The Last flict
IN the sed week of September, Maggie was again sitting in her lonely room, battling with the old shadowy ehat were for ever slain and rising again. It ast midnight, and the rain was beating heavily against the window, driven with fitful force by the rushing, loud-moaning wind. For, the day after Lucys visit there had been a sudden ge in the weather: the heat and drought had given way to cold variable winds, and heavy falls of rain at intervals; and she had been forbidden to risk the plated journey until the weather should beore settled. In the ties higher up the Floss, the rains had been tinuous, and the pletion of the harvest had been arrested. And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower course of the river had been incessant, so that the old men had shaken their heads and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of weather happening about the equinox, brought on the great floods, which swept the bridge away, and reduced the town to great misery. But the younger geion, who had seen several small floods, thought lightly of these sombre recolles and forebodings, and Bob Jakin, naturally proo take a hopeful view of his own luck, laughed at his mother when she regretted their having taken a house by the river-side; that but for that they would have had no boats, which were the most lucky of possessions in case of a flood that obliged them to go to a distance for food. But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in their beds now. There was hope that the rain would abate, by the morrow; threatenings of a worse kind from sudden thaws after falls of snow, had often passed off in the experience of the younger ones; and at the very worst, the banks would be sure to break lower down the river wheide came in with violend so the waters would be carried off, without causing more than temporary invenience, and losses that would be felt only by the poorer sort, whom charity would relieve.
All were in their beds now, for it ast midnight: all except some solitary watchers such as Maggie. She was seated in her little parlour towards the river with one dle, that left everything dim in the room, except a letter which lay before her oable. That letter, which had e to her today, was one of the causes that had kept her up far on into the night - unscious how the hours were going - careless of seeki - with no image of rest ing across her mind, except of that far, far off rest, from which there would be no more waking for her into this strugglihly life.
Two days before Maggie received that letter she had been to the Rectory for the last time. The heavy rain would have prevented her from going since; but there was another reason. Dr Kenn, at first enlightened only by a few hints as to the urn which gossip and slander had taken iion to Maggie, had retly been made more fully aware of it by an ear remonstrance from one of his male parishiainst the indiscretion of persisting iempt to overe the prevalent feeling in the parish by a course of resistance. Dr Kenn, having a sce void of offen the matter, was still ined to persevere - was still averse to give way before a publitiment that was odious and ptible; but he was finally wrought upon by the sideration of the peculiar responsibility attached to his office, of avoiding the appearance of evil - and that `appearance is always depe on the average quality of surrounding minds. Where these minds are low and gross, the area of that `appearance is proportiona