The Water-Finders

Annie Chapman never had liked her husband working at the well. She said as little as she could, and she scarcely knew why, but a sort of nameless fear always crept over her when...

Willowton is a village of some seventeen thousand population, large enough for the inhabitants to talk of "going up the town" when they mean the broad main street which stands o...

One would have thought that so excellent a work as the digging of the wells would be allowed to go on quietly, but unfortunately the fact that the scheme happened to have been o...

It was a week after the finding of the water, and Mildred Greenacre was in the little orchard at the back of the cottage. There was a sickly smell in the air of dying May flower...

Next morning Milly Greenacre was making bread in her little kitchen at the back of the parlour, when an unaccustomed step sounded on the gravel-path. It was a shy, hesitating so...

It is often said that no great work can be accomplished without some correspondingly great sacrifice, and the fever was not stamped out and the water supply made pure without th...

When Tom Chapman opened his door a sight met him that was not a grateful one to a tired man, and would have put most men into a rage, but Tom didn't seem to mind much. He picked...

The account the doctor gave Nurse Blunt of the deplorable state of the sickness in Willowton would have made a weaker woman quail, but Nurse Blunt was strong in body and mind.

The Chapmans were a large family, and every year a new little Chapman appeared upon the scene; consequently every year there was a new mouth to feed, and wages, of course, remai...

In the meantime the vicar had eaten a hurried luncheon of bread and cheese in the master's room, and leaving the Union walked quickly down to the church. He had barely time to p...

It will readily be imagined that the "dowser," as he called himself, was not allowed to go on his quest accompanied only by Mr. Barlow. He was followed, as was only natural, at...

It was perhaps just as well that Geo was an inexperienced well-sinker, and that he did not know the horrible danger he was in, or with what fearful rapidity a long-dry spring so...

The last days of May were over, and June was here, but since the visit of the dowser there had fallen no drop of rain. The fever was in no-ways abated. There had been several mo...

All through the middle of the day, till six o'clock, Geo Lummis slept. At three o'clock Nurse Blunt came over to Mildred and asked her to go to Mrs. Lummis.

The meeting at the Union, mentioned in the first chapter, was stormy, but it resulted in victory. The sudden summoning of the principal people in the parish was occasioned by th...

The sun was setting, and the long shadows were slanting into the tired faces of the crowd, before the dowser considered he had satisfactorily accomplished his self-imposed task....

At last it was Sunday morning, and the men had now been forty-eight hours in the well. A rumour had got about that they were still alive. The bells rang out for service as usual...

It was eight o'clock, and the crowd that had come and gone during the afternoon had now gathered again in force. It was known all round that the critical moment had arrived. Eve...

On the third day the rain abated, and work was resumed at the well. For the first few hours it went steadily on; but before noon an awful catastrophe had occurred, and it became...

On the following day the heat became almost intolerable. People went about their work, and got through it somehow, but everything in nature appeared to be at its last gasp. The...