noon
The useless boat lay in the shallow wash that filled the deep cut among the willows . The white sand beach was gone ; heavy waves swirled past the banks and sent their eddies up into the channels of the hills to meet the streams of melted snow . Thunder clouds chased each other about the mountains , or met in sudden downfalls of rain . One sultry noon , when the sun had come out hot on the hills after a wet morning , Ruth Mary , at work in the shed-room , heard a sound that drove the color from her cheek . She ran out and looked up the river , listening to a distant but ever increasing roar which could be heard above the incessant laboring of the waters over the bar . Above the summit of Sheep Mountain , as it seemed , a huge turban-shaped cloud had rolled itself up , and from its central folds was discharging gray sheets of water that veered and slanted with the wind , but were always distinct in their density against the rain-charged atmosphere . How far away the floods were descending she did not know ; but that they were coming in a huge wall of water , overtaking and swallowing up the river 's current , she was as sure as that she had been bred in the mountains .