobweb floating from the high, shadowy, vaulted ceilings. It was imperative, she kept saying, that they not make fools of themselves.

The sky continued to lighten, though it was not exactly clear. Warmer and warmer the day became. A hazy sun glared through vast caverns of cloud: ah, how very hot the manor was! The windows must be opened. It was mid-November, there had already been a considerable snowfall, but it had melted, and now the temperature was rising as if it were midsummer: 50, 53, 57, 59 . . .

Leah burst into tears when she saw that one of the children, evidently accompanied by a dog, had tracked mud onto a silk-and-wool carpet that had just been cleaned. And what time was it? The first of the guests-on the specially reserved Bellefleur coach on the train from downstate-would be arriving in about six hours.

The sky darkened suddenly. And suddenly there was a tremendous wind, which blew up out of nowhere. Running to the windows, the Bellefleurs saw to their astonishment that the sky had turned boiling-black: and, in the distance, Mount Chattaroy and Mount Blanc were ringed with clouds that appeared to be on fire.

Then there was a blinding flash of light, followed immediately by a crack of thunder so loud that several of the children screamed in terror, and the dogs set up a howl. Lightning! Lightning must have struck!

They ran about shutting windows. But in some cases it was already too late-the wind was too strong, torrents of rain had soaked everything, one could hardly push the windows closed; and there was the danger of lightning. (It had struck nearby-fortunately only a giant oak in the park, which had been struck many times in the past.) So the Great Storm began: which was to rival in violence and damage the Great Storm of twenty years previously: when all of the low-lying areas were flooded, and so many people lost their lives, and even the dead were washed out of their graves.

The winds were of hurricane force. Sometimes the air was sulfurous and warm-sometimes it was quite cold, bringing walls of ice that struck the windows like bullets, and in many cases cracked them. Trees were felled. Sheets of rain pounded against the gravel walks and drives, turning them to mud. In his tower Bromwell observed, through a telescope, how Mink Creek had already risen: and its waters had turned an unrecognizable clayey-orange.

"Our guests-our party-Grandmother Elvira's birthday-"

"But this cannot happen-"

"Why is the sun so bright-"

"Is it a hurricane? Is it the end of the world?"

"Get one of the men to stop that water coming in under the door-"

"Ah, look at Mount Chattaroy!"

"Is it a volcano? Is that fire?"

"What will happen to our wonderful party!"

The sky shifted from side to side as if it were alive. A sickly greenish-orange. And then a livid magenta. Clotted clouds raced from horizon to horizon. The rain lightened; and then suddenly increased; again it fell in sheets, with such malevolence the entire house trembled. There had never been anything like it! The Great Flood of twenty years back had been less violent, and shrouded in mist, so that one couldn't actually see what was happening. No, there had never been anything like this. . . .

The winds continued to blow, and the rain continued to fall, hour upon hour. Power lines to the manor were blown down, and though it was midday candles had to be lit; but even the candles were in danger of being blown out by capricious fingers of air. Devilish spirits raced up and down the curving staircases, loosed by the storm, frenzied as hysterical children. And the children-the children were hysterical: some of them were so frightened they had run away to hide, others were leaning out of windows and shouting ("Come on, come on, what are you waiting for, come on, you can't get us, come on and try!" feverish Christabel screamed from out a nursery window). Leah huddled in a corner of the kitchen with Germaine, trying to comfort her (though it was really herself she was comforting), and then, every few minutes, restless, infuriated, she jumped to her feet and ran out to see-to see-if perhaps the storm wasn't lessening?-and the party might be salvaged after all?

"I could curse God for this! For this vile trick!" she shouted.

Hiram, who had dressed that morning for the party, and was wearing an elegantly tailored suit of the finest lightweight wool, with a very white and very starched shirt, and gold-and-ivory cuff links, and his usual gold watch chain, turned sharply to her, and raised his voice to be heard over the drumlike tolling of the wind: "Leah. How can you. If one of the children heard you-! Such superstitious rot, you know very well there isn't any God, and if there is the poor thing is too feeble to have managed this."

Nevertheless Leah ran about like a madwoman, peering out one window and then another, as if she believed the storm might alter from one angle of perception to another, saying to anyone who would listen, "It's a trick. A vile trick. Because we're Bellefleurs. Because they want to stop us-He wants to stop us-and He isn't going to!"

Ewan and Gideon came in (for they had been-incredibly-out in the storm) to report that the Nautauga River was rising a foot an hour; and that most of the roads were washed out; the Fort Hanna bridge was said to be washed out; there had been a train derailment at Kincardine. And already three people were reported missing. . . .

"You're pleased about this, aren't you!" Leah screamed. "The two of you! Aren't you!"

. . . and Garth and Little Goldie, who had planned to return from their honeymoon in time for the party, must be caught in the storm somewhere to the south. . . .

"Oh, I hate you all! I hate this! I won't stand for this! It was Elvira's hundredth birthday and it won't come again and all my work-my weeks and weeks of work-my guests-I won't stand for this, do you hear!" poor Leah screamed. In her frenzy she ran to Gideon and began pounding his chest and face, but he caught her wrists, and calmed her, and led her back into the kitchen (which was the only warm place in the drafty old house) where he instructed Edna to make a rum toddy for her. And he stayed with her until her sobbing quieted, and she pressed her tear-lashed face against his neck, and fell into a kind of stupor, murmuring I wanted only to do well, I wanted only to help, God has been cruel, I will never forgive Him. . . .

In the end the storm was to be somewhat less severe than the Great Flood of twenty years previously; but it was still a hellish thing, and took away the lives of some twenty-three people in the Lake Noir area alone, and caused damage of upward of several million dollars. The roads were washed out, many of the bridges damaged past repair; trains were derailed and train beds torn away; Lake Noir and the Nautauga River and Mink Creek and innumerable nameless creeks and runs and ditches flooded, propelling debris along: baby buggies, chairs, laundry that had been hung out to dry, lampshades, parts of automobiles, loose boards, doors, window frames, the corpses of chickens, cows, horses, snakes, muskrats, raccoons, and parts of these corpses; and parts of what were evidently human corpses (for the cemeteries once again flooded, and relief workers were to be astonished and sickened by the sight of badly decomposed corpses dangling from roofs, from trees, jammed against silos and corncribs and abandoned cars, washed up against the foundations of homes, in various stages of decay: some aged and leathery, some fresh, soggy, pale; and all of them pathetically naked); and spiders-some of them gigantic, with bristling black hairs-ran about everywhere, washed out of their hiding places and frantic with terror.

Flood damage was comparatively minor at Bellefleur because the house was on somewhat higher ground. But even there the fruit orchards and gardens stood in a foot of muddy water, and the handsome pink gravel of the walks and drives was washed into the lawn, and the newly planted trees and shrubs in Leah's walled garden were uprooted; and it was a terrible sight, the drowned creatures everywhere-not only wild animals but some of the household cats and dogs, and many of the game fowl, and a pet black goat belonging to one of the boys. A number of Bellefleur workers had to evacuate their cottages and the low barracks-type building at the edge of the swamp; they were moved by truck to temporary quarters in the village, at the Bellefleurs' expense, and of course the Bellefleurs volunteered to pay for their food and clothing, and to reimburse them for their losses in the flood. Elsewhere, on other Bellefleur-owned property, there was considerable damage, the most grievous being the loss of an entire herd of Holsteins, drowned when a creek overflowed. The creatures had been penned up, rather stupidly, on low ground.

At the castle the cellar was flooded (the cellar was always flooded, even in minor rainstorms); many windows were broken; slate was torn from the roof and flung for hundreds of yards. Every chimney was damaged, every ceiling was water-stained. When the Bellefleurs, at the height of the storm, at last remembered great-grandmother Elvira, and hurried up to her room, they found the poor old woman in her rocking chair, in a virtual rain that fell from the ceiling. She had pulled her black cashmere shawl up over her head, and though she was shivering, she did not seem especially pleased to see them. She'd sent her maid away hours ago, she said, because she wanted to enjoy the storm in private; and so she had enjoyed it, despite the dripping ceiling and the terrible cold. She had particularly liked, she said, the lightning flashes over the lake.

She seemed to have forgotten, or perhaps did not care to mention, the fact that it was her hundredth birthday, and that a great celebration had been planned: which of course would not now take place.

SO THE STORM passed by, leaving damage and heartbreak in its wake, and next morning the Bellefleurs looked out to see a transformed world: ponds everywhere, great puddles of water that, reflecting the sky, looked like glassy lead, fallen trees, small mountains of debris that would have to be cleared away. The men-Gideon, Ewan, even Vernon, even grandfather Noel-made their way by foot down to the village, to help with the flood relief; Cornelia talked of "opening the castle doors" to the homeless. In the end, however, the only flood victim who was taken in was an elderly man discovered by one of the boys over in the barnyard-jammed against the stone foundation of the stable. At first, the boy said, he naturally thought it was a corpse: but it wasn't a corpse: the poor old man was alive!

So they brought him in, carrying him, since he was too exhausted to walk, and Dr. Jensen was summoned, and he was laid, half-unconscious, in one of the downstairs maids' rooms. A very elderly man-with a livid scar on his forehead-toothless-his cheeks sunken-his skin cancellate, as if it had been soaked for some time-his ragged clothing in shreds-his arms and legs hardly more than sticks, he was so thin. Though his pulse beat was weak it was a pulse beat, and he was able, with difficulty, and with much dribbling, to drink some broth Cornelia gave him. Ah, how pathetic! He spoke incoherently-did not seem to know his name, or where he had come from-or what had happened-that there had been a terrible storm, and that he had been caught in it. You are safe now, they told him. Try to sleep. We've called a doctor. Nothing can happen to you now.

When the men returned they looked in upon him, and there he was, propped up against pillows, blinking dazedly at them, his toothless mouth shifting into a hesitant smile. A miracle, they said, that he hadn't been drowned. (And he was such a very old man, and so very frail.) But he was safe now. And he could stay with them as long as he needed. "This is Bellefleur Manor," Noel said, standing at his bedside. "You're welcome to stay here as long as you like, until your people come to claim you. You don't remember your name . . . ?"

The old man blinked and shook his head no, uncertainly. His cheekbones were so sharp they seemed about to push through his veined skin.

In the late afternoon great-grandmother Elvira came downstairs to see him, followed by her cat, a white-and-bluish-gray female, and when she came to the foot of his bed she fumbled in her pocket, and took out her spectacles. She peered at the old man through her glasses, rather rudely. He was just waking from a light doze, and he peered at her, smiling his uncertain smile. The cat leapt up onto the bed, making a querulous mewing sound; it began to knead its paws against the old man's thigh. For some minutes great-grandmother Elvira and the elderly man stared at each other. And then Elvira took off her spectacles, and thrust them back in her pocket, and mumbled, ". . . old fool." And she gathered up Minerva and left the room without another word.

In the Mountains, in Those Days . . .

In the mountains, in those days, there was always music.

A music composed of many voices.

High above the mist-shrouded river. In the thin cold many-faceted light. Ice, was it?-or sunshine? Or the teasing mountain spirits (which must have to do with God, since they live on the Holy Mountain where the Devil dare not appear)?

Many voices, plaintive and alluring and combative and taunting and lovely, achingly lovely, so very very lovely one's soul is drawn out . . . drawn out like a thread, a hair . . . fine, thin, about to break. . . .