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+Project Gutenberg's Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill, by Alice B. Emerson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill
+
+Author: Alice B. Emerson
+
+Posting Date: July 6, 2011 [EBook #4985]
+Release Date: January, 2004
+[This file was first posted on April 7, 2002]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Weiler, xooqi.com.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill
+
+or
+
+Jasper Parloe's Secret
+
+by Alice B. Emerson, 1913
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+ THE RED FLAME IN THE NIGHT
+
+The sound of the drumming wheels! It had roared in the ears of Ruth
+Fielding for hours as she sat on the comfortably upholstered seat in
+the last car of the afternoon Limited, the train whirling her from the
+West to the East, through the fertile valleys of Upper New York State.
+
+This had been a very long journey for the girl, but Ruth knew that it
+would soon come to an end. Cheslow was not many miles ahead now; she
+had searched it out upon the railroad timetable, and upon the map
+printed on the back of the sheet; and as the stations flew by, she had
+spelled their names out with her quick eyes, until dusk had fallen and
+she could no longer see more than the signal lamps and switch targets
+as the train whirled her on.
+
+But she still stared through the window. This last car of the train
+was fairly well filled, but she had been fortunate in having a seat
+all to herself; she was glad this was so, for a person in the seat
+with her might have discovered how hard it was for her to keep back
+the tears.
+
+For Ruth Fielding was by no means one of the "crying kind," and she
+had forbidden herself the luxury of tears on this occasion.
+
+"We had all that out weeks ago, you know we did!" she whispered,
+apostrophizing that inner self that really wanted to break the brave
+compact. "When we knew we had to leave dear old Darrowtown, and Miss
+True Pettis, and Patsy Hope, and--and 'all other perspiring friends,'
+to quote Amoskeag Lanfell's letter that she wrote home from
+Conference.
+
+"No, Ruth Fielding! Uncle Jabez Potter may be the very nicest kind of
+an old dear. And to live in a mill--and one painted red, too! That
+ought to make up for a good many disappointments--"
+
+Her soliloquy was interrupted by a light tap upon her shoulder. Ruth
+glanced around and up quickly. She saw standing beside her the tall
+old gentleman who had been sitting two seats behind on the other side
+of the aisle ever since the train left Buffalo.
+
+He was a spare old gentleman, with a gaunt, eagle-beaked face, cleanly
+shaven but for a sweeping iron-gray mustache, his iron-gray hair waved
+over the collar of his black coat--a regular mane of hair which
+flowed out from under the brim of his well-brushed, soft-crowned hat.
+His face would have been very stern in its expression had it not been
+for the little twinkle in his bright, dark eyes.
+
+"Why don't you do it?" he asked Ruth, softly.
+
+"Why don't I do what, sir?" she responded, not without a little gulp,
+for that lump would rise in her throat.
+
+"Why don't you cry?" questioned the strange old gentleman, still
+speaking softly and with that little twinkle in his eye.
+
+"Because I am determined not to cry, sir," and now Ruth could call up
+a little smile, though perhaps the corners of her mouth trembled a
+bit.
+
+The gentleman sat down beside her, although she had not invited him to
+do so. She was not at all afraid of him and, after all, perhaps she
+was glad to have him do it.
+
+"Tell me all about it," he suggested, with such an air of confidence
+and interest that Ruth warmed more and more toward him.
+
+But it was a little hard to begin. When he told her, however, that he
+was going to Cheslow, too--indeed, that that was his home--it was
+easier by far.
+
+"I am Doctor Davison, my dear," he said. "If you are going to live in
+Cheslow you will hear all about Doctor Davison, and you would better
+know him at first-hand, to avoid mistakes," and his eyes twinkled more
+than ever, though his stern mouth never relaxed.
+
+"I expect that my new home is some little way outside of Cheslow,"
+Ruth said, timidly. "They call it the Red Mill."
+
+The humorous light faded out of the dark, bright eyes of the
+gentleman. Yet even then his countenance did not impress her as being
+unkindly.
+
+"Jabez Potter's mill," he said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, sir. That is my uncle's name."
+
+"Your uncle?"
+
+"My great uncle, to be exact," said Ruth. "He was mother's uncle."
+
+"Then you," he said, speaking even more gently than before, "are
+little Mary Potter's daughter?"
+
+"Mother was Mary Potter before she married papa," said Ruth, more
+easily now. "She died four years ago."
+
+He nodded, looking away from her out of the window at the
+fast-darkening landscape which hurried by them.
+
+"And poor papa died last winter. I had no claim upon the kind friends
+who helped me when he died," pursued Ruth, bravely. "They wrote to
+Uncle Jabez and he--he said I could come and live with him and Aunt
+Alvirah Boggs."
+
+In a flash the twinkle came back into his eyes, and he nodded again.
+
+"Ah, yes! Aunt Alviry," he said, giving the name its old-fashioned,
+homely pronunciation. "I had forgotten Aunt Alviry," and he seemed
+quite pleased to remember her.
+
+"She keeps house for Uncle Jabez, I understand," Ruth continued. "But
+she isn't my aunt."
+
+"She is everybody's Aunt Alviry, I think," said Doctor Davison,
+encouragingly.
+
+For some reason this made Ruth feel better. He spoke as though she
+would love Aunt Alviry, and Ruth had left so many kind friends behind
+her in Darrowtown that she was glad to be assured that somebody in the
+new home where she was going would be kind, too.
+
+Miss True Pettis had not shown her Uncle Jabez's letter and she had
+feared that perhaps her mother's uncle (whom she had never seen nor
+known much about) might not have written as kindly for his niece to
+come to the Red Mill as Miss True could have wished. But Miss True was
+poor; most of the Darrowtown friends had been poor people. Ruth had
+felt that she could not remain a burden on them.
+
+Somehow she did not have to explain all this to Doctor Davison. He
+seemed to understand it when he nodded and his eyes twinkled so
+glowingly.
+
+"Cheslow is a pleasant town. You will like it," he said, cheerfully.
+"The Red Mill is five miles out on the Lake Osago Road. It is a pretty
+country. It will be dark when you ride over it to-night; but you will
+like it when you see it by daylight."
+
+He took it for granted that Uncle Jabez would come to the station to
+meet her with a carriage, and that comforted Ruth not a little.
+
+"You will pass my house on that road," continued Doctor Davison. "But
+when you come to town you must not pass it."
+
+"Sir?" she asked him, surprised.
+
+"Not without stopping to see me," he explained, his eyes twinkling
+more than ever. And then he left her and went back to his seat.
+
+But Ruth found, when he had gone, that the choke came back into her
+throat again and the sting of unshed tears to her eyes. But she would
+not let those same tears fall!
+
+She stared out of the plate-glass window and saw that it was now quite
+dark. The whistle of the fast-flying locomotive shrieked its
+long-drawn warning, and a group of signal lights flashed past. Then
+she heard the loud ringing of a gong at a grade crossing. They must be
+nearing Cheslow now.
+
+And then she saw that they were on a curve quite a sharp curve, for
+she saw the lights of the locomotive and the mail car far ahead upon
+the gleaming rails. They began to slow down, too, and the wheels
+wailed under the pressure of the brakes.
+
+She could see the signal lights along the tracks ahead and then--with
+a start, for she knew what it meant--a sharp red flame appeared out
+of the darkness beyond the rushing engine pilot.
+
+Danger! That is what that red light meant. The brakes clamped down
+upon the wheels again so suddenly that the easily-riding coach jarred
+through all its parts. The red eye was winked out instantly; but the
+long and heavy train came to an abrupt stop.
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+ RENO
+
+But the Limited had stopped so that Ruth could see along the length of
+the train. Lanterns winked and blinked in the dark as the trainmen
+carried them forward. Something had happened up front of more
+importance than an ordinary halt for permission to run in on the next
+block. Besides, the afternoon Limited was a train of the first-class
+and was supposed to have the right of way over all other trains. No
+signal should have stopped it here.
+
+"How far are we from Cheslow, please?" she asked of the rear brakeman
+(whom she knew was called the flagman) as he came down the car with
+his lantern.
+
+"Not above a mile, Miss," he replied.
+
+His smile, and his way of speaking, encouraged her to ask:
+
+"Can you tell me why we have stopped?"
+
+"Something on the track, Miss. I have set out my signal lamp and am
+going forward to inquire."
+
+Three or four of the male passengers followed him out of the car. Ruth
+saw that quite a number had disembarked from the cars ahead, that a
+goodly company was moving forward, and that there were ladies among
+the curious crowd. If it was perfectly safe for them to satisfy their
+curiosity, why not she? She arose and hurried out of the car,
+following the swinging lamp of the brakeman as he strode on.
+
+Ruth ran a little, seeing well enough to pick her way over the ends of
+the ties, and arrived to find at least half a hundred people grouped
+on the track ahead of the locomotive pilot. The great, unblinking,
+white eye of the huge machine revealed the group clearly--and the
+object around which the curious passengers, as well as the train crew,
+had gathered.
+
+It was a dog--a great, handsome, fawn-colored mastiff, sleek of coat
+and well fed, but muddied now along his flanks, evidently having waded
+through the mire of the wet meadow beside the tracks. He had come
+under, or through, a barbed wire fence, too, for there was a long
+scratch upon his shoulder and another raw cut upon his muzzle.
+
+To his broad collar was fastened a red lamp. Nobody had taken it off,
+for both the train men and the passengers were excitedly discussing
+what his presence here might mean; and some of them seemed afraid of
+the great fellow.
+
+But Ruth had been used to dogs, and this noble looking fellow had no
+terrors for her. He seemed so woebegone, his great brown eyes pleaded
+so earnestly, that she could only pity and fondle him.
+
+"Look out, Miss; maybe he bites," warned the anxious conductor. "I
+wager this is some boy's trick to stop the train. And yet--"
+
+Ruth bent down, still patting the dog's head, and turned the great
+silver plate on his collar so that she could read, in the light of the
+lanterns, that which was engraved upon it. She read the words aloud:
+
+"'This is Reno, Tom Cameron's Dog.'"
+
+"Cameron?" repeated some man behind her. "That Tom Cameron lives just
+outside of Cheslow. His father is the rich dry-goods merchant, Macy
+Cameron. What's his dog doing here?"
+
+"And with a red light tied to his collar?" propounded somebody else.
+
+"It's some boy's trick, I tell you," stormed the conductor. "I'll have
+to report this at headquarters."
+
+Just then Ruth made a discovery. Wound about the collar was a bit of
+twisted cloth--a strip of linen--part of a white handkerchief. Her
+nimble fingers unwound it quickly and she spread out the soiled rag.
+
+"Oh, see here!" she cried, in amazement as well as fear. "See! What
+can it mean? See what's drawn on this cloth--"
+
+It was a single word--a word smeared across the rag in shaking,
+uneven letters:
+
+"HELP!"
+
+"By George!" exclaimed one of the brakemen. "The little girl's right.
+That spells 'Help!' plain enough."
+
+"It--it is written in something red, sir," cried Ruth, her voice
+trembling. "See! It is blood!"
+
+"I tell you we've wasted a lot of time here," declared the conductor.
+"I am sorry if anybody is hurt, but we cannot stop for him. Get back
+to the cars, please, gentlemen. Do you belong aboard?" he added, to
+Ruth. "Get aboard, if you do."
+
+"Oh, sir! You will not leave the poor dog here?" Ruth asked.
+
+"Not with that red lamp on his collar--no!" exclaimed the conductor.
+"He will be fooling some other engineer--"
+
+He reached to disentangle the wire from the dog's collar; but Reno
+uttered a low growl.
+
+"Plague take the dog!" ejaculated the conductor, stepping back
+hastily. "Whoever it is that's hurt, or wherever he is, we cannot send
+him help from here. We'll report the circumstance at the Cheslow
+Station. Put the dog in the baggage car. He can find the place where
+his master is hurt, from Cheslow as well as from here, it's likely."
+
+"You try to make him follow you, Miss," added the conductor to Ruth.
+"He doesn't like me, it's plain."
+
+"Come here, Reno!" Ruth commanded. "Come here, old fellow."
+
+The big dog hesitated, stepped a yard or two after her, stopped,
+looked around and across the track toward the swamp meadow, and
+whined.
+
+Ruth went back to him and put both arms about the noble fellow's neck.
+"Come, Reno," she said "Come with me. We will go to find your master
+by and by."
+
+She started for the cars again, with one hand on the dog's neck. He
+trotted meekly beside her with head hanging. At the open baggage-car
+door one of the brakemen lifted her in.
+
+"Come, Reno! Come up, sir!" she said, and the great mastiff, crouching
+for an instant, sprang into the car.
+
+Even before they were fairly aboard, the train started. They were late
+enough, indeed! But the engineer dared not speed up much for that last
+mile of the lap to Cheslow. There might be something ahead on the
+track.
+
+"You get out at Cheslow; don't you Miss?" asked the conductor.
+
+"Yes, sir," returned Ruth, sitting down with an air of possession upon
+her old-fashioned cowhide trunk that had already been put out by the
+door ready for discharging at the next station.
+
+"And you were sitting in the last car. Have you a bag there?"
+
+"Yes, sir, a small bag. That is all."
+
+"I'll send it forward to you," he said, not unkindly, and bustled
+away.
+
+And so Ruth Fielding was sitting on her own trunk, with her bag in her
+lap, and the great mastiff lying on the floor of the baggage car
+beside her, when the train slowed down and stopped beside the Cheslow
+platform. She had not expected to arrive just in this way at her
+journey's end.
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+ WHAT HAS HAPPENED?
+
+The baggage-car door was wheeled wide open again and the lamps on the
+platform shone in. There was the forward brakeman to "jump" her down
+from the high doorway, and Reno, with the little red light still hung
+to his collar, bounded after her.
+
+The conductor bustled away to tell the station master about the dog
+with the red light, and of the word scrawled on the cloth which Ruth
+had found wound around his collar. Indeed, Ruth herself was very
+anxious and very much excited regarding this mystery; but she was
+anxious, too, about herself. Was Uncle Jabez here to meet her? Or had
+he sent somebody to take her to the Red Mill? He had been informed by
+Miss True Pettis the week before on which train to expect his niece.
+
+Carrying her bag and followed dejectedly by the huge mastiff, Ruth
+started down the long platform. The conductor ran out of the station,
+signalled the train crew with his hand, and lanterns waved the length
+of the train. Panting, with its huge springs squeaking, the locomotive
+started the string of cars. Faster and faster the train moved, and
+before Ruth reached the pent-house roof of the little brick station,
+the tail-lights of the last car had passed her.
+
+A short, bullet-headed old man, with close-cropped, whitish-yellow
+hair, atop of which was a boy's baseball cap, his face smoothly shaven
+and deeply lined, and the stain of tobacco at either corner of his
+mouth, was standing on the platform. He was not a nice looking old man
+at all, he was dressed in shabby and patched garments, and his little
+eyes seemed so sly that they were even trying to hide from each other
+on either side of a hawksbill nose.
+
+He began to eye Ruth curiously as the girl approached, and she, seeing
+that he was the only person who gave her any attention, jumped to the
+conclusion that this was Uncle Jabez. The thought shocked her. She
+instinctively feared and disliked this queer looking old man. The lump
+in her throat that would not be swallowed almost choked her again, and
+she winked her eyes fast to keep from crying.
+
+She would, in her fear and disappointment, have passed the old man by
+without speaking had he not stepped in front of her.
+
+"Where d'ye wanter go, Miss?" he whined, looking at her still more
+sharply out of his narrow eyes. "Yeou be a stranger here, eh?"
+
+"Yes, sir," admitted Ruth.
+
+"Where are you goin'?" asked the man again, and Ruth had enough Yankee
+blood in her to answer the query by asking:
+
+"Are you Mr. Jabez Potter?"
+
+"Me Jabez Potter? Why, ef I was Jabe Potter I'd be owing myself money,
+that's what I'd be doin'. You warn't never lookin' for Jabe Potter?"
+
+Much relieved, Ruth admitted the fact frankly. "He is my uncle, sir,"
+she said. "I am going to live at the Red Mill."
+
+The strange old man puckered up his lips into a whistle, and shook his
+head, eyeing her all the time so slily that Ruth was more and more
+thankful that he had not proven to be Uncle Jabez.
+
+"Do you know Mr. Potter?" she asked, undecided what to do.
+
+"Do I know Jabe Potter?" repeated the man. "Well, I don't know much
+good of him, I assure ye! I worked for him onct, I did. And I tell ye
+he owes me money yet. You ax him if he don't owe Jasper Parloe money--
+you jest ax him!"
+
+He began to get excited and did not seem at all inclined to step out
+of Ruth's path. But just then somebody spoke to her and she turned to
+see the station master and two or three other men with him.
+
+"This is the girl Mr. Mason spoke to me about, isn't it?" the railroad
+man asked. "The conductor of the express, I mean. He said the dog
+would mind you."
+
+"He seems to like me," she replied, turning to the mastiff that had
+stood all this time close to her.
+
+"That is Tom Cameron's dog all right," said one of the other men. "And
+that lantern is off his motorcycle, I bet anything! He went through
+town about dark on that contraption, and I shouldn't wonder if he's
+got a tumble."
+
+Ruth showed the station master, whose name was Curtis, the bit of
+handkerchief with the appeal for help traced upon it.
+
+"That is blood," she said. "You see it's blood, don't you? Can't
+somebody take Reno and hunt for him? He must be very badly hurt."
+
+"Mason said he expected it was nothing but some fool joke of the boys.
+But it doesn't look like a joke to me," Mr. Curtis said, gravely.
+"Come, Parloe, you know that patch of woods well enough, over beyond
+the swamp and Hiram Jennings' big field. Isn't there a steep and rocky
+road down there, that shoots off the Osago Lake pike?"
+
+"The Wilkins Corners road--yep," said the old man, snappishly.
+
+"Then, can't you take the dog and see if you can find young Tom?"
+
+"Who's going to pay me for it?" snarled Jasper Parloe. "I ain't got no
+love for them Camerons. This here Tom is as sassy a boy as there is in
+this county."
+
+"But he may be seriously hurt," said Ruth, looking angrily at Jasper
+Parloe.
+
+"'Tain't nothin' to me--no more than your goin' out ter live with
+Jabe Potter ain't nothin' to me," responded the old man, with an ugly
+grin.
+
+"You're a pretty fellow, you are, Jasper!" exclaimed Mr. Curtis, and
+turned his back upon the fellow. "I can't leave the station now--Ah!
+here's Doctor Davison. He'll know what to do."
+
+Doctor Davison came forward and put his hand upon Ruth's shoulder most
+kindly. "What is all this?" he asked. "And there is the mastiff. They
+tell me you are a dog tamer, Miss Fielding."
+
+He listened very closely to what Mr. Curtis had to say, and looked,
+too, at the smeared handkerchief.
+
+"The dog can find him--no doubt of that. Come, boys, get some
+lanterns and we'll go right along to the Wilkins Corners road and
+search it." Then to Ruth he said: "You are a brave girl, sure enough."
+
+But when the party was ready to start, half a dozen strong, with
+Parloe trailing on behind, and with lanterns and a stretcher, Reno
+would not budge. The man called him, but he looked up at Ruth and did
+not move from her side.
+
+"I declare for't," exclaimed one man. "That girl will have to go with
+us, Doctor Davison. You see what the dog means to do."
+
+Ruth spoke to the mastiff, commanded him to leave her and find "Tom."
+But although the dog looked at her intelligently enough, and barked
+his response--a deep, sudden, explosive bark--he refused to start
+without her.
+
+"It's a long way for the girl," objected Doctor Davison. "Besides, she
+is waiting to meet her uncle."
+
+"I am not tired," she told him, quickly. "Remember I've been sitting
+all the afternoon. And perhaps every minute is precious. We don't know
+how badly the dog's master may be hurt. I'll go. I'm sure I can keep
+up with you."
+
+Reno seemed to understand her words perfectly, and uttered another
+short, sharp bark.
+
+"Let us go, then," said Doctor Davison, hurriedly.
+
+So the men picked up their lanterns and the stretcher again. They
+crossed the tracks and came to a street that soon became a country
+road. Cheslow did not spread itself very far in this direction. Doctor
+Davison explained to Ruth that the settlement had begun to grow in the
+parts beyond the railroad and that all this side of the tracks was
+considered the old part of the town.
+
+The street lights were soon behind them and they depended entirely
+upon the lanterns the men carried. Ruth could see very little of the
+houses they passed; but at one spot--although it was on the other
+side of the road--there were two green lanterns, one on either side
+of an arched gate, and there seemed to be a rather large, but gloomy,
+house behind the hedge before which these lanterns burned.
+
+"You will always know my house," Doctor Davison said, softly, and
+still retaining her hand, "by its green eyes."
+
+So Ruth knew she had passed his home, to which he had so kindly
+invited her. And that made her think for a moment about Uncle Jabez
+and Aunt Alvirah. Would she find somebody waiting to take her to the
+Red Mill when she got back to the station?
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+ THE GATE OF THE GREEN EYES
+
+It was a dark lane, beneath overhanging oaks, that met and intertwined
+their branches from either side--this was the Wilkins Corners road.
+And it was very steep and stony--up hill and down dale--with deep
+ruts in places and other spots where the Spring rains had washed out
+the gravel and sand and left exposed the very foundations of the
+world.
+
+It seemed as though no bicyclist, or motor-cyclist would have chosen
+this road to travel after dark. Yet there was a narrow path at the
+side--just wide enough for Ruth and Doctor Davison to walk abreast,
+and Reno to trot by the girl's side which seemed pretty smooth.
+
+"We don't want to go by the spot, Doctor," said one of the men walking
+ahead with the lights. "Don't the dog show no signs of looking for
+Tom?"
+
+"Where's Tom, Reno? Where's Tom?" asked Ruth, earnestly, believing
+that the dog would recognize his master's name.
+
+The mastiff raised his muzzle and barked sharply again, but trotted
+onward.
+
+"He might have fallen down any of these gullies, and we'd miss him,
+it's so dark," observed the previous speaker.
+
+"I don't believe the dog will miss the place," responded Doctor
+Davison.
+
+Just then Reno leaped forward with a long-drawn whine. Ruth hurried
+with him, leaving the doctor to come on in the rear. Reno took the
+lead and the girl tried to keep pace with him.
+
+It was not for many yards. Reno stopped at the brink of a steep bank
+beside the road. This bank fell away into the darkness, but through
+the trees, in the far distance, the girl could see several twinkling
+lights in a row. She knew that they were on the railroad, and that she
+was looking across the great swamp-meadow.
+
+"Hullo!" shouted one man, loudly. "Something down there, old fellow?"
+
+Reno answered with a short bark and began to scramble down the rough
+bank.
+
+"Here's where somebody has gone down ahead of him," cried another of
+the searchers, holding his own lantern close to the ground. "See how
+the bank's all torn up? Bet his wheel hit that stone yonder in the
+dusk and threw him, wheel and all, into this gulley."
+
+"Wait here, child," ordered Doctor Davison, quickly. "If he is in bad
+shape, boys, call me and I'll come down. Lift him carefully--"
+
+"He's here, sir!" cried the first man to descend.
+
+And then Reno lifted up his voice in a mournful howl.
+
+"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" murmured Ruth. "I am afraid he is badly hurt."
+
+"Come, come!" returned Doctor Davison. "Be a brave girl now. If he is
+badly hurt he'll need us both to keep our wits about us, you know."
+
+"Ye needn't fret none, leetle gal," said Jasper Parloe's voice, behind
+her. "Ye couldn't kill that there Cameron boy, I tell ye! He is as
+sassy a young'un as there is in this county."
+
+Doctor Davison turned as though to say something sharp to the mean old
+man; but just then the men below shouted up to him:
+
+"He's hit his head and his arm's twisted under him, Doctor. He isn't
+conscious, but doesn't seem much hurt otherwise."
+
+"Can you bring him up?" queried the physician.
+
+"That's what we mean to do," was the reply.
+
+Ruth waited beside the old doctor, not without some apprehension. How
+would this Tom Cameron look? What kind of a boy was he? According to
+Jasper Parloe he was a very bad boy, indeed. She had heard that he was
+the son of a rich man. While the men were bringing the senseless body
+up the steep bank her mind ran riot with the possibilities that lay in
+store for her because of this accident to the dry-goods merchant's
+son.
+
+And now the bearers were at the top of the bank, and she could see the
+limp form borne by them--a man holding the body under the arms and
+another by his feet. But, altogether, it looked really as though they
+carried a limp sack between them.
+
+"Fust time I ever see that boy still," murmured Jasper Parloe.
+
+"Cracky! He's pale; ain't he?" said another man.
+
+Doctor Davison dropped on one knee beside the body as they laid it
+down. The lanterns were drawn together that their combined light might
+illuminate the spot. Ruth saw that the figure was that of a youth not
+much older than herself--lean, long limbed, well dressed, and with a
+face that, had it not been so pale, she would have thought very nice
+looking indeed.
+
+"Poor lad!" Ruth heard the physician murmur. "He has had a hard fall--
+and that's a nasty knock on his head."
+
+The wound was upon the side of his head above the left ear and was now
+all clotted with blood. It was from this wound, in some moment of
+consciousness, that he had traced the word "Help" on his torn
+handkerchief, and fastened the latter, with the lamp of his
+motorcycle, to the dog's collar.
+
+Here was the machine, bent and twisted enough, brought up the bank by
+two of the men.
+
+"Dunno what you can do for the boy, Doctor," said one of them; "but it
+looks to me as though this contraption warn't scurcely wuth savin'."
+
+"Oh, we'll bring the boy around all right," said Doctor Davison, who
+had felt Tom Cameron's pulse and now rose quickly. "Lift him carefully
+upon the stretcher. We will get him into bed before I do a thing to
+him. He's best as he is while we are moving him."
+
+"It'll be a mighty long way to his house," grumbled one of the men.
+
+"I believe yeou!" rejoined Jasper Parloe. "Three miles beyond Jabe
+Potter's mill."
+
+"Pshaw!" exclaimed Doctor Davison, in his soft voice. "You know we'll
+not take him so far. My house is near enough. Surely you can carry him
+there."
+
+"If you say the word, Doctor," said the fellow, more cheerfully, while
+old Parloe grunted.
+
+They were more than half an hour in getting to the turn in the main
+road where she could observe the two green lights before the doctor's
+house. There the men put the stretcher down for a moment. Jasper
+Parloe grumblingly took his turn at carrying one end.
+
+"I never did see the use of boys, noway," he growled. "They's only an
+aggravation and vexation of speret. And this here one is the
+aggravatingest and vexationingest of any I ever see."
+
+"Don't be too hard on the boy, Jasper," said Doctor Davison, passing
+on ahead, so as to reach his house first.
+
+Ruth remained behind, for the old gentleman walked too fast for her.
+Before the men picked up the stretcher again there was a movement and
+a murmur from the injured boy.
+
+"Hullo!" said one of the men. "He's a-talkin', ain't he?"
+
+"Jest mutterin'," said Parloe, who was at Tom's head. "'Tain't nothin'"
+
+But Ruth heard the murmur of the unconscious boy, and the words
+startled her. They were:
+
+"It was Jabe Potter--he did it! It was Jabe Potter--he did it!"
+
+What did they mean? Or, was there no meaning at all to the muttering
+of the wounded boy? Ruth saw that Parloe was looking at her in his sly
+and disagreeable way, and she knew that he, too, had heard the words.
+
+"It was Jabe Potter--he did it!" Was it an accusation referring to
+the boy's present plight? And how could her Uncle Jabez--the relative
+she had not as yet seen--be the cause of Tom Cameron's injury? The
+spot where the boy was hurt must have been five miles from the Red
+Mill, and not even on the Osago Lake turnpike, on which highway she
+had been given to understand the Red Mill stood.
+
+Not many moments more and the little procession was at the gateway, on
+either side of which burned the two green lamps.
+
+Jasper Parloe, who had been relieved, shuffled off into the darkness.
+Reno after one pleading look into the face of the hesitating Ruth,
+followed the stretcher on which his master lay, in at the gate.
+
+And Ruth Fielding, beginning again to feel most embarrassed and
+forsaken, was left alone where the two green eyes winked in the warm,
+moist darkness of the Spring night.
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+ THE GIRL IN THE AUTOMOBILE
+
+The men who had gone in with the unconscious boy and the stretcher
+hung about the doctor's door, which was some yards from the gateway.
+Everybody seemed to have forgotten the girl, a stranger in Cheslow,
+and for the first day of her life away from kind and indulgent
+friends.
+
+It was only ten minutes walk to the railroad station, and Ruth
+remembered that it was a straight road. She arrived in the waiting
+room safely enough. Sam Curtis, the station master, descried her
+immediately and came out of his office with her bag.
+
+"Well, and what happened? Is that boy really hurt?" he asked.
+
+"He has a broken arm and his head is cut. I do not know how seriously,
+for Doctor Davison had not finished examining him when I--I came
+away," she replied, bravely enough, and hiding the fact that she had
+been overlooked.
+
+"They took him to the doctor's house, did they?" asked Sam.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Ruth. "But--"
+
+"Mr. Curtis, has there been anybody here for me?"
+
+"For you, Miss?" the station master returned, somewhat surprised it
+seemed.
+
+"Yes, sir. Anybody from Red Mill?"
+
+Curtis smote one fist into his other palm, exclaiming:
+
+"You don't mean to say that you was what Jabe Potter was after?"
+
+"Mr. Jabez Potter, who keeps the Red Mill, is my uncle," Ruth
+observed, with dignity.
+
+"My goodness gracious me, Miss! He was here long before your train was
+due. He's kind of short in his speech, Miss. And he asked me if there
+was anything here for him, and I told him no. And he stumped out again
+without another word. Why, I thought he was looking for an express
+package, or freight. Never had an idea he was expectin' a niece!"
+
+Ruth still looked at him earnestly. The man did not suspect, by her
+appearance, how hard a time she was having to keep the tears from
+overrunning those calm, gray eyes.
+
+"And you expected to go out to the Red Mill to-night, Miss?" he
+continued. "They're country folk out there and they'd all be abed
+before you could get there, even if you took a carriage."
+
+"I don't know that I have enough to pay for carriage hire," Ruth said,
+softly. "Is--is there any place I can stop over night in the village?
+Then I can walk out in the morning."
+
+"Why--there's a hotel. But a young girl like you--You'll excuse me,
+Miss. You're young to be traveling alone."
+
+"Perhaps I haven't money enough to pay for a lodging there?" suggested
+Ruth. "I have a dollar. It was given me to spend as I liked on the
+way. But Miss True gave me such a big box of luncheon that I did not
+want anything."
+
+"A dollar wouldn't go far at the Brick Hotel," murmured the station
+agent. He still stared at her, stroking his lean, shaven jaw. Finally
+he burst out with: "I tell you! We'll go home and see what my wife
+says."
+
+At the moment the station began to jar with the thunder of a coming
+train and Ruth could not make herself heard in reply to his proposal.
+Besides, Sam Curtis hurried out on the platform. Nor was Ruth ready to
+assert her independence and refuse any kind of help the station master
+might offer. So she sat down patiently and waited for him.
+
+There were one or two passengers only to disembark from this train and
+they went away from the station without even coming into the waiting
+room. Then Curtis came back, putting out the lights and locking his
+ticket office. The baggage room was already locked and Ruth's old
+trunk was in it.
+
+"Come on now, girl--What's your name?" asked Curtis.
+
+"Ruth Fielding."
+
+"Just so! Well, it's only a step to our house and wife will have
+supper waiting. And there's nobody else there save Mercy."
+
+Ruth was a little curious about "Mercy"--whether it referred to
+abounding grace, or was a person's name. But she asked no questions as
+they came out of the railroad station and Sam Curtis locked the door.
+
+They did not cross the tracks this time, but went into the new part of
+the town. Turning a corner very soon as they walked up what Curtis
+said was Market Street, they reached, on a narrow side street, a
+little, warm-looking cottage, from almost all the lower windows of
+which the lamplight shone cheerfully. There was a garden beside it,
+with a big grape arbor arranged like a summer-house with rustic chairs
+and a table. The light shining on the side porch revealed the arbor to
+Ruth's quick eyes.
+
+When they stepped upon this porch Ruth heard a very shrill and not at
+all pleasant voice saying--very rapidly, and over and over again: "I
+don't want to! I don't want to! I don't want to!" It might have been a
+parrot, or some other ill-natured talking bird; only Ruth saw nothing
+of the feathered conversationalist when Sam opened the door and
+ushered her in.
+
+"Here we are, wife!" he exclaimed, cheerfully. "And how's Mercy?"
+
+The reiterated declaration had stopped instantly. A comely, kind-faced
+woman with snow-white hair, came forward. Ruth saw that she was some
+years younger than Curtis, and he was not yet forty. It was not Father
+Time that had powdered Mrs. Curtis' head so thickly.
+
+"Mercy is--Why, who's this?" she asked espying Ruth. "One of the
+girls come in to see her?"
+
+Instantly the same whining, shrill voice began:
+
+"I don't want her to see me! They come to stare at me! I hate 'em all!
+All girls do is to run and jump and play tag and ring-around-a-rosy
+and run errands, and dance! I hate 'em!"
+
+This was said very, very fast--almost chattered; and it sounded so
+ill-natured, so impatient, so altogether mean and hateful, that Ruth
+fell back a step, almost afraid to enter the pleasant room. But then
+she saw the white-haired lady's face, and it was so grieved, yet
+looked such a warm welcome to her, that she took heart and stepped
+farther in, so that Sam Curtis could shut the door.
+
+The father appeared to pay no attention to the fault-finding, shrill
+declamation of the unhappy voice. He said, in explanation, to his
+wife:
+
+"This is Ruth Fielding. She has come a long way by train to-day,
+expecting to meet her uncle, old Jabe Potter of the Red Mill. And you
+know how funny Jabe is, wife? He came before the train, and did not
+wait, but drove right away with his mules and so there was nobody here
+to meet Ruthie. She's marooned here till the morning, you see."
+
+"Then she shall stay with us to-night," declared Mrs. Curtis, quickly.
+
+"I don't want her to stay here to-night!" ejaculated the same shrill
+voice.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Curtis paid no attention to what was said by this
+mysterious third party. Ruth, coming farther into the room, found that
+it was large and pleasant. There was a comfortable look about it all.
+The supper table was set and the door was opened into the warm
+kitchen, from which delicious odors of tea and toast with some warm
+dish of meat, were wafted in. But the shrill and complaining voice had
+not come from the next room.
+
+In the other corner beside the stove, yet not too near it, stood a
+small canopy bed with the pretty chintz curtains drawn all about it.
+Beside it stood a wheel-chair such as Ruth knew was used by invalids
+who could not walk. It was a tiny chair, too, and it and the small bed
+went together. But of the occupant of either she saw not a sign.
+
+"Supper will be ready just as soon as our guest has a chance to remove
+the traces of travel, Sam," said Mrs. Curtis, briskly. "Come with me,
+Ruth."
+
+When they returned from the pleasant little bed-chamber which the
+good-hearted lady told Ruth was to be her own for that night, they
+heard voices in the sitting room--the voice of Mr. Curtis and the
+querulous one. But it was not so sharp and strained as it seemed
+before. However, on opening the door, Mr. Curtis was revealed sitting
+alone and there was no sign of the owner of the sharp voice, which
+Ruth supposed must belong to the invalid.
+
+"Mercy has had her supper; hasn't she, wife?" said the station master
+as he drew his chair to the table and motioned Ruth to the extra place
+Mrs. Curtis had set.
+
+The woman nodded and went briskly about putting the supper on the
+table. While they ate Mr. Curtis told about Reno stopping the train,
+and of the search for and recovery of the injured Cameron boy. All the
+time Ruth, who sat sideways to the canopied bed, realized that the
+curtains at the foot were drawn apart just a crack and that two very
+bright, pin-point eyes were watching her. So interested did these eyes
+become as the story progressed, and Ruth answered questions, that more
+of Mercy Curtis' face was revealed--a sharp, worn little face, with a
+peaked chin and pale, thin cheeks.
+
+Ruth was very tired when supper was ended and the kind Mrs. Curtis
+suggested that she go to bed and obtain a good night's rest if she was
+to walk to the Red Mill in the morning. But even when she bade her
+entertainers good-night she did not see the child in the canopy bed
+and she felt diffident about asking Mrs. Curtis about her. The young
+traveler slept soundly--almost from the moment her head touched the
+pillow. Yet her last thought was of Uncle Jabez. He had been in town
+some time before the train on which she arrived was due and had driven
+away from the station with his mules, Mr. Curtis said. Had he driven
+over that dark and dangerous road on which Tom Cameron met with his
+accident, and had he run down the injured boy, or forced him over the
+bank of the deep gully where they had found Tom lying unconscious?
+
+"It was Jabe Potter--he did it," the injured lad had murmured, and
+these words were woven in the pattern of Ruth's dreams all night.
+
+The little cottage was astir early and Ruth was no laggard. She came
+down to breakfast while the sun was just peeping above the house-tops
+and as she entered the sitting room she found an occupant at last in
+the little wheel-chair. It was the sharp, pale little face that
+confronted her above the warm wrapper and the rug that covered the
+lower part of the child's body; for child Mercy Curtis was, and little
+older than Ruth herself, although her face seemed so old.
+
+To Ruth's surprise the first greeting of the invalid was a most
+ill-natured one. She made a very unpleasant face at the visitor, ran
+out her tongue, and then said, in her shrill, discordant voice:
+
+"I don't like you at all--I tell you that, Miss!"
+
+"I am sorry you do not like me," replied Ruth, gently. "I think I
+should like you if you'd let me."
+
+"Yah!" ejaculated the very unpleasant, but much to be pitied invalid.
+
+The mother and father ignored all this ill-nature on the part of the
+lame girl and were as kind and friendly with their visitor as they had
+been on the previous evening. Once during breakfast time (Mercy took
+hers from a tray that was fastened to her chair before her) the child
+burst out again, speaking to Ruth. There were eggs on the table and,
+pointing to the golden-brown fried egg that Mrs. Curtis had just
+placed upon Ruth's plate, Mercy snapped:
+
+"Do you know what's the worst wish I'd wish on My Enemy?"
+
+Ruth looked her astonishment and hesitated to reply. But Mercy did not
+expect a reply, for she continued quickly:
+
+"I'd wish My Enemy to have to eat every morning for breakfast two soft
+fried eggs with his best clothes on--that's what I'd wish!"
+
+And this is every word she would say to the visitor while Ruth
+remained. But Mr. Curtis bade Ruth good-bye very kindly when he
+hurried away to the station, and Mrs. Curtis urged her to come and see
+them whenever she came to town after getting settled at the Red Mill.
+
+It was a fresh and lovely morning, although to the weather-wise the
+haze in the West foredoomed the end of the day to disaster. Ruth felt
+more cheerful as she crossed the railroad tracks and struck into the
+same street she had followed with the searching party the evening
+before. She could not mistake Doctor Davison's house when she passed
+it, and there was a fine big automobile standing before the gate where
+the two green lanterns were. But there was nobody in the car, nor did
+she see anybody about the doctor's house.
+
+Beyond the doctor's abode the houses were far apart--farther and
+farther apart as she trudged on. Nobody noticed or spoke to the girl
+as she went on with her small bag--the bag that grew heavy, despite
+its smallness, as she progressed. And so she traveled two miles, or
+more, along the pleasant road. Then she heard the purring of an
+automobile behind her--the first vehicle that she had seen since
+leaving town.
+
+It was the big gray car that had been standing before Doctor Davison's
+house when she had passed, and Ruth would have known the girl who sat
+at the steering wheel and was driving the car alone, even had Reno,
+the big mastiff, not sat in great dignity on the seat beside her. For
+no girl could look so much like Tom Cameron without being Tom
+Cameron's sister.
+
+And the girl, the moment she saw Ruth on the road, retarded the speed
+of the machine. Reno, too, lost all semblance of dignity and would not
+wait for the car to completely stop before bounding into the road and
+coming to caress her hand.
+
+"I know who you are!" cried the girl in the automobile. "You are Ruth
+Fielding."
+
+She was a brilliant, black-eyed, vivacious girl, perhaps a year or
+more older than Ruth, and really handsome, having her brother's olive
+complexion with plenty of color in cheeks and lips. And that her
+nature was impulsive and frank there could be no doubt, for she
+immediately leaped out of the automobile, when it had stopped, and ran
+to embrace Ruth.
+
+"Thank you! thank you!" she cried. "Doctor Davison has told us all
+about you--and how brave you are! And see how fond Reno is of you! He
+knows who found his master; don't you, Reno?"
+
+"Oh, dear me," said Ruth, breathlessly, "Doctor Davison has been too
+kind. I did nothing at all toward finding your brother--I suppose he
+is your brother, Miss?"
+
+"How dare you 'Miss' me?" demanded the other girl, hugging her again.
+"You're a dear; I knew you must be! And I was running back and
+intended to stop at the Red Mill to see you. I took father to town
+this morning, as he had to take an early train to the city, and we
+wished to see Tom again."
+
+"He--he isn't badly hurt, then--your brother, I mean?" said Ruth,
+timidly.
+
+"He is going to stay at the doctor's to-day, and then he can come
+home. But he will carry his arm in a sling for a while, although no
+bone was broken, after all. His head is badly cut, but his hair will
+hide that. Poor Tom! he is always falling down, or getting bumped, or
+something. And he's just as reckless as he can be. Father says he is
+not to be trusted with the car as much as I am."
+
+"How--how did he come to fall over that bank?" asked Ruth, anxiously.
+
+"Why--it was dark, I suppose. That was the way of it. I don't know as
+he really told me what made him do such a foolish thing. And wasn't it
+lucky Reno was along with him?" cried Tom's sister.
+
+"Now, I see you remained in town over night. They thought somebody had
+come for yon and taken you out to the mill. Is Jabez Potter really
+your uncle?"
+
+"Yes. He was my mother's uncle. And I have no other relative."
+
+"Well, dear, I am more than sorry for you," declared the girl from the
+automobile. "And now we will climb right in and I'll take you along to
+the mill."
+
+But whether she was sorry for Ruth Fielding's friendlessness, or sorry
+because she was related to Jabez Potter, the young traveler could not
+decide.
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+ THE RED MILL
+
+"Now, my name's Helen, and you are Ruth," declared Miss Cameron, when
+she had carefully started the car once more. "We are going to be the
+very best of friends, and we might as well begin by telling each other
+all about ourselves. Tom and I are twins and he is an awful tease!
+But, then, boys are. He is a good brother generally. We live in the
+first yellow house on the right--up among the trees--beyond Mr.
+Potter's mill--near enough so that we can run back and forth and see
+each other just lots."
+
+Ruth found herself warmly drawn toward this vivacious miss. Nor was
+she less frank in giving information about herself, her old home, in
+Darrowtown, that she still wore black for her father, and that she had
+been sent by her friends to Uncle Jabez because he was supposed to be
+better able to take care of and educate her. Helen listened very
+earnestly to the tale, but she shook her head at the end of it.
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I don't want to hurt your feelings, Ruthie.
+But Jabez Potter isn't liked very well by people in general, although
+I guess he is a good miller. He is stingy--"
+
+"I must say it. He isn't given to kind actions, and I am surprised that
+he should have agreed to take and educate you. Of course, he didn't
+have to."
+
+"I don't suppose he did have to," Ruth said, slowly. "And it wasn't as
+though I couldn't have remained in Darrowtown. But Miss True Pettis--"
+
+"Miss True?" repeated Helen, curiously.
+
+"Short for Truthful. Her name is Rechelsea Truthful Tomlinson Pettis
+and she is the dearest little old spinster lady--much nicer than her
+name."
+
+"Well!" ejaculated the amazed Helen.
+
+"Miss True isn't rich. Indeed, she is very poor. So are Patsy Hope's
+folks--Patsy is really Patricia, but that's too long for her. And all
+the other folks that knew me about Darrowtown had a hard time to get
+along, and most of them had plenty of children without taking another
+that wasn't any kin to them," concluded Ruth, who was worldly wise in
+some things, and had seen the harder side of life since she had opened
+her eyes upon this world.
+
+"But your uncle is said to be a regular miser," declared Helen,
+earnestly. "And he is so gruff and grim! Didn't your friends know
+him?"
+
+"I guess they never saw him, or heard much about him," said Ruth,
+slowly. "I'm sure I never did myself."
+
+"But don't you be afraid," said the other, warmly. "If he isn't good
+to you there are friends enough here to look out for you. I know
+Doctor Davison thinks you are very brave, and Daddy will do anything
+for you that Tom and I ask him to."
+
+"I am quite sure I shall get on nicely with Uncle Jabez," she said.
+"And then, there is Aunt Alvirah."
+
+"Oh, yes. There is an old lady who keeps house for Mr. Potter. And she
+seems kind enough, too. But she acts afraid of Mr. Potter. I don't
+blame her, he is so grim."
+
+The automobile, wheeling so smoothly over the hard pike, just then was
+mounting a little hill. They came over the summit of this and there,
+lying before them, was the beautiful slope of farming country down to
+the very bank of the Lumano River. Fenced fields, tilled and untilled,
+checkered the slope, with here and there a white farmhouse with its
+group of outbuildings. There was no hamlet in sight, merely scattered
+farms. The river, swollen and yellow with the Spring rains, swept upon
+its bosom fence rails, hen-coops, and other flotsam of a Spring flood.
+Yonder, at a crossing, part of the bridge had been carried away.
+
+"If the dam at Minturn goes, we shall be flooded all through this low
+land again," Helen Cameron explained. "I remember seeing this valley
+covered with water once during the Spring. But we live on the shoulder
+of Mount Burgoyne, and you see, even the mill sets on quite high
+ground."
+
+Ruth's eyes had already seen and lingered upon the mill. It was a
+rambling structure, the great, splashing millwheel at the far end, the
+long warehouse in the middle, and the dwelling attached to the other
+end. There were barns, corn-cribs and other outbuildings as well, and
+some little tillable land connected with the mill; and all the
+buildings were vividly painted with red mineral paint, trimmed with
+white. So bright and sparkling was the paint that it seemed to have
+been put on over night.
+
+"Mr. Potter is considered a good miller," said Helen, again; "and he
+does not neglect his property. He is not miserly in that way. There
+isn't a picket off the fence, or a hinge loose anywhere. He isn't at
+all what you consider a miser must be and look like; yet he is always
+hoarding money and never spends any. But indeed I do not tell you this
+to trouble you, Ruthie. I want you to believe, my dear, that if you
+can't stand it at Mr. Potter's you can stand it at Mr. Cameron's--and
+you'll be welcome there.
+
+"Our mother is dead. We talk of her a good deal, just as though she
+were living and had gone on a little journey somewhere, and we should
+see her again soon. God took her when Tom and I were only a few weeks
+old; but Daddy has made himself our playfellow and dear, dear friend;
+and there has always been Nurse Babette and Mrs. Murchiston--at
+least, Mrs. Murchiston has been with us since we can remember. But
+what Daddy says is law, and he said this morning that he'd like to
+have a girl like you come to our house to be company for me. It gets
+lonely for me sometimes, you see, for Tom doesn't want to play with
+girls much, now he is so big. Perhaps next fall I'll go away to
+boarding school--won't that be fun?"
+
+"It will be fun for you, I hope, Helen," said Ruth, with rather a
+wistful smile. "I don't know where I shall go to school."
+
+"There is your uncle now!" exclaimed Miss Cameron. "See that man in
+the old dusty suit?"
+
+Ruth had already seen the tall, stoop-shouldered figure, who looked as
+though he had been powdered with flour, coming down the short path
+from one of the open doors of the mill to the road, where a little,
+one horse wagon stood. He bore a bag of meal or flour on his shoulder
+which he pitched into the wagon. The man on the seat was speaking as
+the automobile came to a stop immediately behind the wagon.
+
+"Jefers pelters! Ef there's one thing yeou know how to do, it's to
+take toll, Jabe. Let the flour be poor, or good, there's little enough
+of it comes back to the man that raises the wheat."
+
+"You don't have to bring your wheat here, Jasper Parloe," said the
+miller, in a strong, harsh voice. "There is no law compels ye."
+
+"Yah!" snarled old Parloe. "We all know ye, Jabe Potter. We know what
+ye be." Potter turned away. He had not noticed the two girls in the
+automobile. But now Jasper Parloe saw them. "Ho!" he cried, "here's
+somebody else that will l'arn ter know ye, too. Didn't know you was
+ter hev comp'ny; did ye, Jabe? Here's yer niece, Jabe, come ter live
+on ye an' be an expense to ye," and so, chuckling and screwing up his
+mean, sly face, Parloe drove on, leaving the miller standing with arms
+akimbo, and staring at Ruth, who was slowly alighting from the
+automobile with her bag.
+
+Helen squeezed her hand tightly as she got out "Don't forget that we
+are your friends, Ruthie," she whispered. "I'm coming by again this
+afternoon when I drive over to the station for father. If--if
+anything happens you be out here--now remember!"
+
+What could possibly happen to her, Ruth could not imagine. She was not
+really afraid of Uncle Jabez. She walked directly to him, as he stood
+there, staring gloomily, in front of the Red Mill. He was not only
+tall and stoop-shouldered, and very dusty; but his dusty eyebrows
+almost met over his light blue eyes. He was lantern-jawed, and it did
+seem as though his dry, shaven lips had never in all his life wrinkled
+into a smile. His throat was wrinkled and scraggy and his head was
+plainly very bald on top, for the miller's cap he wore did not
+entirely cover the bald spot.
+
+"I am Ruth Fielding, from Darrowtown," she said, in a voice that she
+controlled well. "I have come to--to live with you, Uncle Jabez."
+
+"Where was you last night?" demanded the miller, without so much as
+returning her greeting. "Was you with them Camerons?"
+
+"I stayed all night with the station master," she said, in
+explanation.
+
+"What time did you get to the station?"
+
+Ruth told him. Never once did his voice change or his grim look relax.
+
+"I mistook the time of the train," he said, without expressing any
+sorrow.
+
+"I--I hope you will be glad to have me come," the said. "Miss True--"
+
+"You mean that old maid that wrote to me?" he asked, harshly.
+
+"Miss True Pettis. She said she thought you would like to have me here
+as we were so near related."
+
+"Not so near related as some," was all he said in reply to this. After
+a moment, he added: "You can go along to the house yonder. Aunt Alviry
+will show you what to do."
+
+Ruth could not have said another word just then without breaking down
+and weeping, so she only nodded and turned to walk up a path toward
+the house door.
+
+"One thing," urged the old man, before she had gone far. She turned to
+look at him and he continued: "One thing I want you to understand, if
+you live here you have got to work. I don't like no laggards around
+me."
+
+She could only nod again, for her heart seemed to be right in her
+throat, and the sting of the tears she wanted to shed, but could not,
+almost blinded her as she went on slowly to the house door.
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+ AUNT ALVIRAH'S BACK AND BONES
+
+Ruth came to the kitchen door and found that the lower half was
+closed; but she could see over the upper panel that had been flung
+wide to let in the sweet Spring air and sunlight. A little old woman
+was stooping to brush the rag carpet with a whisk broom and dustpan,
+and as she hobbled around the big stove and around the table, which
+was already set neatly for dinner, she was crooning to herself:
+
+"Oh, my back and oh, my bones! Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"
+
+She was a very neat-looking old lady, with a kerchief crossed on her
+breast in the style of the old-fashioned Quakeresses. She was not much
+taller than Ruth herself, for when she stood upright--or as upright
+as she could stand--her eyes were just about on a level with Ruth's
+eyes looking in over the half door.
+
+But the face of the old lady seemed, to the lonely, tear-filled girl,
+almost the gentlest, sweetest face she had ever seen, as it slowly
+smiled upon her. Aunt Alviry's welcome was like the daybreak.
+
+"Bless us and save us!" ejaculated she, rising upright by degrees with
+her hand upon the back she had been apostrophizing. "If here isn't a
+pretty little creeter come to see her Aunt Alviry. How-de-do, girl?"
+
+Ruth had set down her bag. Now she opened the door and stepped in. The
+smile of the old lady broke down every bit of fortitude the girl had
+left and she walked directly into Aunt Alviry's arms and burst into
+tears.
+
+"There! there! Deary, deary me!" murmured the little old lady, patting
+her shoulder. "Somebody has been treating you badly, I know. And
+you've come right to your Aunt Alviry for comfort. And you've come to
+the right place, my pretty girl, for I've got tons of comfort for ye."
+
+She found a chair and lowered herself into it, not without the formula
+which Ruth had heard before, of "Oh, my back and oh, my bones!" Ruth
+dropped on her knees before her, hid her face in the old lady's lap,
+and had her cry out. Meanwhile Aunt Alvirah seemed to have taken in
+several things about her guest that were significant. She touched the
+stuff of which Ruth's gown was made, and nodded; even the black
+hair-ribbon did not go unnoticed.
+
+"Now," said Ruth, rising after a few moments, "I guess that's all of
+that foolishness. I--I don't usually cry, Aunt Alvirah."
+
+"Pshaw, now! I could tell that," said the old lady, comfortably.
+
+"I am going right to work to help you," said the girl. "I can stoop
+better than you can."
+
+"I expect you can, you pretty creeter," admitted the old lady.
+
+Ruth had already taken the brush and pan and was at work upon the
+floor. The lady said: "You ain't familiar to me, child. You've lost
+some folks lately, I see. Do you live 'round here?"
+
+The little girl stopped and looked up at her in surprise. "Why, don't
+you know about it?" she cried.
+
+"Know about what, child?"
+
+"Didn't you know I had come here to live with you?"
+
+"Bless us and save us!" ejaculated Aunt Alvirah. "How did that
+happen?"
+
+"Didn't my uncle tell you?" cried Ruth, much more surprised than the
+old lady.
+
+"Who's your uncle, child?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Potter--Uncle Jabez."
+
+So astonished did the old lady appear to be that she started from her
+chair and her ejaculation was changed to a moan of pain as she
+murmured her old formula: "Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"
+
+"Jabez ain't said a word to me about it. Why should he take anybody to
+help me? Is he struck with the fear o' his latter end?"
+
+She said this in no cross-grained way, but because she was so amazed.
+She likewise stared harder and harder at her visitor.
+
+"You ain't come from the poor farm, child?" she asked, finally.
+
+The flush upon Ruth's cheek and the expression which came into her
+face told Aunt Alviry that she was wrong there.
+
+"Not that you look like poorhouse breed--not at all. You're too
+pretty dressed and you're too well fed. I know what they be there, for
+I have been there myself. Yes, ma'am! Jabez Potter came after me to
+the poor farm. I was sickly, too. There's them that said he went to
+Doctor Davison first to find out if I was goin' to git well before he
+come arter me; but Jabez ain't never treated me noways but kind. Starn
+he is--by natur and by practice; an' clost he is in money matters.
+But he's been good to an old woman without a home who warn't neither
+kith nor kin to him."
+
+Ruth listened to the first good word she had heard of Uncle Jabez, and
+the speech comforted her somewhat. Perhaps there was something better
+within the rough husk of Uncle Jabez, after all.
+
+"I did not live near here," Ruth said, quietly. "But my papa and mama
+did. I came from Darrowtown."
+
+Aunt Alviry opened wide her bright brown eyes, and still stared in
+wonder.
+
+"My mother's name was Mary Potter, and she was Mr. Potter's niece. So
+he is my great-uncle."
+
+"Bless us and save us!" ejaculated Aunt Alviry, again, shaking her
+head. "I never heard a word of it--never! I 'member Mary Potter, and
+a sweet, pretty child she was. But Jabez never had no fondness for any
+of his kin. You--you are all alone in the world, child?"
+
+"All alone save for Uncle Jabez."
+
+She had come near to the old woman again. As she dropped quietly on
+her knees Aunt Alviry gathered her head close to her bosom; but Ruth
+did not weep any more. She only said:
+
+"I know I shall love you very, very much, dear Aunt Alvirah. And I
+hope I shall help your back and your bones a great deal, too!"
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+ HOARDING UP: PASSIONS--MONEY--WATER
+
+This was Ruth Fielding's introduction to the Red Mill, its occupants,
+and its surroundings. The spot was, indeed, beautiful, and an hour
+after she had arrived she knew that she would love it. The Lumano
+River was a wide stream and from the little window of the chamber that
+Aunt Alviry said would be her own, she could look both up and down the
+river for several miles.
+
+Uncle Jabez had a young man to help him in the mill. It was true, Aunt
+Alviry said, that Jasper Parloe had worked for some time at the Red
+Mill; but he was quarrelsome and Mr. Potter had declared he was not
+honest. When the mill owner was obliged to be absent and people had
+come to have corn or wheat ground, paying for the milling instead of
+giving toll, Jasper had sometimes kept the money instead of turning it
+over to Mr. Potter. This had finally resulted in a quarrel between the
+two, and Mr. Potter had discharged Parloe without paying him for his
+last month's work.
+
+The young newcomer had learned a great deal about the big mill and the
+homestead, and about the work Aunt Alviry had to do, before the first
+meal was prepared. She was of much assistance, too, and when Uncle
+Jabez came in, after washing at the pump, but bringing a cloud of
+flour with him on his clothes, the old woman was seated comfortably in
+her chair and Ruth "dished up the dinner."
+
+At the end of his meal her uncle spoke just once to Ruth. "You have
+l'arned to work, I see. Your Aunt Alviry has trouble with her back and
+bones. If you make yourself of use to her you can stay here. I expect
+all cats to catch mice around the Red Mill. Them that don't goes into
+the sluice. There's enough to do here. You won't be idle for want of
+work."
+
+And this was every word of his welcome, in a tone that showed neither
+interest nor care for the girl. It was what help she could be and how
+much he could save by her. It was plain enough that Uncle Jabez Potter
+was as saving as a person could possibly be. There was none too much
+food on the table, and Ruth watched the ravenous hunger of the hired
+man, when he came in, with a feeling as though she were watching a
+half-starved dog at his meal.
+
+Jabez Potter was not like the misers Ruth had read about, save in his
+personal appearance. He was not well dressed, nor was he very clean.
+But naturally the mill-dust would stick to him and to his clothing. It
+seemed to have worked into the very texture of his skin during all the
+years he had controlled the mill, until he was all of a dead gray.
+
+Sometimes there were half a dozen wagons or buggies waiting at the
+mill, and not all of them gave toll for their milling. Ruth, in the
+afternoon, and because it had begun to rain and she could not go out,
+went into the mill to quench her curiosity regarding it. She saw that
+there was a tiny office over the water, with a fireproof safe in it.
+Her uncle brought the money he took from his customers and put it in a
+little locked, japanned box, which he kept upon a shelf. The safe
+appeared to be full of ledgers.
+
+Farther down the mill was a wide door and platform overhanging the
+water (this was below the dam) where flour and meal could be loaded
+upon barges for transportation to Osago Lake, some miles away. There
+were great bins of wheat and corn, many elevator pipes, several mills
+turning all the time, grinding different grains, and a great
+corn-sheller that went by power, and which the young man fed when he
+had nothing else to do.
+
+All the time the building trembled and throbbed, and this throbbing
+was communicated to the house. As she sat with Aunt Alvirah, and sewed
+carpet-rags for a braided mat, the distant thunder of the mills and
+the trembling of the machinery made the whole house vibrate.
+
+Late in the afternoon Ruth heard the honking of an auto horn and ran
+out upon the covered porch. Between the scuds of rain that drove along
+the valley she saw the gray automobile coming slowly past the mill.
+There was a man driving it now, and he stopped and let Helen Cameron
+out so that she could run up to great Ruth under the shelter of the
+porch.
+
+"Oh, you dear! How are you getting on?" cried Helen, kissing her
+impulsively and as glad to see Ruth as though they had been separated
+for days instead of for only a few hours. "Colfax wanted to drive down
+to the station alone for Daddy--for we won't bring poor Tom home in
+this rain--but I just couldn't resist coming to see how you were
+getting on." She looked around with big eyes. "How does the Ogre treat
+you?" she whispered.
+
+But Ruth could laugh now and did so, saying, cheerfully: "He hasn't
+eaten me up yet! And Aunt Alvirah is the dearest little lady who ever
+lived."
+
+"She likes you, then?"
+
+"Of course she does."
+
+"I knew she would, she was bound to love you. But I don't know about
+the Ogre," and she shook her head. "But there! I must run. We don't
+want to be late for the train. That will put Daddy out. And I must
+stop and see Tom at the doctor's, too."
+
+"I hope you will find your brother ever so mach better," cried Ruth,
+as her friend ran down the walk again.
+
+"You'll see him come by here to-morrow, if it quits raining," returned
+Helen, over her shoulder.
+
+But it did not stop raining that night, nor for a full week. The scuds
+of rain, blowing across the river, slapped sharply against the side of
+the house, and against Ruth's window all night. She did not sleep that
+first night as well as she had in the charitable home of the station
+master and his good wife. The evening meal had been as stiff and
+unpleasant as the noon meal. The evening was spent in the same room--
+the kitchen. Aunt Alviry knitted and sewed; Uncle Jabez pored over
+certain accounts and counted money very softly behind the uplifted
+cover of the japanned cash-box that he had brought in from the mill.
+
+She got in time to know that cash-box very well indeed. It often came
+into the house under Uncle Jabez's arm at dinner, too. He scarcely
+seemed willing to trust it out of his sight. And Ruth was sure that he
+locked himself into his room with it at night.
+
+A loaded shotgun lay upon rests over the kitchen door all the time,
+and there was a big, two-barreled, muzzle-loading pistol on the stand
+beside Uncle Jabez's bed. Ruth was much more afraid of these loaded
+weapons than she was of burglars. But the old man evidently expected
+to be attacked for his wealth at some time although, Aunt Alvirah told
+her, nobody had ever troubled him in all the years she had lived at
+the Red Mill.
+
+So it was not fear of marauders that kept Ruth so wakeful on this
+first night under her uncle's roof. She thought of all the kind
+friends she had left in Darrowtown, and her long journey here, and her
+cold welcome to what she supposed would be her future home. Without
+Helen, and without Aunt Alvirah, she knew she would have gotten up,
+put on her clothing, packed her bag, and run away in the rain to some
+other place. She could not have stood Uncle Jabez alone.
+
+Jabez Potter was hoarding up something besides money, too. Ruth did
+not understand this until it had already rained several days, and the
+roaring of the waters fretting against the river banks and against the
+dam, had become all but deafening in her ears.
+
+Then, during a lull in the storm, and on the afternoon that Tom
+Cameron was taken home from Dr. Davison's, the old doctor himself
+stopped at the mill and shouted for Jabez to come out. The doctor
+drove a very fast red and white mare and had difficulty in holding her
+in, for she was eager to be moving.
+
+Uncle Jabez came out and seemed to look upon the doctor in no very
+friendly way. Ruth, standing at the open door of the kitchen, could
+hear Dr. Davison's voice plainly.
+
+"Jabez," he said, "do you know how the river is at Minturn?"
+
+"No," returned the miller, briefly.
+
+"It's higher than it's ever been. That dam is not safe. Why don't you
+let your water out so that, if Minturn should break, she'd have free
+sweep here and so do less damage below? Let this small flood out and
+when the greater one comes there'll be less danger of a disaster."
+
+"And how do I know the Minturn dam will burst, Dr. Davison?" asked Mr.
+Potter, tartly.
+
+"You don't know it. I'm only advising that precaution."
+
+"And if it don't burst I'll have my pains for my trouble--and no
+water for the summer, perhaps. They wouldn't let me have water later,
+if I needed it."
+
+"But you're risking your own property here."
+
+"And it's mine to risk, Dr. Davison," said Potter, in his sullen way.
+
+"But there are other people to think of--"
+
+"I don't agree with you," interrupted the miller. "I have enough to do
+to attend to my own concerns. I don't bother about other people's
+business."
+
+"Meaning that I do when I speak to you about the water; eh?" said the
+old doctor, cheerfully. "Well, I've done my duty. You'll learn some
+time, Jabez."
+
+He let out the impatient mare then, and the mud spattered from his
+wheels as he flew up the road toward Cheslow.
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+ THE CREST OF THE WAVE
+
+The rain could not last forever; Nature must cease weeping some time.
+Just as girls, far away from their old homes and their old friends,
+must cease wetting their pillows with regretful tears after a time,
+and look forward to the new interests and new friends to which they
+have come.
+
+Not that Ruth wept much. But the rainy days of that first week were
+necessarily trying. On Saturday, however, came a clear day. The sun
+shone, the drenched trees shook themselves, and the wind came and blew
+softly and warmly through their branches to dry the tender foliage.
+The birds popped out of their hiding-places and began to sing and
+chirp as though they never could be glad enough for this change in the
+weather.
+
+There was so much to see from the kitchen door at the Red Mill that
+Ruth did not mind her work that morning. She had learned now to help
+Aunt Alvirah in many ways. Not often did the old lady have to go about
+moaning her old refrain:
+
+"Oh, my back and oh, my bones! Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"
+
+The housework was all done and the kitchen swept and as neat as a new
+pin when the gay tooting of the Cameron automobile horn called Ruth to
+the porch. There was only Helen on the front seat of the car; but in
+the tonneau was a bundled-up figure surmounted by what looked to be a
+scarlet cap which Ruth knew instantly must be Tom's. Ruth did not know
+many boys and, never having had a brother, was not a little bashful.
+Besides, she was afraid Tom Cameron would make much of her connection
+with his being found on the Wilkins Corners road that dark night,
+after his accident.
+
+And there was another thing that made Ruth feel diffident about
+approaching the boy. She had borne it all the time in her mind, and
+the instant she saw Tom in the automobile it bobbed up to the surface
+of her thought again.
+
+"It was Jabe Potter--he did it."
+
+So, for more reasons than one, Ruth approached the motor car with
+hesitation.
+
+"Oh, Ruth!" cried Helen, putting out a gauntleted hand to her. "So
+this horrid rain has not washed you away? You won't like the Red Mill
+if the weather keeps this way. And how do you get on?" she added,
+lowering her voice. "How about the Ogre?"
+
+"He has not ground me into bread-flour yet," responded Ruth, smiling.
+
+"I see he hasn't. You're just as plump as ever, so he hasn't starved
+you, either. Now, Ruth, I want you to know my brother Tom, whom you
+have met before without his having been aware of it at the time," and
+she laughed again.
+
+Tom's left arm was in a sling, and the scarlet bandage around his head
+made him look like a pirate; but he grinned broadly at Ruth and put
+out his lean brown hand.
+
+"When I heard about you, Miss Fielding, I knew you were a spunky one,"
+he said. "And anybody that Reno takes to, the way she did to you, is
+all right. Besides, Nell is just spoons on you already, and Nell, like
+Reno, doesn't take to every girl."
+
+"The doctor said an outing in the car wouldn't hurt Tom," went on
+Helen, "and we're going to run up the valley road a way. Now Ruth
+Fielding, you get your hat and coat and come with us."
+
+"I don't know that I may," Ruth said, timidly.
+
+"I'll believe that he is an ogre then, and that you are kept a
+prisoner in this awful castle," cried Helen.
+
+"I'd love to go," murmured Ruth.
+
+"Then run and ask," urged her friend, while Tom added, good-naturedly:
+
+"Yes, why not come along? Don't be afraid of Nell's driving. She
+handles the car all right."
+
+Ruth knew that Uncle Jabez had gone to town. She had a feeling that he
+did not like the Camerons and might oppose her friendliness with them.
+But he was not at hand now to interfere with her innocent pleasures.
+She went in and asked Aunt Alvirah if she could take the ride.
+
+"Why not, child? You've been the very best helpmate ever an old woman
+had--Oh, my back and oh, my bones! Run along and have your fun,
+deary. You need not be back till supper time. You have earned your
+little outing, that's sure and sartain."
+
+Before Helen had picked her up on the road to the Red Mill that first
+day, Ruth had never ridden in a motor car. On that occasion they had
+traveled very slowly, while the girls talked. But now, when she was
+seated beside her new friend, Helen ran the auto on its high gear, and
+they shot away up the level river road at a pace that almost took
+Ruth's breath away.
+
+"Up here among the foothills is the big Minturn Pond Dam," Tom said,
+leaning forward to speak to their guest. "It's twenty miles above your
+uncle's dam and is a deal bigger. And some say it is not safe--Wait,
+Nell! Slow down so that we can see the face of the dam from the
+Overlook."
+
+The speed of the car was immediately reduced under Helen's
+manipulation, and then she swerved it into a short side road running
+toward the river, and they came out upon a little graveled plaza in
+the center of a tiny park, which gave a splendid view of the valley in
+both directions.
+
+But the young people in the motor car turned their eyes to the west.
+There the face of the Minturn dam could be discerned; and even as they
+looked at it they seemed to see it changing--dissolving, covered with
+mist, and spouting geysers of what at first seemed like smoke. But it
+was Tom who realized the truth.
+
+"She's burst!" he cried. "The old dam's burst! There she goes in a
+dozen places!"
+
+Although they were several miles down the valley, the thunder of the
+bursting masonry now echoed in their ears. And up from the bottom of
+the wall, near its center, a great geyser spouted. In a moment the
+wall crumbled and they saw tons upon tons of the masonry melt away.
+The waters of the pond burst through in a solid flood and charged down
+the valley, spreading wider and wider as it charged on, and bearing
+upon its crest every light and unstable structure found in its path.
+
+It was a startling--a terrifying sight. No wonder the two girls cried
+out in alarm and clung together. The sight of the charging flood
+fascinated them.
+
+But then they were aroused--and that within the first half minute of
+their terror--by Tom. He was trying, crippled as he was, to climb
+over into their seat.
+
+"What are you doing, you foolish boy?" cried Helen. "Sit down."
+
+"We've got to get out of here!" muttered the excited youth.
+
+"Why, we are safe here. The water will never rise to this height."
+
+"I know it! I know it!" groaned Tom, falling back in his seat and
+paling because of the pain from his arm, which he had twisted. "But
+don't you see? There are many down the valley who won't know of this
+until too late. Why, they can't see it at the bridge--at Culm Falls--
+until the flood is right upon them."
+
+"It's true!" gasped Helen. "What shall we do?"
+
+"We must warn them--we can warn them, can't we?" demanded Ruth. "This
+car runs so fast--you control it so well, Helen. Can't we warn them?"
+
+"Try it, Sis!" shouted Tom. "You can do it!"
+
+And already his sister, setting her teeth hard upon her lower lip, was
+backing and turning the motor car. In twenty seconds they were dashing
+off upon the track over which they had so recently come--on the road
+down the valley with the flood following fast behind them.
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+ THE RACE
+
+The two girls on the front seat of the flying automobile were not
+prepared for racing. Of course, Ruth Fielding had no proper automobile
+outfit, and Helen had not expected such an emergency when she had
+started with her crippled brother for this afternoon run. She had no
+goggles, nor any mask; but she had the presence of mind to raise the
+wind-shield.
+
+Already they could have heard the steady roaring of the advancing
+flood had not the racing motor car drowned all other sounds. There
+was, however, no need to look behind; they knew the wave was there and
+that it was sweeping down the valley of the Lumano with frightful
+velocity.
+
+Indeed, they were not at all sure for those first few miles whether
+they were traveling as fast as the flood, or not. Suppose the wave
+should reach and sweep away the bridge before they could cross the
+river? The thought was in the mind of both Helen and Ruth, whether
+Tom, on the rear seat, considered it or not. When they finally shot
+out of the woods and turned toward the toll-bridge, all glanced
+around. From here the upper reaches of the Lumano were plainly
+revealed. And extending clear across the valley was the foam-crested
+wave charging down upon the lowlands, but a number of miles away.
+
+Here was the first house, too. They saw a man and woman and several
+children out front, staring at the automobile as it raced down the
+road. Perhaps they had been called from the house by the vibration of
+the bursting dam.
+
+Tom sprang up in the car and pointed behind him, yelling:
+
+"The flood! The flood!"
+
+It is doubtful if they heard what he said; and they, too, were on a
+knoll and likely out of the reach of the water. But the three in the
+automobile saw the whole family turn and run for the higher ground
+behind their house. They understood the peril which menaced the whole
+valley.
+
+In a flash the auto had turned the bend in the river road, and the
+occupants saw the toll-bridge and the peaceful hamlet of Culm Falls.
+There was no stir there. The toll-bridge keeper was not even out of
+his cottage, and the light and flimsy gates were down across the
+driveway at either end of the bridge. The bend in the river hid the
+advancing wall of water. Perhaps, too, it deadened the sound of the
+bursting dam and the roar of the waters.
+
+There was another house at the bend. Helen tooted the automobile horn
+as though it had gone crazy. The raucous notes must of a certainty
+have awakened anybody but the Seven Sleepers. But the three in the car
+saw no sign of life about the premises. Helen had started to slow
+down; but Tom stopped her with a hand on her arm.
+
+"Not here! Not here!" he yelled. "Get across the river first, Nell!
+That wave is coming!"
+
+Indeed it was. And the toll-bridge keeper did not appear, and the
+gates were shut. But Helen Cameron was excited now and her racing
+blood was up. She never hesitated at the frail barrier, but drove
+straight through it, smashing the gate to kindling wood, and smashing
+their own wind shield as well.
+
+Out ran the toll-man then; but they were half way across the bridge;
+he could barely have raised the other gate had he set about it
+instantly. So they went through that, too, leaving him bawling and
+shrieking after them, but soon to learn by looking up the river what
+Tom meant by his excited words as the motor car swept by.
+
+Helen slowed down at the smithy. There were several men there and a
+number of wagons. The trio in the car screamed at them: "The dam has
+burst! The flood is coming!" and then started up again and swept
+through the little village, looking back to see the group at the
+smithy running in all directions to give the alarm.
+
+Now the road, clear to the Red Mill and beyond, ran within sight of
+the river. The mill was all of ten miles away. The valley was low here
+and as far as they could see ahead it broadened considerably on this
+side of the Lumano. But the hills arose abruptly on the farther bank
+and all the force and mass of the flood must sweep across these
+meadows.
+
+As the car moved on, Helen tooted the horn constantly. Its blasts
+alone should have warned people of what threatened, without Tom's
+frantic shouts and gesticulations. They were obliged, however, to slow
+down before several houses to make the occupants understand their
+danger.
+
+They were not half way to the Red Mill when the roar of the advancing
+tidal wave was apparent even above the noise of the auto. Then they
+saw the crest of the flood appear around the bend and the already
+heavily burdened waters dashed themselves upon the toll-bridge. It
+crumpled up and disappeared like a spider-web bridge, and the flood
+rolled on, the wave widening and overflowing the lowlands behind the
+automobile.
+
+Ahead of them now upon the road there was a single foot-passenger--a
+man carrying a heavy basket. He seemed so far from the higher ground,
+and so determined to keep to the road, that Ruth cried out and laid
+her hand upon Helen's arm. The latter nodded and shut off the engine
+so that the automobile ran down and almost stopped by this pedestrian.
+
+"Here, you!" shouted Tom, from the tonneau. "Get in here quick!
+There's no time to lose!"
+
+Much of what he said was lost in the roaring of the waters; but the
+fellow understood him well enough, and scrambled into the car with his
+basket. It was Jasper Parloe, and the old man was shaking as with
+palsy.
+
+"My goodness gracious!" he croaked, falling back in the seat as the
+car darted away again. "Ain't this awful? Ain't this jest awful?"
+
+He was too scared, one would have supposed, to think of much else than
+the peril of the flood sweeping the valley behind them; yet he stared
+up at Tom Cameron again and again as the auto hurried them on toward
+the safety of the higher ground about the Red Mill, and there was
+something very sly in his look.
+
+"Ye warn't hurt so bad then, arter all, was ye, Master Cameron?" he
+croaked.
+
+"I reckon I shall live to get over it," returned the boy, shortly.
+
+"But no thanks to Jabe Potter--heh? Ha! I know, I know!"
+
+Tom stared in return angrily, but the old man kept shaking his head
+and smiling up at him slily and in such a significant way that, had
+the boy not been so disturbed by what was going on behind them, he
+certainly would have demanded to know what the old fellow meant.
+
+But the car was getting close to the long hill that mounted to the
+crest on which the Red Mill stood. How much better would it have been
+for Jabez Potter and all concerned had he taken Doctor Davison's
+advice and let out the water behind his dam! But now he was not even
+at home to do anything before the thousands upon thousands of tons of
+water from the Minturn reservoir swept through the Red Mill dam.
+
+They saw the foaming, yellow water spread over the country behind
+them; but within half a mile of the mill it gathered into narrower
+compass again because of the nature of the land, and the wave grew
+higher as it rushed down upon Potter's dam. The motor car puffed up
+the hill and halted before the mill door.
+
+"Will we be safe here, Tom?" cried Helen, as pale as a ghost now, but
+too brave to give way. "Are we safe?"
+
+"We're all right, I believe," said Tom.
+
+Jasper Parloe was already out of the car and ran into the mill. Only
+the hired man was there, and he came to the door with a face whiter
+than it was naturally made by the flour dust.
+
+"Come in, quick!" he cried to the young people. "This mill can't go--
+it's too solid."
+
+Beyond the Red Mill the ground was low again; had the Camerons tried
+to keep on the road for home the flood would have overtaken the car.
+And to take the road that branched off for Cheslow would have
+endangered the car, too. In a few seconds the knoll on which the mill
+stood was an island!
+
+The girls and Tom ran indoors. They could hardly hear each other shout
+during the next few minutes. The waters rose and poured over the dam,
+and part of it was swept out. Great waves beat upon the river-wall of
+the mill. And then, with a tearing crash of rent timbers and masonry,
+the front of the little office and the storeroom, built out over the
+river, was torn away.
+
+From that quarter Jasper Parloe ran, yelling wildly. Ruth saw him dart
+out of the far door of the mill, stooping low and with his coat over
+his head as though he expected the whole structure to fall about his
+ears.
+
+But only that wall and the loading platform for the boats were sliced
+off by the flood. Then the bulk of the angry waters swept past,
+carrying all sorts of debris before it, and no farther harm was done
+to the mill, or to Mr. Potter's other buildings.
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+ UNCLE JABEZ IS EXCITED
+
+So rapidly had all this taken place that the girls had remained in the
+mill. But now Ruth, crying: "Aunt Alvirah will be frightened to death,
+Helen!" led the way down the long passage and through the shed into
+the kitchen porch. The water on this side of the building had swept up
+the road and actually into the yard; but the automobile stood in a
+puddle only and was not injured.
+
+Aunt Alviry was sitting in her rocker by the window. The old woman was
+very pale and wan. She had her Bible open on her knees and her lips
+trembled in a smile of welcome when the girls burst into the room.
+
+"Oh, my dears! my dears!" she cried. "I am so thankful to see you both
+safe!" She started to rise, and the old phrase came to her lips: "Oh,
+my back and oh, my bones!"
+
+Then she rose and hobbled across the room. Her bright little, birdlike
+eyes, that had never yet known spectacles, had seen something up the
+Cheslow road.
+
+"Who's this a-coming? For the land's sake, what recklessness! Is that
+Jabez and his mules, Ruthie? Bless us and save us! what's he going to
+try and do?"
+
+The two girls ran to the door. Down the hill thundered a farm wagon
+drawn by a pair of mules, said mules being on the dead run while their
+driver stood in the wagon and snapped his long, blacksnake whip over
+their ears. Such a descent of the hill was reckless enough in any
+case; but now, at the foot, rolled the deep water. It had washed away
+a little bridge that spanned what was usually a rill, but the banks of
+this stream being overflowed for yards on either side, the channel was
+at least ten feet deep.
+
+It was Jabez Potter driving so recklessly down the hill from Cheslow.
+
+"Oh, oh!" screamed the old lady. "Jabez will be killed! Oh, my back
+and oh, my bones! Oh, deary, deary me!"
+
+She had crossed the porch and was hobbling down the steps. Her
+rheumatic twinges evidently caused her excruciating pain, but the fear
+she felt for the miller's safety spurred her to get as far as the
+fence. And there Ruth and Helen kept her from splashing into the muddy
+water that covered the road.
+
+"You can do no good, Aunt Alvirah!" cried Ruth.
+
+"The mules are not running away with him, Mrs. Boggs," urged Helen.
+
+"They'll kill him! He's crazy! It's his money--the poor, poor man!"
+
+It was evident that Aunt Alvirah read the miller's excitement aright.
+Ruth remembered the cash-box and wondered if it had been left in the
+mill while her uncle went to Cheslow? However that might be, her
+attention--indeed, the attention of everybody about the mill--was
+held by the reckless actions of Mr. Potter.
+
+It was not fifteen minutes after the wave had hit the mill and torn
+away a part of the outer office wall and the loading platform, or
+wharf, when the racing mules came down to the turbulent stream that
+lay between the Cheslow road and the Red Mill. The frightened animals
+would have balked at the stream, but the miller, still standing in the
+wagon, coiled the whip around his head and then lashed out with it,
+laying it, like a tongue of living fire, across the mules' backs.
+
+They were young animals and they had been unused, until this day, to
+the touch of the blacksnake. They leaped forward with almost force
+enough to break out of their harness, but landing in the deep water
+with the wagon behind them. So far out did they leap that they went
+completely under and the wagon dipped until the body was full of
+water.
+
+But there stood the miller, upright and silent, plying the whip when
+they came to the surface, and urging them on. Ruth had noticed before
+this that Uncle Jabez was not cruel to his team, or to his other
+animals; but this was actual brutality.
+
+However, the mules won through the flood. The turgid stream was not
+wide and it was not a long fight. But there was the peril of mules,
+wagon and man being swept out into the main stream of the flood and
+carried over the dam.
+
+"He is awful! awful!" murmured Helen, in Ruth's ear, as they clung
+together and watched the miller and his outfit come through and the
+mules scramble out upon solid ground.
+
+The miller had brought his half-mad team to the mill and pulled the
+mules down right beside the Cameron's automobile. Already the young
+fellow who worked for him had flown out of the mill to Jabez's
+assistance. He seized the frightened mules by their bits.
+
+"How much has gone, boy?" cried Jabez, in a strained, hoarse voice.
+
+"Not much, boss. Only a part of the office an'--"
+
+The miller was already in at the door. In a moment, it seemed, he was
+back again, having seen the damage done by the flood to his building.
+But that damage was comparatively slight. It should not have caused
+the old man to display such profound despair.
+
+He wrung his hands, tore off his hat and stamped upon it on the walk,
+and behaved in such a manner that it was little wonder Helen Cameron
+was vastly frightened. He seemed beside himself with rage and despair.
+
+Ruth, herself torn by conflicting emotions, could not bear to see the
+old man so convulsed with what seemed to be anguish of spirit, without
+offering her sympathy. During this week that she had been at the Red
+Mill it could not be said that she had gained Uncle Jabez's
+confidence--that she had drawn close to him at all. But it was not
+for a will on her part to do so.
+
+The girl now left Aunt Alvirah and Helen on the porch and walked
+straight down to the old man. She was beside him, with a hand upon his
+arm, before he was aware of her coming.
+
+He stared at her so angrily--with such an expression of rage and
+hopelessness upon his face--that she was held speechless for a
+moment.
+
+"What do you know about it, girl?" he demanded, hoarsely.
+
+"About what, Uncle?" she returned.
+
+"The box--the cash-box--my money!" he cried, in a low voice. "Do you
+know anything about it? Was it saved?"
+
+"Oh, Uncle! We only got here in the automobile just in time to escape
+the flood. The office was wrecked at that very moment. Was the box
+there?"
+
+"Gone! Gone!" he murmured, shaking his head; and turning on his heel,
+he strode into the mill.
+
+The boy had taken the mules around to the stable. Ruth hesitated, then
+followed the old man into the mill. There Jabez confronted Tom
+Cameron, sitting on a sack of meal and watching the turbid waters
+falling over the dam.
+
+"Ha! Young Cameron," muttered Uncle Jabez. "You didn't see the
+cash-box, of course?"
+
+"Where was it?" asked Tom, quietly.
+
+"In that office--on a shelf, with an old coat thrown over it. I
+believed it to be as safe there as in the house with nobody but an old
+woman to guard it."
+
+"Better put your money in the bank, sir," said Tom, coolly.
+
+"And have some sleek and oily scoundrel steal it, eh?" snarled Uncle
+Jabez.
+
+"Well, the water stole it, I reckon," Tom said. "I'm sorry for you if
+there was much money in the box. But I know nothing about it. Jasper
+Parloe might have saved the box had he known about it; he was over
+there by the office when the water tore away the wall."
+
+"Jasper Parloe!" ejaculated Uncle Jabez, starting. "Was he here?"
+
+"He wasn't here long," chuckled Tom. "He thought the mill was going
+and he lit out in a hurry."
+
+Uncle Jabez made another despairing gesture and walked away. Ruth
+followed him and her hands closed upon the toil-hardened fist clenched
+at his side.
+
+"I'm sorry, Uncle," she whispered.
+
+He suddenly stared down at her.
+
+"There! I believe you be, child. But your being sorry can't help it
+none. The money's gone--hard it come and it's hard to part with in
+this way."
+
+"Was it a large sum, Uncle?"
+
+"All the ready cash I had in the world. Every cent I owned. That boy
+said, put it in a bank. I lost money when the Cheslow Bank failed
+forty year ago. I don't get caught twice in the same trap--no, sir!
+I've lost more this time; but no dishonest blackleg will have the
+benefit of it, that's sure. The river's got it, and nobody will ever
+be a cent the better off for it. All! All gone!"
+
+He jerked his hand away from Ruth's sympathetic pressure and walked
+moodily away.
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+ THE CATASTROPHE
+
+This was the beginning of some little confidence between Ruth and
+Uncle Jabez. He had not been quite so stern and unbending, even in his
+passion, as before. He said nothing more about the lost cash-box--
+Aunt Alviry dared not even broach the subject--but Ruth tried to show
+him in quiet ways that she was sorry for his loss.
+
+Uncle Jabez was not a gentle man, however; his voice being so seldom
+heard did not make it the less rough and passionate. There were times
+when, because of his black looks, Ruth did not even dare address him.
+And there was one topic she longed to address him upon very much
+indeed. She wanted to go to school.
+
+She had always been quick at her books, and had stood well in the
+graded school of Darrowtown. There was a schoolhouse up the road from
+the Red Mill--not half a mile away; this district school was a very
+good one and the teacher had called on Aunt Alvirah and Ruth liked her
+very much.
+
+The flood had long since subsided and the repairs to the mill and the
+dam were under way. Uncle Jabez grew no more pleasant, however, for
+the freshet had damaged his dam so that all the water had to be let
+out and he might go into midsummer with such low pressure behind the
+dam that he could not run the mill through the drouth. This
+possibility, together with the loss of the cash-box, made him--even
+Aunt Alvirah admitted--"like a dog with a sore head." Nevertheless
+Ruth determined to speak to him about the school.
+
+She chose an evening when the kitchen was particularly bright and
+homelike and her uncle had eaten his supper as though he very much
+enjoyed it. There was no cash-box for him to be absorbed in now; but
+every evening he made countless calculations in an old ledger which he
+took to bed with him with as much care as he had the money-box.
+
+Before he opened his ledger on this evening, however, Ruth stood
+beside him and put a hand upon his arm.
+
+"Uncle," she said, bravely, "can I go to school?"
+
+He stared at her directly for a moment, from under his heavy brows;
+but her own gaze never wavered.
+
+"How much schoolin' do you want?" he demanded, harshly.
+
+"If you please Uncle Jabez, all I can get," replied Ruth.
+
+"Ha! Readin', writin', an' mighty little 'rithmatic--we called 'em
+'the three R's '--did for me when I was a boy. The school tax they
+put onto me ev'ry year is something wicked. And I never had chick nor
+child to go to their blamed old school."
+
+"Let me go, Uncle, and so get some of your money back that way," Ruth
+said, quickly, and smiling in her little, birdlike way with her head
+on one side.
+
+"Ha! I don't know about that," he growled, shaking his head. "I don't
+see what I'll be makin' out of it."
+
+"Perhaps I can help you later, if you'll let me learn enough," she
+urged. "I can learn enough arithmetic to keep your books. I'll try
+real hard."
+
+"I don't know about that," he said, again, eyeing her suspiciously.
+"The little money I make I kin keep watch of--when I'm here to watch
+it, that is. There ain't no book-keeping necessary in my business. And
+then--there's your Aunt Alviry. She needs you."
+
+"Don't you go for to say that, Jabez," interposed the old woman,
+briskly. "That child's the greatest help that ever was; but she can do
+all that's necessary before and arter school, and on Saturdays. She's
+a good smart child, Jabez. Let her have a chance to l'arn."
+
+"Ain't no good ever come of books," muttered the miller.
+
+"Oh, Uncle! Just let me show you," begged the girl, in her earnestness
+clinging to his arm with both hands.
+
+He looked down for a moment at her hands as though he would fling off
+her hold. But he thought better of it, and waited fully a minute
+before he spoke.
+
+"You know your Aunt Alviry needs ye," he said. "If you kin fix it with
+her, why I don't see as I need object."
+
+"Will it be too much trouble for you to get my trunk, Uncle, so that I
+can begin going to school next week?" Ruth asked.
+
+"Ain't you got nothin' to wear to school?" he said. "It's dress; is
+it? Beginning that trouble airly; ain't ye?"
+
+He seemed to be quite cross again, and the girl looked at him in
+surprise.
+
+"Dear Uncle! You will get the trunk from the station, won't you?"
+
+"No I won't," he said. "Because why? Because I can't."
+
+"You can't?" she gasped, and even Aunt Alvirah looked startled.
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+"Why--why can't you?" cried Ruth. "Has something happened to my
+trunk?"
+
+"That's jest it--and it warn't no fault o' mine," said the miller. "I
+got the trunk like I said I would and it was in the wagon when we came
+down the hill yonder.
+
+"Oh, oh!" gasped Ruth, her hands clasped. "You don't mean when you ran
+the mules into the water, Uncle?"
+
+"I had to get to my mill. I didn't know what was being done over
+here," he said, uglily. "And didn't I lose enough? What's the loss of
+some old rags, and a trunk, 'side of my money?"
+
+He said it with such force, and with so angry a gesture, that she
+shrank back from him. But her pain and disappointment were so strong
+that she had to speak.
+
+"And the trunk was washed out of the wagon, Uncle Jabez? It's gone?"
+
+"That's what happened to it, I suppose," he grunted, and dropping his
+head, opened the ledger and began to study the long lines of figures
+there displayed. Not a word to show that he was sorry for her loss. No
+appreciation of the girl's pain and sorrow. He selfishly hugged to him
+the misfortune of his own loss and gave no heed to Ruth.
+
+But Aunt Alvirah caught her hand as she passed swiftly. The old woman
+carried the plump little hand to her lips in mute sympathy, and then
+Ruth broke away even from her and ran upstairs to her room. There she
+cast herself upon the bed and, with her sobs smothered in the pillows,
+gave way to the grief that had long been swelling her heart to the
+bursting point.
+
+  CHAPTER XIII
+
+ BUTTER AND BUTTERCUPS
+
+Such little keepsakes as remained of her father and mother--their
+photographs, a thin old bracelet, her mother's wedding ring, her
+father's battered silver watch had fortunately been in Ruth's bag.
+Those keepsakes had been too precious to risk in the trunk and in the
+baggage car. And how glad the girl was now that she had thus treasured
+these things.
+
+But the loss of the trunk, with all her clothing --common though that
+clothing had been--was a disaster that Ruth could not easily get
+over. She cried herself to sleep that night and in the morning came
+down with a woebegone face indeed. Uncle Jabez did not notice her, and
+even Aunt Alvirah did not comment upon her swollen eyes and
+tear-streaked countenance. But the old woman, if anything, was kinder
+than ever to her.
+
+It was Saturday, and butter day. Uncle Jabez owned one cow, and since
+Ruth had come to the mill it was her work twice a week to churn the
+butter. The churn was a stone crock with a wooden dasher and Ruth had
+just emptied in the thick cream when Helen Cameron ran in.
+
+"Oh, Ruth!" she cried. "You're always busy--especially if I chance to
+want you at all particularly."
+
+"If you will be a drone yourself, Helen, you must expect to be always
+hunting company," laughed Ruth. "Just what is troubling Miss Cameron
+at present?"
+
+"We're going to dress the Cove Chapel for to-morrow. You know, I told
+you our guild attends to the decoration of the chapel and I've just
+set my heart on making a great pillow of buttercups. The fields are
+full of them. And Tom says he'll help. Now, you'll come; won't you?"
+
+"If I come for buttercups it will have to be after the butter comes!"
+returned Ruth, laughing.
+
+She had begun to beat the dasher up and down and little particles of
+cream sprayed up through the hole in the cover of the jar, around the
+handle of the dasher. Helen looked on with growing interest.
+
+"And is that the way to make butter?" she asked. "And the cream's
+almost white. Our butter is yellow--golden. Just as golden as the
+buttercups. Do you color it?"
+
+"Not at this time of year. I used to help Miss True make butter. She
+had a cow. She said I was a good butter maker. You see, it's all in
+the washing after the butter comes. You wait and see."
+
+"But I want to pick buttercups--and Tom is waiting down by the
+bridge."
+
+"Can't help it. Butter before buttercups," declared Ruth, keeping the
+dasher steadily at work. "And then, Aunt Alvirah may want me for
+something else before dinner."
+
+"We've got dinner with us--or, Tom has. At least, Babette put us up a
+basket of lunch."
+
+"Oh! A picnic!" cried Ruth, flushing with pleasure. This visit had
+driven out of her mind --for the time, at least--her trouble of
+overnight.
+
+"I'm going to ask Aunt Alviry for you," went on Helen, and skipped
+away to find the little old woman who, despite the drawback of "her
+back and her bones" was a very neat and particular housekeeper. She
+was back in a few moments.
+
+"She says you can go, just as soon as you get the butter made. Now,
+hurry up, and let us get into the buttercup field, which is a whole
+lot nicer than the butter churn and--Oh! it smells much nicer, too.
+Why, Ruth, that cream actually smells sour!"
+
+"I expect it is sour," laughed her friend. "Didn't you know that sweet
+butter comes from sour cream? And that most nice things are the result
+of hard work? The sweet from the bitter, you know."
+
+"My! how philosophical we are this morning. Isn't that butter ever
+coming?"
+
+"Impatience! Didn't you ever have to wait for anything you wanted in
+your life?"
+
+"Why, I've got to wait till next fall before I go to Briarwood Hall.
+That's a rhyme, Ruthie; it's been singing itself over and over in my
+mind for days. I'm really going to boarding school in the autumn. It's
+decided. Tom is going to the military academy on the other side of
+Osago Lake. He'll be within ten miles of Briarwood."
+
+Ruth's face had lost its brightness as Helen said this. The word
+"school" had brought again to the girl's mind her own unfortunate
+position and Uncle Jabez's unkindness.
+
+"I hope you will have a delightful time at Briarwood," Ruth said,
+softly. "I expect I shall miss you dreadfully."
+
+"Oh, suppose the Ogre should send you to school there, too!" cried
+Helen, with clasped hands. "Wouldn't that be splendid!"
+
+"That would be beyond all imagination," said Ruth, shaking her head.
+"I--I don't know that I shall be able to attend the balance of the
+term here."
+
+"Why not?" demanded Helen. "Won't he let you?"
+
+"He has said I could." Ruth could say no more just then. She hid her
+face from her friend, but made believe that it was the butter that
+occupied her attention. The dasher began to slap, slap, slap
+suggestively in the churn and little particles of beaten cream began
+to gather on the handle of the dasher.
+
+"Oh!" cried Helen. "It's getting hard!"
+
+"The butter is coming. Now a little cold water to help it separate.
+And then you shall have a most delicious glass of buttermilk."
+
+"No, thank you!" cried Helen. "They say it's good for one to drink it.
+But I never do like anything that's good for me."
+
+"Give it to me, Ruth," interposed another voice, and Tom put a smiling
+face around the corner of the well. "I thought you were never coming,
+Miss Flyaway," he said, to his sister.
+
+"Butter before buttercups, young man," responded Helen, primly. "We
+must wait for Ruth to--er--wash the butter, is it?"
+
+"Yes," said her friend, seriously, opening the churn and beginning to
+ladle out the now yellow butter into a wooden bowl.
+
+"May I assist at the butter's toilet?" queried Tom, grinning.
+
+"You may sit down and watch," said his sister, in a tone intended to
+quell any undue levity on her brother's part.
+
+Ruth had rolled her sleeves above her elbows, so displaying her pretty
+plump arms, and now worked and worked the butter in cold water right
+"from the north side of the well" as though she were kneading bread.
+First she had poured Tom a pitcher of the fresh buttermilk, and given
+him a glass. Even Helen tasted a little of the tart drink.
+
+"Oh, it's ever so nice, I suppose," she said, with a little grimace;
+"but I much prefer my milk sweet."
+
+Again and again Ruth poured off the milky water and ran fresh, cold
+water upon her butter until no amount of kneading and washing would
+subtract another particle of milk from the yellow ball. The water was
+perfectly clear.
+
+"Now I'll salt it," she said; "and put it away until this afternoon,
+and then I'll work it again and put it down in the butter-jar. When I
+grow up and get rich I am going to have a great, big dairy; with a
+herd of registered cattle, and I'm going to make all the butter
+myself."
+
+"And Tom's going to raise horses. He's going to own a stock farm--so
+he says. You'd better combine interests," said Helen, with some scorn.
+"I like horses to ride, and butter to eat, but--well, I prefer
+buttercups just now. Hurry up, Miss Slow-poke! We'll never get enough
+flowers for a pillow."
+
+So Ruth cleaned her face, taking a peep into the glass in the kitchen
+to make sure, before going out to her friends. Tom looked at her with
+plain approval, and Helen jumped up to squeeze her again.
+
+"No wonder Aunt Alvirah calls you 'pretty creetur'," she whispered in
+Ruth's ear. "For that's what you are." Then to Tom: "Now young man,
+have you the lunch basket?"
+
+"What there is left of it is in charge of Reno down at the bridge," he
+replied, coolly.
+
+They found the huge mastiff lying with the napkin-covered basket
+between his forepaws, on the grass by the water side. Reno was
+growling warningly and had his eyes fixed upon a figure leaning upon
+the bridge railing.
+
+"That there dawg don't seem ter take to me," drawled Jasper Parloe,
+who was the person on the bridge. "He needn't be afraid. I wouldn't
+touch the basket."
+
+"You won't be likely to touch it while Reno has charge of it," said
+Tom, quietly, while the girls passed on swiftly. Neither Ruth nor
+Helen liked to have anything to do with Parloe. When Tom released Reno
+from his watch and ward, the dog trotted after Ruth and put his nose
+into her hand.
+
+"Ye been up ter the mill, hev ye?" queried Parloe, eyeing Tom Cameron
+aslant, "ye oughter be gre't friends with Jabe Potter. Or has he
+squared hisself with ye?"
+
+"Say, Mister Parloe," said Tom, sharply, "you've been hinting
+something about the miller every time you've seen me lately.
+
+"Only since yeou was knocked down that bank inter the gully, an' yer
+arm an' head hurt. There warn't nothin' about Jabe ter interest yeou
+afore that," returned Parloe, quickly.
+
+Tom flushed suddenly and he looked at the old fellow with new
+interest.
+
+"Just what do you mean?" he asked, slowly.
+
+"Ye know well enough. Your dad, Tom Cameron, is mighty riled up over
+your bein' hurt. I heered him say that he'd give a ten-dollar note ter
+know who it was drove by ye that night and crowded ye inter the ditch.
+Would you give more than that not ter have it known who done it?"
+
+"What do you mean?" exclaimed Tom, angrily.
+
+"I guess ye like this here gal that's cone to live on Jabez, purty
+well; don't ye--yeou an' yer sister?" croaked old Parloe. "Wal, if
+your dad an' the miller gits inter a row--comes ter a clinch, as ye
+might say--yeou an' yer sister won't be let ter hev much ter do with
+Ruth, eh, now?"
+
+"I don't know that that's so," Tom said doggedly.
+
+"Oh, yes, ye do. Think it over. Old Jabe will put his foot right down
+an' he'll stop Ruth havin' anything ter do with ye--ye know it! Wal,
+now; think it over. I got a conscience, I have," pursued Parloe,
+cringing and rubbing his hands together, his sly little eyes
+sparkling. "I r'ally feel as though I'd oughter tell yer dad who it
+was almost run ye down that night and made ye fall into the gully."
+
+"You mean, you'd like to handle Dad's ten dollars!" cried Tom,
+angrily.
+
+Parloe smirked and still rubbed his hands together. "Don't matter a
+mite whose ten dollars I handle," he said, suggestively. "Your ten
+dollars would be jest as welcome to me as your Dad's, Master Cameron."
+
+"Ten dollars is a lot of money," said Tom.
+
+"Yes. It's right smart. I could make use of it I'm a poor man, an' I
+could use it nicely," admitted the sly and furtive Parloe.
+
+"I haven't got so much money now," growled the boy.
+
+"Yeou kin get it, I warrant."
+
+"I suppose I can." He drew his purse from his pocket. "I've got three
+dollars and a half here. I'll have the rest for you on Monday."
+
+"Quite correct," said Jasper Parloe, clutching eagerly at the money.
+"I'll trust ye till then--oh, yes! I'll trust ye till then."
+
+  CHAPTER XIV
+
+ JUST A MATTER OF A DRESS
+
+"Well, I really believe, Tommy Cameron!" cried his sister Helen, when
+he overtook the girls and Reno, swinging the basket recklessly, "that
+you are developing a love for low company. I don't see how you can
+bear to talk with that Jasper Parloe."
+
+"I don't see how I can, either," muttered Tom, and he was rather
+silent--for him--until they were well off the road and the incident
+at the bridge was some minutes behind them.
+
+But the day was such a glorious one, and the fields and woods were so
+beautiful, that no healthy boy could long be gloomy. Besides, Tom
+Cameron had assured his sister that he thought Ruth Fielding "just
+immense," and he was determined to give the girl of the Red Mill as
+pleasant a time as possible.
+
+He worked like a Trojan to gather buttercups, and after they had eaten
+the luncheon old Babette had put up for them (and it was the very
+nicest and daintiest luncheon that Ruth Fielding had ever tasted) he
+told the girls to remain seated on the flat stone he had found for
+them and weave the foundation for the pillow while he picked bushels
+upon bushels of buttercups.
+
+"You'll need a two-horse load, anyway to have enough for a pillow of
+the size Nell has planned," he said, grinning. "And perhaps she'll
+finish it if you help her, Ruth. She's always trying to do some big
+thing and 'falling down' on it."
+
+"That's not so, Master Sauce-box!" cried his sister.
+
+Tom went off laughing, and the two girls set to work on the great mass
+of buttercups they had already picked. They grew so large, and were so
+dewey and golden, that a more brilliant bed of color one could scarce
+imagine than the pillow, as it began to grow under the dexterous hands
+of Helen and Ruth. And, being alone together now, they began to grow
+confidential.
+
+"And how does the Ogre treat you?" asked Helen. "I thought, when I
+came this morning, that you had been feeling badly."
+
+"I am not very happy," admitted Ruth.
+
+"It's that horrid Ogre!" cried Helen.
+
+"It isn't right to call Uncle Jabez names," said Ruth, quietly. "He is
+greatly to be pitied, I do believe. And just now, particularly so."
+
+"You mean because of the loss of that cash-box?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you suppose there was much in it?"
+
+"He told me that it contained every cent he had saved in all these
+years."
+
+"My!" cried Helen. "Then he must have lost a fortune! He has been a
+miser for forty years, so they say."
+
+"I do not know about that," Ruth pursued. "He is harsh and--and he
+seems to be very selfish. He--he says I can go to school, though."
+
+"Well, I should hope so!" cried Helen.
+
+"But I don't know that I can go," Ruth continued, shaking her head.
+
+"For pity's sake I why not?" asked her friend.
+
+Then, out came the story of the lost trunk. Nor could Ruth keep back
+the tears as she told her friend about Uncle Jabez's cruelty.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Helen, almost weeping herself. "The mean, mean
+thing! No, I won't call him Ogre again; he isn't as good as an Ogre.
+I--I don't know what to call him!"
+
+"Calling him names won't bring back my trunk, Helen," sobbed Ruth.
+
+"That's so. I--I'd make him pay for it! I'd make him get me dresses
+for those that were lost."
+
+"Uncle is giving me a home; I suppose he will give me to wear all that
+he thinks I need. But I shall have to wear this dress to school, and
+it will soon not be fit to wear anywhere else."
+
+"It's just too mean for anything, Ruth! I just wish--"
+
+What Miss Cameron wished she did not proceed to explain. She stopped
+and bit her lip, looking at her friend all the time and nodding. Ruth
+was busily wiping her eyes and did not notice the very wise expression
+on Helen's face.
+
+"Look out! here comes Tom," whispered Helen, suddenly, and Ruth made a
+last dab at her eyes and put away her handkerchief in a hurry.
+
+"Say! ain't you ever going to get that thing done?" demanded Tom.
+"Seems to me you haven't done anything at all since I was here last."
+
+The girls became very busy then and worked swiftly until the pillow
+was completed. By that time it was late afternoon and they started
+homeward. Ruth separated from Helen and Tom at the main road and
+walked alone toward the Red Mill. She came to the bridge, which was at
+the corner of her uncle's farm, and climbed the stile, intending to
+follow the path up through the orchard to the rear of the house--the
+same path by which she and her friends had started on their little
+jaunt in the morning.
+
+The brook which ran into the river, and bounded this lower end of Mr.
+Potter's place, was screened by clumps of willows. Just beyond the
+first group of saplings Ruth heard a rough voice say:
+
+"And I tell you to git out! Go on the other side of the crick, Jasper
+Parloe, if ye wanter fish. That ain't my land, but this is."
+
+"Ain't ye mighty brash, Jabe?" demanded the snarling voice of Parloe,
+and Ruth knew the first speaker to be her uncle. "Who are yeou ter
+drive me away?"
+
+"The last time ye was at the mill I lost something--I lost more than
+I kin afford to lose again," continued Uncle Jabez. "I don't say ye
+took it. They tell me the flood took it. But I'm going to know the
+right of it some time, and if you know more about it than you ought--"
+
+"What air ye talkin' about, Jabe Potter?" shrilled Parloe. "I've lost
+money by you; ye ain't never paid me for the last month I worked for
+ye."
+
+"Ye paid yerself--ye paid yerself," said Jabe, tartly. "And if ye
+stole once ye would again--"
+
+"Now stop right there, Jabe Potter!" cried Parloe, and Ruth knew that
+he had stepped closer to Mr. Potter, and was speaking in a trembling
+rage. "Don't ye intermate an' insinerate; for if ye do, I kin fling
+out some insinerations likewise. Yeou jest open yer mouth about me
+stealin' an' I'll put a flea in old man Cameron's ear. Ha! Ye know
+what I mean. Better hev a care, Jabe Potter--better hev a care!"
+
+There was silence. Her uncle made no reply, and Ruth, fearing she
+would be seen, and not wishing to be thought an eavesdropper (although
+the conversation had so surprised and terrified her that she had not
+thought what she did, before) the girl ran lightly up the hill,
+leaving the two old men to their wrangle. When Uncle Jabez came in to
+supper that evening his scowl was heavier than usual, if that were
+possible, and he did not speak to either Ruth or Aunt Alvirah all the
+evening.
+
+  CHAPTER XV
+
+ IN SCHOOL
+
+Ruth thought it all over, and she came to this conclusion: Uncle Jabez
+had given his permission--albeit a grumpy one--and she would begin
+school on Monday. The black cloth dress that was so shabby and would
+look so odd and proverty-stricken among the frocks of the other girls
+(for she had watched them going to and from school, and already knew
+some of them to speak to) would have to be worn, if possible, through
+the term. Perhaps Uncle Jabez might notice how shabby she looked,
+finally, and give her something more appropriate to wear. Especially
+as it had been through him that her other frocks were lost.
+
+But it was not an easy thing to face a whole schoolroom full of girls
+and boys--and most of them strangers to her--looking so "dowdyish."
+Ruth's love of pretty things was born in her. She had always taken
+pride in her appearance, and she felt her shortcomings in this line
+quicker and more acutely than most girls of her age.
+
+She faced the school on Monday morning and found it not so hard as she
+had supposed. Miss Cramp welcomed her kindly, and put her through
+quite a thorough examination to decide her grade. The Darrowtown
+schools had been so good that Ruth was able to take a high place in
+this one, and the teacher seated her among the most advanced of her
+pupils, although Ruth was younger than some of them.
+
+The fact that Ruth was well grounded in the same studies that the
+scholars at this district school were engaged in, made a difficulty
+for her at the start. But she did not know it then. She only knew that
+Miss Cramp, seating her pupils according to their grade, sent her to
+an empty seat beside one of the largest girls--Julia Semple.
+
+A good many of the girls stared at the new-comer with more than
+ordinary attention; but Julia immediately turned her back on her new
+seatmate. Ruth did not, however, give Julia much attention at the
+time. She was quite as bashful as most girls of her age; and, too,
+there were many things during that first session to hold her
+attention. But at recess she found that Julia walked away from her
+without a word and that most of the girls who seemed to be in her
+grade kept aloof, too. As a stranger in the school the girl from the
+Red Mill felt no little unhappiness at this evident slight; but she
+was too proud to show her disappointment. She made friends with the
+younger girls and was warmly welcomed in their games and pastimes.
+
+"Julia's mad at you, you see," one of her new acquaintances confided
+to Ruth.
+
+"Mad at me? What for?" asked the surprised new scholar.
+
+"Why, that seat was Rosy Ball's. Rosy has gone away to see her sister
+married and she's coming back to-morrow. If you hadn't come in to take
+her place, Rosy would have been let sit beside Julia again, of course,
+although like enough she's fallen behind the class. Miss Cramp is very
+strict."
+
+"But I didn't know that. I couldn't help it," cried Ruth.
+
+"Just the same, Julia says she doesn't like you and that you're a
+nobody--that Jabe Potter has taken you in out of charity. And Julia
+pretty nearly bosses everything and everybody around this school. Her
+father, Mr. Semple, you see, is chairman of the school board."
+
+Her plain-spoken friend never realized how much she was hurting Ruth
+by telling her this. Ruth's pride kept her up, nor would she make
+further overtures toward friendship with her classmates. She
+determined, during those first few days at the district school, that
+she would do her very best to get ahead and to win the commendation of
+her teacher. There was a splendid high school at Cheslow, and she
+learned that Miss Cramp could graduate pupils from her school directly
+into the Cheslow High. It was possible, the teacher assured her, for
+Ruth to fit herself for such advancement between that time and the
+fall term.
+
+It seemed as though Ruth could never make her crotchety old uncle love
+her. As time passed, the loss of his cash-box seemed to prey upon the
+miller's mind more and more. He never spoke of it in the house again;
+it is doubtful if he spoke of it elsewhere. But the loss of the money
+increased (were that possible) his moroseness. He often spoke to
+neither the girl nor Aunt Alvirah from sunrise to sunset.
+
+But although Uncle Jabez was so moody and so unkind to her, in the
+little old woman, whose back and whose bones gave her so much trouble,
+Ruth found a loving and thoughtful friend. Aunt Alvirah was as
+troubled at first about Ruth's lack of frocks as the girl was herself.
+But before Ruth had been attending school a week, she suddenly became
+very light-hearted upon the question of dress.
+
+"Now, don't you fret about it, deary," said Aunt Alviry, wagging her
+head knowingly. "Gals like you has jest got ter hev frocks, an' the
+good Lord knows it, jest the same as He knows when a sparrer falls.
+There'll be a way pervided--there'll be a way pervided. Ef I can't
+make ye a purty dress, 'cause o' my back an' my bones, there's them
+that kin. We'll hev Miss 'Cretia Lock in by the day, and we'll make
+'em."
+
+"But, dear," said Ruth, wonderingly, "how will we get the goods--and
+the trimmings--and pay Miss Lock for her work?"
+
+"Don't you fret about that. Jest you wait and see," declared Aunt
+Alvirah, mysteriously.
+
+Ruth knew very well that the old woman had not a penny of her own.
+Uncle Jabez would never have given her a cent without knowing just
+what it was for, and haggling over the expenditure then, a good deal.
+To his view, Aunt Alviry was an object of his charity, too, although
+for more than ten years the old woman had kept his house like wax and
+had saved him the wages of a housekeeper.
+
+This very day, on coming home from school, Ruth had met Doctor Davison
+coming away from the Red Mill. She thought the red and white mare,
+that was so spirited and handsome, had been tied to the post in front
+of the kitchen door, and that the physician must have called upon Aunt
+Alvirah.
+
+"So this is the young lady who wouldn't stop at my house but went to
+Sam Curtis' to stay all night," he said, holding in the mare and
+looking down at Ruth. "And you haven't been past the gate with the
+green eyes since?"
+
+"No, sir," Ruth said, timidly. "I have never even been to town."
+
+"No. Or you would not have failed to see the Curtises again. At least,
+I hope you'll see them. Mercy has never ceased talking about you."
+
+"The lame girl, sir?" cried Ruth, in wonder. "Why, she spoke awfully
+unkindly to me, and I thought her mother only thought I would feel bad
+and wanted to smooth it over, when she asked me to come again."
+
+"No," said the doctor, seriously, shaking his head. "Nobody knows
+Mercy like her mother. That's not to be expected. She's a poor,
+unfortunate, cramp-minded child. I've done what I can for her back--
+she has spinal trouble; but I can do little for Mercy's twisted and
+warped mind. She tells me she has cramps in her back and legs and I
+tell her she has worse cramps in her mind. Bright! Why, child, she
+knows more than most grown folks. Reads every book she can get hold
+of; there is scarcely a child in the Cheslow High School who could
+compete with her for a month in any study she had a mind to take hold
+of. But," and the doctor shook his head again, "her mind's warped and
+cramped because of her affliction."
+
+"I pitied her," said Ruth, quietly.
+
+"But don't tell her so. Go and see her again--that's all. And mind
+you don't come to town without turning in at the gate with the green
+eyes;" and so saying he let the eager mare out and she swiftly carried
+him away.
+
+It was after this Aunt Alvirah seemed so confident that a way would be
+provided for Ruth to get the frocks that she so sadly needed. On the
+very next day, when Ruth came home from school, she found the little
+old lady in a flutter of excitement.
+
+"Now, Ruthie," she whispered, "you mustn't ask too many questions, and
+I'll surely tell ye a gre't secret, child."
+
+"It must be something very nice, Aunt Alviry, or you'd never be like
+this. What is it?"
+
+"Now Ruthie, you mustn't ask too many questions, I tell you. But to
+make no secret of it, for secrets I do despise, somebody's made you a
+present."
+
+"Made me a present?" gasped Ruth.
+
+"Now, careful about questions," warned Aunt Alvirah. "I told you that
+a way would be pervided for you to have frocks. And it is true. You
+are a-goin' to have 'em."
+
+"Auntie! New frocks!"
+
+"Just as good as new. Ev'ry bit as good as new. Somebody that's--
+that's seen ye, deary, and knows how badly you want to go to school,
+and that you need dresses, has given you three."
+
+"My goodness me!" cried Ruth, clasping her hands. "Not three?"
+
+"Yes, my dear. And they're jest as good as new--about. 'Cretia Lock
+won't be two days fixin' 'em over to fit you. And you won't mind,
+deary, if the little girl who wore them before you is--is--Well,
+deary, she won't never want them any more."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried Ruth. "Three frocks all at once! And--and I'm
+not to ask who gave them to me?"
+
+"That's it. You're not to ask that. I'll git 'em and show you--Oh, my
+back and oh, my bones! Oh, my back and oh, my bones!" the old lady
+added, starting from her chair and hobbling out of the room.
+
+Ruth was so amazed that she hardly knew what her other feelings at the
+moment might be. But there had sprung into her mind, full-fledged, the
+suspicion that Doctor Davison had been the donor of the frocks.
+Perhaps he had had a little girl sometime, who had died. For Ruth had
+quite decided, from what Aunt Alvirah said, that the girl who had
+formerly worn the frocks in question was no longer upon earth.
+
+  CHAPTER XVI
+
+ BEHIND THE GREEN LAMPS
+
+Aunt Alvirah returned in a short time with such a pile of pretty
+colors over her arm that Ruth gasped with delight, she couldn't help
+it The dresses were all nice ginghams, each of a different color,
+nicely trimmed and delightfully made. They were not too fancy for
+school wear, and they were good, practical frocks.
+
+Ruth had worn her little black and white frocks at school while she
+was still in Darrowtown, and had she remained longer Miss True Pettis
+would have helped her to make other frocks in colors. It is a sad
+thing to see a child in black, or black and white, and Ruth's father
+had been dead now six months.
+
+"Ye needn't be scart at the colors, child," said old Aunt Alviry.
+"Here's this pretty lavender. We'll make that over first. 'Cretia Lock
+will be here to-morrow and we'll make a big beginnin'."
+
+"But what will uncle say?" gasped Ruth, almost bursting with
+questions, but being debarred from asking the most important ones.
+
+"Don't you fret about your Uncle Jabez. He ain't got nothin' ter do
+with it," declared the little old woman, firmly. "Nor he won't say
+nothin'."
+
+Which was very true. Uncle Jabez seldom spoke to his niece now. His
+moodiness grew upon him as time passed. And in the evening, as he sat
+over his endless calculations at the kitchen table, the girl and the
+old woman scarcely dared speak to each other save in whispers.
+
+Miss Lock worked three days, instead of two, at the Red Mill, helping
+Aunt Alvirah "dress-make." How she was paid, Ruth did not know; but
+she feared that the pennies Aunt Alvirah saved from her egg and
+chicken money had done this. However, the shabby black frock was put
+away and Ruth blossomed out into as pretty an appearance as any girl
+attending Miss Cramp's school.
+
+But she did not make friends among her classmates. Julia Semple had
+such influence that she seemed to have set all the girls of the higher
+class in the district school against Ruth. Julia herself could not
+pass Ruth without tossing her head and staring at her haughtily; and
+sometimes she would whisper to her companions and look at the girl
+from the Red Mill in so scornful a way that Ruth could not help
+feeling uncomfortable.
+
+Indeed, Ruth would have lacked almost all young company had it not
+been for Helen Cameron and Tom. Tom didn't think much of "playing with
+girls;" but he could always be depended upon to do anything Ruth and
+Helen wanted him to. Helen was at the Red Mill often after Ruth's
+school hours, and seldom did a Saturday pass that the two chums did
+not spend at least half the day together. Aunt Alvirah declared Ruth
+should have Saturday afternoons to herself, and often Helen came in
+her little pony carriage and drove Ruth about the country. There was a
+fat old pony named Tubby that drew the phaeton, and Tubby jogged along
+the pleasant country roads with them in a most delightfully gypsyish
+way.
+
+One Saturday afternoon they went to town. Ruth had never seen Cheslow
+save on the night of her arrival and on the following morning, when
+she had started directly after breakfast at the station master's house
+to walk to the Red Mill.
+
+"Why, you'll like Cheslow," declared Helen, in her enthusiastic way.
+"It's just as pretty as it can be--you'll love it! I often drive in
+to shop, and sometimes Mrs. Murchiston goes with me. Get up, Tubby!"
+
+Tubby had to be urged incessantly; exertion was not loved by him. He
+would rather walk than trot; he would rather stand than walk; and he
+always had the appearance of being asleep--save when he was at his
+manger.
+
+Ruth remembered that she had been warned not to go past "the gate with
+the green eyes" and she told Helen of her promise to Doctor Davison.
+
+"Oh, splendid!" cried her chum. "I don't know anybody whom I like to
+call upon in Cheslow ahead of Doctor Davison. It's almost as good as
+having him come to see you when you're sick."
+
+"But I don't think," Ruth objected, "that it's any fun to have any
+doctor come to see one on business."
+
+"You don't half mind being ill when Doctor Davison calls," declared
+Helen, with unabated enthusiasm. "And when you call there! Well,"
+concluded Helen, with a sigh of anticipation, "you'll soon know what
+that means. He's got a colored Mammy for cook who makes the most
+wonderful jumbles and cakes that you ever tasted--they about melt in
+pour mouth!"
+
+Ruth soon had the opportunity of judging Mammy 'Liza's goodies for
+herself, for the doctor was at home, and the girls had scarcely become
+seated in his consultation room when a little colored girl with her
+wool "done" in innumerable pigtails, like tiny horns, and sticking out
+all over her brown head in every direction, came in with a tray on
+which was a plate piled high with fancy cakes and two tall glasses of
+yellow-gold beaten egg and milk with a dust of nutmeg floating upon
+the surface of each glassful.
+
+"'Liza done sez as how yo'-all might be hongry aftah yo' ride," said
+the child, timidly, and then darted out of the room before Ruth and
+Helen could thank her.
+
+They were munching the goodies when Doctor Davison came smilingly in.
+
+"That's Mammy 'Liza all over," he said, shaking his head, but with his
+dark eyes twinkling. "I try to keep my young folk in good digestion
+and she is bound to make a patient of everybody who comes to see me.
+Cookies and cakes and sweets are what she believes girls live for; or
+else she is trying to make customers for my nasty drugs."
+
+Doctor Davison seemed to have plenty of time to give to the society of
+young folk who called upon him. And he showed an interest in Ruth and
+her affairs which warmed our heroine's heart. He wanted to know how
+she got along at school, and if it was true that she was trying to
+"make" the High by the opening of the fall term.
+
+"Not that I want any of my young folk to travel the road to knowledge
+too steadily, or travel it when their bodily condition is not the
+best. But you are strong and well, Ruthie, and you can do a deal that
+other girls of your age would find irksome. I shall be proud if you
+prepare to enter the High at your age."
+
+And this made Ruth feel more and more sure that Doctor Davison had
+taken interest enough in her career at school to supply the pretty
+frocks, one of which she was then wearing. But Aunt Alvirah had warned
+her that the frocks were to remain a mystery by the special request of
+the donor, and she could not ask the good old doctor anything about
+them. His interest in her progress seemed to infer that he expected
+Ruth to accomplish a great deal in her school, and the girl from the
+Red Mill determined not to disappoint him.
+
+When Helen told Doctor Davison where else they intended to call, he
+nodded understandingly. "That is," he added, "Ruth will call on Mercy
+while you do your shopping, Miss Cameron. Oh, yes! that is the better
+plan. You know very well that Mercy Curtis won't want to see you,
+Helen."
+
+"I don't know why not," said Helen, pouting. "I know she never treats
+anyone nicely, but I don't mind. If it does her good to do what Tom
+calls 'bully-ragging,' I can stand it as well as Ruth--better,
+perhaps."
+
+"No," said the doctor, gravely. "I have told you before why you
+shouldn't call there. You have everything that Mercy can possibly
+desire. Comparisons with poor Mercy certainly are odious. Ruth, she
+knows, is not so fortunately placed in life as yourself. She is not so
+fortunately placed, indeed, as Mercy is. And Mercy is in an extremely
+nervous state just now, and I do not wish her to excite herself beyond
+reason."
+
+"Well, I declare," exclaimed Helen, but good-naturedly after all. "I
+don't like to be told I'm not wanted anywhere. But if you say so, I'll
+not go with Ruth to the house."
+
+Doctor Davison opened a new topic of conversation by asking after Tom.
+
+"Oh, his head is all healed up--you can just barely see the scar,"
+Helen declared. "And his arm is only a little tender. We think he got
+out of it very lucky indeed--thanks to Ruth here."
+
+"Yes, thanks to Ruth," repeated the doctor, his eyes twinkling.
+
+Ruth was "on pins and needles," as the saying is, for she very well
+remembered what the injured boy had murmured, in his half conscious
+state, when they brought him along the road on the stretcher. Had it
+been Jabez Potter who ran down Tom Cameron and forced him down the
+embankment with his motorcycle? This thought had been bobbing up in
+Ruth's mind ever since she had come to the Red Mill.
+
+She had seen her uncle driving his team of mules in one of his
+reckless moods. She would never forget how the team tore down the long
+hill and was forced through the flood the day the Minturn dam had
+burst. Had Jabez Potter been driving through the dark road where Tom
+Cameron was hurt, in any such way as that, he would have run down a
+dozen cyclists without noticing them.
+
+Fortunately Tom's injury had not been permanent. He was all right now.
+Ruth felt that she must be loyal to her uncle and say nothing about
+her own suspicions; but as long as the matter was discussed between
+Helen and Doctor Davison she was anxious. Therefore she hurried their
+departure from the kind physician's office, by rising and saying:
+
+"I think we would better go, Helen. You know how slow Tubby is, and
+perhaps I can give the little Curtis girl some pleasure by calling on
+her."
+
+"Without doubt she'll have pleasure," observed Helen, somewhat
+bitingly. "She is likely to scold and 'bullyrag' to her heart's
+content. You're such a meek thing that you'll let her."
+
+"If that's what gives her pleasure, Helen," said Ruth, with a quiet
+smile, "why, I guess I can stand it for an hour."
+
+Doctor Davison had risen likewise, and he went to the front door with
+them, his hand resting lightly on Ruth's shoulder.
+
+"You have the right idea of it, Ruthie," he said. "Let Mercy take her
+pleasure in that way if it's all the pleasure she can get. But perhaps
+a better mind as well as a better body may come to the poor child in
+time." Then to Ruth he added, more personally: "Remember you have a
+friend in here behind the green lamps. Don't forget to come to him
+with any troubles you may have. Perhaps I do not look it, but I am
+something like a fairy godmother--I have a wonderful power of
+transmogrification. I can often turn dark clouds inside out and show
+you the silver on the other side."
+
+"I believe that, Doctor Davison," she whispered, and squeezed his hand
+hard, running after Helen the next moment down the walk.
+
+  CHAPTER XVII
+
+ TORMENTING MERCY
+
+After they had awakened Tubby and urged him into something resembling
+a trot they got into Cheslow proper by degrees. By the light of the
+very sunshiny afternoon Ruth thought the town looked far prettier than
+any place she had ever seen. This side of the railroad the houses were
+mostly old-fashioned, and there were few stores. There were many lawns
+and pretty, old-time gardens, while the elms and maples met in green
+arches overhead so that many of the streets were like rustic tunnels,
+the sun sifting through the thick branches to make only a fine,
+lacework pattern upon the walks and driveway.
+
+They crossed the railroad near the station and struck into Market
+Street. Ruth would not allow Helen to drive her directly to the Curtis
+cottage. She had remembered Doctor Davison's words, and she thought
+that perhaps Mercy Curtis might be looking from the window and see her
+visitor arrive in the pony cart. So she got down at the corner,
+promising to meet her friend at that spot in an hour.
+
+She could see the pretty cottage belonging to the railroad station
+agent before she had walked far. Its garden on the side was already a
+bower. But the rustic arbor on which the grape vines were trained was
+not yet sufficiently covered to yield any shelter from the street;
+therefore Ruth did not expect to find it occupied.
+
+Just before she reached the cottage, however, she saw two little girls
+ahead of her, hesitating on the walk. They were talking seriously
+together when Ruth approached within earshot, and she heard one say to
+the other:
+
+"Now, she'll be there in the window. We mustn't notice her, no matter
+what she does or says. You know what mamma said."
+
+The other child was sobbing softly. "But she made me, oh, such a face!
+And she chopped her teeth at me just as though she'd bite me! I think
+she's the very hatefulest thing--"
+
+"Hush! she's greatly to be pitied," said the older sister, with an air
+and in a tone that showed she copied it from the "grown-ups" whom she
+had heard discussing poor Mercy Curtis.
+
+"I wish we'd gone 'round the other way," complained the other child.
+
+"Now, come on. You needn't look into the window and smile. I'll do
+that."
+
+"No," said the little one, stubbornly. "I'll go by on the opposite
+side of the way. And you must come, too, Anna. She--she'd bite me if
+she could get the chance."
+
+"Oh, well! Come on, little silly!" said her sister, and the two
+crossed over and Ruth, who watched them interestedly, saw them hurry
+by the cottage with scarcely a glance at the front windows.
+
+But Ruth could see the outline of the lame girl's figure at one of the
+windows and she saw a lean fist shaken in the air at the two children
+going by. She could imagine the face Mercy Curtis "pulled," as well,
+and did not wonder that the two little ones took to their heels and
+ran away as fast as ever they could.
+
+But, thus prepared for an unpleasant greeting from, the unfortunate
+and much to be pitied Mercy, Ruth smiled happily herself and waved her
+hand at the lame girl's window. Mercy saw her and, for a moment, was
+stricken with surprise so that she could neither greet her with frown
+or smile. She knew the girl from the Red Mill, although she had seen
+her so many weeks before; but Ruth ran into the yard and up the porch
+steps at the side of the house, and knocked at the door before the
+lame girl recovered from her amazement.
+
+The motherly Mrs. Curtis came to the door and, the moment she saw who
+it was, received Ruth with open arms.
+
+"You dear child! I am so glad you have come again. Did Doctor Davison
+tell you?" she whispered.
+
+"He told me that Mercy would be glad to see me again; but I should
+have come before, as I promised, if I could have gotten in," Ruth
+said. "Will she see me?"
+
+"She is not so well to-day," sighed the harassed mother. "This is one
+of her days of torment. I do not know how she will treat you, Ruth
+Fielding; but don't mind what she says to you, dear. Your being here
+will take her mind off her pain and off her own self."
+
+Ruth laid aside her hat and coat and went into the sitting room. The
+crippled girl was in her wheel chair by the window. The instant Ruth
+entered she seized the wheels on either side and propelled the chair
+across the room in a sudden dash that threatened to run her visitor
+down. And her face was screwed up into such a mean look, and her eyes
+flashed so angrily, that Ruth was startled for a moment. But she stood
+her ground and instead of colliding with her, the nervous hands
+brought the chair to a sudden stop right before her.
+
+"Thought you were going to be run down; didn't you?" snapped Mercy.
+"I'd ought to break your legs--you run on them so fine. Showing off;
+wasn't you?"
+
+She was offended because Ruth had run so lightly into the cottage and
+the girl from the Red Mill made a decision there and then that she
+would never come in to see Mercy again saving at a sedate walk. But
+she laughed lightly, and said:
+
+"Do you want me to come on crutches, Mercy? That wouldn't help you a
+bit."
+
+She put out her hand to take the lame girl's, but Mercy struck it
+smartly with her own, then whirled her chair around and returned to
+her former position by the window. She handled the wheel chair with
+remarkable dexterity, and Ruth, following her and taking a neighboring
+chair said:
+
+"How quick you are! You get around your room so nicely. I think that's
+fine."
+
+"You do; do you?" snapped the cripple. "If you'd been tied to this
+chair like I have, you'd be quick, too. I suppose it's something for
+me to be grateful for; eh?"
+
+"It must be a lot better than lying abed all the time," said Ruth,
+quietly.
+
+"Oh, yes! I suppose so!" snapped Mercy. Her conversation was mostly
+made up of snaps and snarls. "Everybody tells me all about how happy I
+ought to be because I'm not worse off than I am. That's their
+tormenting ways--I know 'em! There!" she added, looking out of the
+window. "Here's another of those dratted young ones!"
+
+Ruth glanced out, too. A lady was coming along the walk holding a
+little boy by the hand. Before they reached the cottage the little boy
+said something to his mother and then broke away from her hand and
+went to the other side of her, nearest the curb.
+
+"There! he's hiding from me," said Mercy, bitterly.
+
+The lady looked up and smiled pleasantly, but the cripple only
+returned her pleasant salutation with a cold nod. The child peeped out
+from around his mother's skirt.
+
+"There! go along, you nasty little thing!" muttered Mercy. "See him
+trot on his little fat legs. I wish a dog would bite 'em!" It was
+useless, Ruth saw, to try and bring the cripple to a better mind. But
+she ignored her sallies at people who went by the window, and began to
+talk about the Red Mill and all that had happened to her since she had
+come to live with Uncle Jabez. Gradually she drew Mercy's attention
+from the street. She told about the flood, and how she, with Helen and
+Tom, had raced in the big automobile down the river road to warn the
+people that the water was coming. Mercy's eyes grew big with wonder
+and she listened with increasing interest.
+
+"That's a nice place to live--that mill," the cripple finally
+admitted, grudgingly. "And it's right on the river, too!"
+
+"I can look 'way up and down the river from my window the first thing
+when I get up in the morning," Ruth said. "It's very pretty at
+sunrise. And then, the orchard and the fields are pretty. And I like
+to see the men ploughing and working the land. And the garden stuff is
+all coming up so pretty and green."
+
+"I've got a garden, too. But it's not warm enough yet to plant many
+flower seeds," said Mercy.
+
+"I suppose, when it comes warm, you can sit out in the arbor?"
+
+"When the grape leaves get big enough to hide me--yes," said Mercy.
+"I don't go into the garden excepting in schooltime. Then the young
+ones aren't always running by and tormenting me," snapped the cripple,
+chopping off her speech at the end.
+
+She was a self-tormentor. It was plain that the poor child made
+herself very miserable by believing that everybody possessing a strong
+back and lively legs felt his or her superiority to her and delighted
+in "showing off" before her. The girl of the Red Mill felt only pity
+for a sufferer possessing such an unfortunate disposition.
+
+She tried to turn the conversation always into pleasant channels. She
+held Mercy's interest in the Red Mill and her life there. She told her
+of the broods of downy chicks that she cared for, and the
+butter-making, and the household tasks she was able to help Aunt
+Alviry about.
+
+"And don't you go to school?" demanded Mercy.
+
+"I am going now. I hope this spring and summer to prepare myself for
+entering the Cheslow High."
+
+"And then you'll be in town every day?" said Mercy, with one of her
+occasional wistful looks.
+
+"I hope to. I don't know how I will get here. But I mean to try. Miss
+Cramp says if I'll come two or three times a week this summer, after
+our school closes, that she will help me to prepare for the High School
+exams., so I can enter at the beginning of the fall term.
+
+"I know Miss Cramp," said Mercy. "She lives on this street. You'll be
+so busy then that you'll never get in to see me at all, I suppose."
+
+"Why, I can come much oftener," cried Ruth. "Of course I will."
+
+If Mercy was pleased by this statement, she would not show it.
+
+"I studied to enter High," she said, after a little silence. "But
+what's the use? I'll never go to school again. Reading books isn't any
+fun. Just studying, and studying, and studying doesn't get you
+anywhere."
+
+"Why, I should think that would be nice," Ruth declared. "You've got
+so much chance to study. You see, you don't have to work around the
+house, or outside, and so you have all your time to devote to study. I
+should like that."
+
+"Yah!" snarled Mercy, in her most unpleasant way. "That's what you
+say. I wish you were here to try it, and I could be out to the Red
+Mill." Then she paid more softly: "I'd like to see that mill and the
+river--and all the things you tell about."
+
+"You wait!" cried Ruth. "I'll ask Uncle Jabez and Aunt Alviry. Maybe
+we can fix it so you could come out and see me. Wouldn't that be
+fine?"
+
+"Yah!" snarled the cripple again. "I'll never get that far away from
+this old chair."
+
+"Perhaps not; but you might bring the chair with you," returned Ruth,
+unshaken. "Wait till vacation. I'll not give up the idea until I've
+seen if it can't be arranged."
+
+That the thought pleased Mercy, the cripple could not deny. Her eyes
+shone and a warmth of unusual color appeared in her thin cheeks. Her
+mother came in with a tray of cakes and lemonade, and Mercy became
+quite pleasant as she did the honors. Having already eaten her fill at
+the doctor's, Ruth found it a little difficult to do justice to this
+collation; but she would not hurt Mercy's feelings by refusing.
+
+The hour passed in more pleasant converse. The cripple's mind was
+evidently coaxed from its wrong and unhappy thoughts. When Ruth rose
+to leave, promising to come again as soon as she could get into town,
+Mercy was plainly softened.
+
+"You just hate to come--I know you do!" she said, but she said it
+wistfully. "Everybody hates to come to see me. But I don't mind having
+you come as much as I do them. Oh, yes; you can come again if you
+will," and she gave Ruth her hand at parting.
+
+Mrs. Curtis put her arms about the girl from the Red Mill and kissed
+her warmly at the door.
+
+"Dear, dear!" said the cripple's mother, "how your own mother would
+have loved you, if she had lived until now. You are like sunshine in
+the house."
+
+So, after waving her hand and smiling at the cripple in the window,
+Ruth went slowly back to the corner to meet Helen, and found herself
+wiping some tender tears from her eyes because of Mrs. Curtis's words.
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ THE SPELLING BEE
+
+In spite of the fact that the big girls at the district school, led by
+Julia Semple, whose father was the chairman of the board of trustees,
+had very little to say to Ruth Fielding, and shunned her almost
+altogether outside of the schoolroom, Ruth was glad of her chance to
+study and learn. She brought home no complaints to Aunt Alvirah
+regarding the treatment she received from the girls of her own class,
+and of course uncle Jabez never spoke to her about her schooling, nor
+she to him.
+
+At school Ruth pleased Miss Cramp very much. She had gradually worked
+her way toward the top of the class--and this fact did not make her
+any more friends. For a new scholar to come into the school and show
+herself to be quicker and more thorough in her preparation for
+recitations than the older scholars naturally made some of the latter
+more than a little jealous.
+
+Up to this time Ruth had never been to the big yellow house on the
+hill--"Overlook," as Mr. Macy Cameron called his estate. Always
+something had intervened when Ruth was about to go. But Helen and Tom
+insisted upon the very next Saturday following the girls' trip to
+Cheslow as the date when Ruth must come to the big house to luncheon.
+The Camerons lived all of three miles from the Red Mill; otherwise
+Ruth would in all probability have been to her chum's home before.
+
+Tom agreed to run down in the machine for his sister's guest at
+half-past eleven on the day in question, and Ruth hurried her tasks as
+much as possible so as to be all ready when he appeared in the big
+drab automobile. She even rose a little earlier, and the way she flew
+about the kitchen and porch at her usual Saturday morning tasks was,
+as Aunt Alvirah said, "a caution." But before Tom appeared Ruth saw,
+on one of her excursions into the yard, the old, dock-tailed, bony
+horse of Jasper Parloe drawing that gentleman in his rickety wagon up
+to the mill door.
+
+"Hi, Jabe!" called Jasper, in his cracked voice. "Hi, Jabe! Here's a
+grindin' for ye. And for massy's sake don't take out a double toll as
+you us'ally do. Remember I'm a poor man--I ain't got lashin's of
+money like you to count ev'ry night of my life--he, he, he!"
+
+The boy had appeared at the mill door first, and he stepped down and
+would have taken the bag of grain out of the wagon, had not the miller
+himself suddenly appeared and said, in his stern way:
+
+"Let it be."
+
+"Hi, Jabe!" cackled Jasper. "Don't be mean about it. He's younger than
+me, or you. Let him shoulder the sack into the mill."
+
+"The sack isn't coming into the mill," said Jabez, shortly.
+
+"What? what?" cried Parloe. "You haven't retired from business; have
+you, miller? Ye ain't got so wealthy that ye ain't goin' to grind any
+more?"
+
+"I grind for those whom it pleases me to grind for," said the miller,
+sternly.
+
+"Then take in the bag, boy," said Jasper, still grinning.
+
+But Mr. Potter waved the boy away, and stood looking at Jasper with
+folded arms and a heavy frown upon his face.
+
+"Come, come, Jabe! you keep a mill. You grind for the public, you
+know," said Jasper.
+
+"I grind no more for you," rejoined the miller. "I have told you so.
+Get you gone, Jasper Parloe."
+
+"No," said the latter, obstinately. "I am going to have my meal."
+
+"Not here," said the miller.
+
+"Now, that's all nonsense, Jabe," exclaimed Jasper Parloe, wagging his
+head. "Ye know ye can't refuse me."
+
+"I do refuse you."
+
+"Then ye'll take the consequences, Jabe--ye'll take the consequences.
+Ye know very well if I say the word to Mr. Cameron--"
+
+"Get away from here!" commanded Potter, interrupting. "I want nothing
+to do with you."
+
+"You mean to dare me; do ye, Jabe?" demanded Jasper, with an evil
+smile.
+
+"I don't mean to have anything to do with a thief," growled the
+miller, and turning on his heel went back into the mill.
+
+It was just then that Ruth spied the automobile coming down the road
+with Tom Cameron at the steering wheel. Ruth bobbed into the house in
+a hurry, with a single wave of her hand to Tom, for she was not yet
+quite ready. When she came down five minutes later, with a fresh
+ribbon in her hair and one of the new frocks that she had never worn
+before looking its very trimmest, Jasper Parloe had alighted from his
+ramshackle wagon and was talking with Tom, who still sat in the
+automobile.
+
+And as Ruth stood in the porch a moment, while Aunt Alvirah proudly
+looked her over to see that she was all right, the girl saw by the
+expression on Tom's face that whatever Parloe talked about was not
+pleasing the lad in the least.
+
+She saw, too, that Tom pulled something from his pocket hastily and
+thrust it into Parloe's hand. The old man chuckled slily, said
+something else to the boy, and then turned away and climbed into his
+wagon again. He drove away as Ruth ran down the path to the waiting
+auto.
+
+"Hullo, Tom!" she cried. "I told you I wouldn't keep you waiting
+long."
+
+"How-do, Ruth," he returned; but it must be confessed that he was not
+as bright and smiling as usual, and he looked away from Ruth and after
+Parloe the next moment.
+
+As the girl reached the machine Uncle Jabez came to the mill door
+again. He observed Ruth about to get in and he came down the steps and
+strode toward the Cameron automobile. Jasper Parloe had clucked to his
+old nag and was now rattling away from the place.
+
+"Where are you going, Ruth?" the miller demanded, sternly eyeing Tom
+Cameron, and without returning the lad's polite greeting.
+
+"She is going up to our house to lunch with my sister, Mr. Potter,"
+Tom hastened to say before Ruth could reply.
+
+"She will do nothing of the kind," said Uncle Jabez, shortly. "Ruth,
+go back to the house and help your Aunt Alvirah. You are going about
+too much and leaving your aunt to do everything."
+
+This was not so, and Ruth knew very well that her uncle knew it was
+not so. She flushed and hesitated, and he said:
+
+"Do you hear me? I expect to be obeyed if you remain here at the Red
+Mill. Just because I lay few commands upon you, is no reason why you
+should consider it the part of wisdom to be disobedient when I do give
+an order."
+
+"Oh, Uncle! do let me go," begged Ruth, fairly crying. "Helen has been
+so kind to me--and Aunt Alvirah did not suppose you would object.
+They come here--"
+
+"But I do not propose that they shall come here any more," declared
+Uncle Jabez, in the same stern tone. "You can drive on, young man. The
+less I see of any of you Camerons the better I shall like it."
+
+"But, Mr. Potter--" began Tom.
+
+The old man raised his hand and stopped him.
+
+"I won't hear any talk about it. I know just how much these Camerons
+have done for you," he said to Ruth. "They've done enough--altogether
+too much. We will stop this intimacy right here and now. At least, you
+will not go to their house, Ruth. Do as I tell you--go in to your
+Aunt Alviry."
+
+Then, as the weeping girl turned away, she heard him say, even more
+harshly than he had spoken to her: "I don't want anything to do with
+people who are hand and glove with that Jasper Parloe. He's a thief--
+a bigger thief, perhaps, than people generally know. At least, he's
+cost me enough. Now, you drive on and don't let me see you or your
+sister about here again."
+
+He turned on his heel and went back to the mill without giving Tom
+time to say a word. The boy, angry enough, it was evident from his
+expression of countenance, hesitated several minutes after the miller
+was gone. Once he arose, as though he would get out of the car and
+follow Jabez into the mill. But finally he started the engine, turned
+the car, and drove slowly away.
+
+This was a dreadful day indeed for the girl of the Red Mill. Never in
+her life had she been so hurt--never had she felt herself so ill-used
+since coming to this place to live. Uncle Jabez had never been really
+kind to her; but aside from the matter of the loss of her trunk he had
+never before been actually cruel.
+
+He could have selected no way that would have hurt her more keenly. To
+refuse to let her go to see the girl she loved--her only close friend
+and playmate! And to refuse to allow Helen and Tom to come here to see
+her! This intimacy was all (and Ruth admitted it now, in a torrent of
+tears, as she lay upon her little bed) that made life at the Red Mill
+endurable. Had she not met Helen and found her such a dear girl and so
+kind a companion, Ruth told herself now that she never could have
+borne the dull existence of this house.
+
+She heard Aunt Alvirah's halting step upon the stair and before the
+old woman reached the top of the flight, Ruth plainly heard her
+moaning to herself: "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!" Thus groaning and
+halting, Aunt Alvirah came to Ruth's door and pushed it open.
+
+"Oh, deary, deary, me!" she whispered, limping into the room.
+"Don't-ee cry no more, poor lamb. Old Aunt Alviry knows jest how it
+hurts--she wishes she could bear it for ye! Now, now, my pretty
+creetur--don't-ee take on so. Things will turn out all right yet.
+Don't lose hope."
+
+She had reached the bed ere this and had gathered the sobbing girl
+into her arms. She sat upon the side of the bed and rocked Ruth to and
+fro, with her arms about her. She did not say much more, but her
+unspoken sympathy was wonderfully comforting.
+
+Aunt Alvirah did not criticise Uncle Jabez's course. She never did.
+But she gave Ruth in her sorrow all the sympathy of which her great
+nature was capable. She seemed to understand just how the girl felt,
+without a spoken word on her part. She did not seek to explain the
+miller's reason for acting as he did. Perhaps she had less idea than
+had Ruth why Jabez Potter should have taken such a violent dislike to
+the Camerons.
+
+For Ruth half believed that she held the key to that mystery. When she
+came to think it over afterward she put what she had heard between the
+two old men--Jabez and Parloe--down at the brook, with what had
+occurred at the mill just before Tom Cameron had come in sight; and
+putting these two incidents together and remembering that Jasper
+Parloe had overheard Tom in his delirium accuse the miller of being
+the cause of his injury, Ruth was pretty sure that in that combination
+of circumstances was the true explanation of Uncle Jabez's cruel
+decision.
+
+Ruth was not the girl to lie on her bed and weep for long. She was
+sensible enough to know very well that such a display of
+disappointment and sorrow would not better the circumstances. While
+she remained at the Red Mill she must obey Uncle Jabez, and his
+decisions could not be controverted. She had never won a place near
+enough to the miller's real nature to coax him, or to reason with him
+regarding this gruff decision he had made. She had to make up her mind
+that, unless something unexpected happened to change Uncle Jabez, she
+was cut off from much future association with her dear chum, Helen
+Cameron.
+
+She got up in a little while, bathed her face and eyes, and kissed
+Aunt Alvirah warmly.
+
+"You are a dear!" she declared, hugging the little old woman. "Come! I
+won't cry any more. I'll come down stairs with you, Auntie, and help
+get dinner."
+
+But Ruth could eat none herself. She did not feel as though she could
+even sit at the table with Uncle Jabez that noon, and remained outside
+while the miller ate. He never remarked upon her absence, or paid her
+the least attention. Oh, how heartily Ruth wished now that she had
+never come away from Darrowtown and had never seen the Red Mill.
+
+The next Monday morning the rural mail carrier brought her a long
+letter from Helen. Uncle Jabez had not said anything against a
+correspondence; indeed, Ruth did not consider that he had more than
+refused to have the Camerons come to see her or she to return their
+visits. If she met them on the road, or away from the house, she did
+not consider that it would be disobeying Uncle Jabez to associate with
+Helen and Tom.
+
+This letter from Helen was very bitter against the miller and wildly
+proposed that Ruth should run away from the Red Mill and come to
+Overlook to live. She declared that her papa would not object--
+indeed, that everybody would warmly welcome the appearance of Ruth
+Fielding "even if she came like a tramp "; and that Tom would linger
+about the Red Mill for an hour or two every evening so that Ruth could
+slip out and communicate with her friends, or could be helped away if
+she wanted to leave without the miller's permission.
+
+But Ruth, coming now to consider her situation more dispassionately,
+simply wrote a loving letter in reply to Helen's, entrusting it to the
+post, and went on upon her usual way, helping Aunt Alviry, going to
+school, and studying harder than ever. She missed Helen's
+companionship vastly; she often wet her pillow with tears at night
+(and that was not like Ruth) and felt very miserable indeed at times.
+
+But school and its routine took up a deal of the girl's thought. Her
+studies confined her more and more as the end of the term approached.
+And in addition to the extra work assigned the girl at the Red Mill by
+Miss Cramp, there was a special study which Ruth wished to excel in.
+Miss Cramp was old-fashioned enough to believe that spelling was the
+very best training for the mind and the memory and that it was a
+positive crime for any child to grow up to be a slovenly speller. Four
+times a year Miss Cramp held an old-fashioned "spelling-bee" at the
+schoolhouse, on designated Friday evenings; and now came the last of
+the four for this school year.
+
+Ruth had never been an extra good speller, but because her kind
+teacher was so insistent upon the point, the girl from the Red Mill
+put forth special efforts to please Miss Cramp in this particular. She
+had given much spare time to the study of the spelling book, and
+particularly did she devote herself to that study now that she hadn't
+her chum to associate with.
+
+The spelling-bees were attended by the parents of the pupils and all
+the neighbors thereabout, and Helen wrote that she and Tom were going
+to attend on the evening in question and that Tom said he hoped to see
+Ruth "just eat up those other girls" when it came to spelling. But
+Ruth Fielding much doubted her cannibalistic ability in this line.
+Julia Semple had borne off the honors on two occasions during the
+winter, and her particular friend Rosa Ball, had won the odd trial.
+Now it was generally considered that the final spelling-bee would be
+the occasion of a personal trial of strength between the two friendly
+rivals. Either Julia or Rosa must win.
+
+But Ruth was the kind of a person who, in attempting a thing, did her
+very best to accomplish it. She had given some time and thought to the
+spelling book. She was not likely to "go down" before any easy, or
+well-known word. Indeed, she believed herself letter perfect in the
+very hardest page of the spelling-book some time before the fateful
+evening.
+
+"Oh, perhaps you think you know them all, Ruth Fielding!" exclaimed
+one of the little girls one day when the spelling-bee was being
+discussed at recess. "But Miss Cramp doesn't stick to the speller. You
+just wait till she tackles the dictionary."
+
+"The dictionary!" cried Ruth.
+
+"That's what Miss Cramp does," the child assured her. "If she can't
+spell them down out of the speller, she begins at the beginning of the
+dictionary and gives words out until she finds one that floors them
+all. You wait and see!"
+
+So Ruth thought it would do no harm to study the dictionary a little,
+and taking her cue from what the little girls said, she remained in
+between sessions and began with "aperse," committing to memory as well
+as she could those words that looked to be "puzzlers." Before the day
+of the spelling-bee she believed that, if Miss Cramp didn't go beyond
+the first letter of the alphabet, she would be fairly well grounded in
+the words as they came in rotation.
+
+Ruth knew that every other pupil in the school would have friends in
+the audience that evening save herself. She wished that Aunt Alvirah
+could have attended the spelling-bee; but of course her back and her
+bones precluded her walking so far, and neither of them dared ask
+Uncle Jabez to hitch up and take them to the schoolhouse in his wagon.
+
+The schoolhouse was crowded, all the extra seats that could be
+provided were arranged in rows, and, it being a mild evening, the men
+and bigger boys stood outside the open windows. There was a great
+bustle and whispering until Miss Cramp's tinkling bell called the
+audience as well as the pupils to order.
+
+The scholars took their places according to their class standing in a
+long row around the room. As one was spelled down he or she took a
+seat again, and so the class was rapidly thinned out, for many of the
+little folk missed on the very easiest words in the speller. Ruth
+stood within ten pupils of the head of the line at the beginning and
+when the spelling began she had an encouraging smile and nod from
+Helen, who, with her brother, sat where they could see the girl from
+the Red Mill Ruth determined to do her best.
+
+  CHAPTER XIX
+
+ THE STING OF POVERTY
+
+At first Miss Cramp's "giving out" of the words was like repeated
+volleys of small-arms in this orthographical battle. Every pupil well
+knew the pages of two-syllable words beginning, "baker, maker, poker,
+broker, quaker, shaker" and even the boys rattled these off, grinning
+the while in a most sheepish fashion at their elder brothers or their
+women-folk, who beamed in pride upon them until such lists as "food,
+soup, meat, bread, dough, butter" bowled over the more shaky ones.
+
+The first failures (and usually upon comparatively easy words) were
+greeted with some laughter, and the ridiculed spellers sought their
+seats with hanging heads. By and by, however, the failures were not
+all at the bottom of the class; here and there such lists as "inane,
+profane, humane, insane, mundane, urbane," or, "staid, unlaid,
+mermaid, prayed, weighed, portrayed" began to pick out uncertain ones
+the entire length of the line.
+
+Miss Cramp shot out word after word, her spectacles gleaming and her
+eyes twinkling. The grim little smile upon her lips when one big girl
+above Ruth went down before "forswear," spelling it with an extra "e,"
+showed that the teacher considered the miss deserved to fail because
+of her heedlessness. Then, when she reached the list ending in "ay, ey
+and eigh" they fell like ripe huckleberries all down the line.
+"Inveigh" dropped so many that it was indeed a massacre, and some of
+the nervous spellers got together such weird combinations of letters
+to represent that single word that the audience was soon in a very
+hilarious state.
+
+"Move up," commanded Miss Cramp to the pupils left standing, and there
+was a great clumping of feet as the line closed up. Not more than two
+dozen were standing by this time, and half an hour had not passed. But
+after that it was another story. The good spellers remained. They
+spelled carefully and quietly and a hush fell upon the whole room as
+Miss Cramp gave out the words with less haste and more precision.
+
+The "seeds," as all the children called the puzzling list, floored
+two, and several of the best spellers had to think carefully while the
+list was being given out: "proceed, succeed, exceed, accede, secede,
+recede, impede, precede, concede, antecede, intercede, supersede."
+Fortunately Ruth, who now kept her eyes upon Miss Cramp's face,
+spelled carefully and correctly, without any sign of hesitancy. The
+match went on then, for page after page, without a pupil failing.
+Perhaps there was hesitation at times, but Miss Cramp gave any
+deserving scholar ample time.
+
+Page after page of the spelling-book was turned. That tricksey little
+list of "goblin, problem, conduct, rocket, pontiff, compact, prospect,
+ostrich" finally left but three scholars between Ruth and Julia at the
+head of the class. One of these was Oliver Shortsleeves, a French
+Canadian lad whose parents had Anglicised their name when they came
+down into New York State. He was as sharp as could be and he had
+pushed Julia Semple and Rosa Ball hard before in the spelling matches.
+But he was the only boy left standing within the next few minutes, and
+again the pupils moved up. There were but fifteen of them. Rosa Ball
+came next to Ruth, below her, and the girl from the Red Mill knew very
+well that Miss Ball would only be too delighted to spell her, Ruth,
+down.
+
+Indeed, when Ruth waited a moment before spelling "seraglio," Rosa in
+her haste blurted out the word, and Julia smiled and there was a
+little rustle of expectancy. It was evident that many of the scholars,
+as well as the audience, thought Ruth had failed.
+
+"Wait!" exclaimed Miss Cramp, sharply. "Did I pass that word to you,
+Rosa?"
+
+"No, ma'am; but I thought..."
+
+"Never mind what you thought. You know the rule well enough," said
+Miss Cramp. "That will be your word, and I will give Ruth Fielding
+another. Spell 'seraglio' again, Rosa."
+
+"'S e r a l g i o'," spelled Rosa.
+
+"I thought in your haste to get ahead of Ruth you spelled it wrongly,
+Rosa," said Miss Cramp, calmly. "You may go down. Next--'Seraglio.'"
+
+Miss Ball went down in tears--angry tears--but there was not much
+sympathy shown her by the audience, and little by her fellow-pupils.
+It was soon seen that there was some sort of rivalry between Ruth and
+Julia, and that the girl from the Red Mill had not been treated
+fairly.
+
+Oliver Shortsleeves became sadly twisted up after hearing those
+immediately before him spell in succession "schooner, tetrarch,
+pibroch and anarchy" and tried to spell "architrave" with so many
+letters that he would have needed no more to have spelled it twice
+over. So Ruth then became fourth in the line. She continued to spell
+carefully and serenely. Nothing disturbed her poise, for she neither
+looked around the room nor gave heed to anything that went on save
+Miss Cramp's distinctly uttered words.
+
+On and on went the steady voice of Miss Cramp. She bowled over one
+pupil with "microcosm," another the next minute with "metonymy ";
+"nymphean" and "naphtha" sent two more to their seats; while the
+silent "m" in "mnemonics" cut a most fearful swath in the remainder,
+so that after the smoke of that bomb was dissipated only Julia, Ruth,
+and two others stood of all the class.
+
+Julia Semple had darted many angry glances et Ruth since the cutting
+down of her friend, Rosa Ball, and her flaunting of the girl from the
+Red Mill, and her scornful looks, might easily have disturbed Ruth had
+the latter not been wise enough to keep her own gaze fixed upon the
+teacher.
+
+Helen and Tom were delighted and plainly showed their enjoyment of
+Ruth's success. Now, as the situation became more strained, the
+audience applauded when one of the spellers overcame a more than
+ordinarily difficult word. So that when the girl next to Ruth missed
+"tergiversation" and it passed to the girl from the Red Mill, who
+spelled it without hesitation, and correctly, Helen applauded softly,
+while Tom audibly exclaimed: "Good for Ruthie!"
+
+This did not make Julia Semple any more pleasant. She actually looked
+across at Helen and Tom and scowled at them. It had already begun to
+be whispered about the room that the match was easily Julia's--that
+she was sure to win; and Mr. Semple, the chairman of the trustees, who
+sat on the platform with the teacher, looked very well satisfied
+indeed.
+
+But Miss Cramp had come down now to the final words in the speller--
+down to "zenith" and "zoology." And still there were three standing.
+Miss Cramp looked for a moment as though she would like to announce
+the match a tie between the trio, for it was plain there would be hard
+feelings engendered among some of the audience, as well as the pupils,
+if the match continued. Her custom had been, however, to go on to the
+bitter end--to spell down the very last one, and she could not easily
+make a change in her method now.
+
+A general sigh and whispering went around when she was seen to reach
+for the academic dictionary which was always the foundation of the
+tower of books upon the northeast corner of Miss Cramp's desk. She
+opened the volume and shot out the word: "Aperse."
+
+The girl standing between Ruth and Julia staggered along until they
+reached "abstinence"; she put an "e" instead of an "i" in the middle
+syllable, and went down. But the audience applauded her. Julia Semple
+began to hesitate now. The end was near. Perhaps she had never taken
+the time to follow down the rows of words in the dictionary. At
+"acalycal" she stumbled, started twice, then stopped and asked to have
+it repeated.
+
+"'Acalycal,'" said Miss Cramp, steadily.
+
+"'A c a l l y c a l,'" stammered Julia.
+
+"Wrong," said Miss Cramp, dispassionately.
+
+"Next. 'Acalycal'?"
+
+Ruth spelled it with two 'l's' only and Miss Cramp looked up quickly.
+
+"Right," she said. "You may step down, Julia. It has been our custom
+to keep on until the winner is spelled down, too. Next word, Ruth:
+'acalycine.'"
+
+But there was such a buzz of comment that Miss Cramp looked up again.
+Julia Semple had seemed half stunned for the moment. Then she wheeled
+on Ruth and said, in a sharp whisper:
+
+"I saw that Cameron girl spell it for you! She's been helping you all
+the time! Everybody knows she's patronizing and helping you. Why,
+you're wearing her old, cast-off clothes. You've got one of her
+dresses on now! Pauper!"
+
+Ruth started back, her face turned red, then white, as though she had
+been struck. The smarting tears started to her eyes, and blinded her.
+
+"Julia! take your seat instantly!" said Miss Cramp, more sharply.
+"Ruth! spell 'acalycine.'"
+
+But Ruth could not open her lips. Had she done so she would have burst
+into tears. And she could not have spelled the word right--nor any
+other word right--at that moment. She merely shook her head and
+followed Julia to her seat, stumblingly, while a dead silence fell
+upon the room.
+
+  CHAPTER XX
+
+ UNCLE JABEZ IS MYSTERIOUS
+
+Miss Cramp was in the habit of calling upon some trustee to speak at
+the close of the exercises--usually Mr. Semple--and then there was a
+little social time before the assemblage broke up. But the frown on
+the chairman's face did not suggest that that gentleman had anything
+very jovial to say at the moment, and the teacher closed the exercises
+herself in a few words that were not at all personal to the winner of
+the spelling-match.
+
+When the stir of people moving about aroused Ruth, her only thought
+was to get away from the schoolhouse. Perhaps not more than two dozen
+people had distinctly heard what Julia so cruelly said to her; but it
+seemed to the girl from the Red Mill as though everybody in that
+throng knew that she was a charity child--that, as Julia said, the
+very frock she had on belonged to somebody else.
+
+And to Helen! She had never for a moment suspected that Helen had been
+the donor of the three frocks. Of course everybody in the neighborhood
+had known all the time that she was wearing Helen's cast-off clothing.
+Everybody but Ruth herself would have recognized the dresses; she had
+been in the neighborhood so short a time that, of course, she was not
+very well acquainted with Helen's wardrobe.
+
+At the moment she could not feel thankful to her chum. She could only
+remember Julia's cutting words, and feel the sting to her pride that
+she should have shown herself before all beholders the recipient of
+her friend's alms.
+
+Nobody spoke to her as she glided through the moving crowd and reached
+the door. Miss Cramp was delayed in getting to her; Helen and Tom did
+not see her go, for they were across the room and farthest from the
+door. And so she reached the exit and slipped out.
+
+The men and boys from outside thronged the tiny anteroom and the
+steps. As she pushed through them one man said:
+
+"Why, here's the smart leetle gal that took Semple's gal down a peg--
+eh? She'd oughter have a prize for that, that's what she ought!"
+
+But Ruth could not reply to this, although she knew it was meant
+kindly. She went out into the darkness. There were many horses hitched
+about the schoolhouse, but she reached the clear road in safety and
+ran toward the Red Mill.
+
+The girl came to the mill and went quietly into the kitchen. She had
+got the best of her tears now, but Aunt Alviry's bright eyes
+discovered at once that she was unhappy. Uncle Jabez did not even
+raise his eyes when she came in.
+
+"What is the matter with my pretty leetle creetur?" whispered the old
+woman, creeping close to Ruth.
+
+"Nothing is the matter now," returned Ruth, in the same low tone.
+
+"Didn't you do well?" asked the old woman, wistfully.
+
+"I won the spelling match," replied Ruth. "I stood up longer than
+anybody else."
+
+"Is that so!" exclaimed Aunt Alvirah, with pride. "I told ye so,
+Ruthie. And ye beat that Semple gal?"
+
+"She was the last one to fail before me," Ruth returned.
+
+"Well, well! D'ye hear that, Jabez? Our Ruth won the spellin'-match."
+
+The miller did not raise his head from his accounts; only grunted and
+nodded.
+
+"But something went wrong wi' ye, deary?" persisted Aunt Alvirah,
+watching Ruth's face closely.
+
+"Oh, Auntie! why didn't you tell me that Helen gave me the frocks?"
+
+"Deary, deary, me!" ejaculated Aunt Alvirah. "How did you know?"
+
+"Julia Semple told me--she told me before everybody!" gasped Ruth,
+fighting hard to keep back the tears. "She called me a pauper! She
+called it out before them all, and said that I wore Helen's cast-off
+clothes!"
+
+"The mean thing!" said Aunt Alvirah, with more sharpness then she
+usually expressed. "Isn't that jest like the Semples? They're all that
+way. Got mad with you because you beat her at spelling; eh?"
+
+"Yes. But she has known it right along, of course."
+
+"Deary me!" said Aunt Alvirah. "Nobody supposed them frocks would be
+reckernized--least of all Helen. She meant it kindly, Ruthie. It was
+kindly meant."
+
+"I wish I'd worn my old black dress to rags!" cried Ruth, who was too
+hurt to be sensible or just. "I suppose Helen meant it kindly. And you
+did what you thought was right, Auntie. But all the girls have turned
+up their noses at me--"
+
+"Let 'em stay turned up--what do you care?" suddenly growled Uncle
+Jabez.
+
+For the moment Ruth had forgotten his presence and she and Aunt
+Alvirah had been talking more loudly. They both fell suddenly silent
+and stared at him.
+
+"Are ye too proud to wear dresses that's give to ye?" demanded Uncle
+Jabez. "Ye ain't too proud to take food and shelter from me. And I'm a
+poorer man than Macy Cameron an' less able to give."
+
+The tone and the words were both cruel--or seemed to be to Ruth's
+mind. But she said, bravely:
+
+"People know that you're my uncle--"
+
+"I was yer mother's uncle; that's all. The relationship ain't much,"
+declared Uncle Jabez.
+
+"Jabez," said the little old woman, solemnly, "you've been a good
+friend to me--ye've borne with me in sickness and in weakness. Ye
+took me from the a'mshouse when I didn't have a penny to my name and
+nobody else to turn to, it seemed. I've tried ter do for ye
+faithfully. But I ain't done my duty by you no more than this child
+here has since she's come here to the Red Mill. You know that well
+yourself, too. Don't blame the pretty leetle creetur for havin' the
+nateral vanity that all young things hez. Remember, Jabez, that it was
+through you that she has had to accept clothing from outsiders."
+
+"Through me?" growled the miller, raising his countenance and scowling
+at the brave old woman--for it took courage for Aunt Alvirah to speak
+to him in this way.
+
+"Helen Cam'ron wouldn't have been called on to give Ruthie her frocks
+which she only wore last year, and outgrew, if you hadn't lost
+Ruthie's trunk. Ye know that, Jabez," urged Aunt Alvirah.
+
+"I s'pose I'm never to hear the last of that!" stormed the miller.
+
+"You are still to hear the first word from Ruthie about it, Jabez,"
+admonished his housekeeper.
+
+"Well!"
+
+"Well," repeated Aunt Alvirah, still speaking quietly but earnestly.
+"You know it ain't my way to interfere in your affairs, Jabez. But
+right is right. It was you lost Ruthie's trunk. I never knew ye ter be
+dishonest--"
+
+"What's that?" gasped Mr. Potter, the red mantling his gray cheek
+dully.
+
+"I never knew ye ter do a dishonest thing afore, Jabez," pursued Aunt
+Alvirah, with her voice shaking now. "But it's dishonest for ye to
+never even perpose ter make good what ye lost. If you'd lost a sack of
+grain for a neighbor ye'd made it up to him; wouldn't ye?"
+
+"What's thet gotter do with a lot of foolish fal-lals an' rigamagigs
+belonging to a gal that I've taken in--"
+
+"To help us. And she does help us," declared the old woman, quickly.
+"She more'n airns her keep, Jabez. Ye know she does."
+
+"Well!" grunted the miller again, but he actually looked somewhat
+abashed and dropped his gaze to the ledger.
+
+"Well, then, Jabez Potter," said the old housekeeper, "you think it
+over--think it over, Jabez. And as sure as my name's Alviry Boggs, if
+you do think it over, something will come of it!"
+
+This seemed like a rather mysterious saying, and there seemed to be
+nothing for the miller to observe in answer to it. Ruth had ere this
+dried her eyes and it was soon bedtime. It is a long time from Friday
+night to Monday morning--especially to young folk. The hurt that Ruth
+had felt over Julia Semple's unkind words had lost its keenness in
+Ruth's mind ere school began again. So Ruth took up her school duties
+quite as usual, wearing one of the pretty frocks in which, however,
+she could no longer take such pride and delight.
+
+There was really nothing for her to do but wear them. She realized
+that. She felt, however, that whenever any girl looked at her she
+remembered that it was Helen Cameron's cast-off dress she wore; so she
+was glad that the big girls were no more friendly than before and that
+they seldom looked at her.
+
+Besides, all the school was very busy now. In a fortnight would came
+graduation. About all Ruth heard at recess and between sessions, even
+among the smaller girls, was the discussion of what they were to wear
+on the last day of the term. It was a great day at this school, and
+Miss Cramp was to graduate from her care seven pupils--four girls and
+three boys--all of whom would go to the Cheslow High the coming year.
+Ruth would not be ready to graduate; but before fall, if she was
+faithful to the tasks Miss Cramp set her, that kind teacher assured
+the girl from the Red Mill that she would be able to enter the higher
+school with this graduating class.
+
+All the older girls and many of the others were to wear white. Miss
+Cramp approved of this, for even a simple white dress would look
+pretty and nice and was within the means of most of the girl pupils.
+Nobody asked Ruth what she would wear; and she was glad of that, for
+she knew that she had no choice but to don the shabby black cloth
+frock she had worn at first, or one of the "charity" frocks.
+
+In this first week after the spelling-bee she did not see Helen or
+Tom, and only received a brief note from Helen which she tried to
+answer with her usual cheerfulness. Helen and Tom were going to the
+city for a few days, therefore Ruth was not likely to see either until
+the end of the term.
+
+At the Red Mill matters went much the same as usual. If Uncle Jabez
+had taken to heart anything that Aunt Alvirah had said, he did not
+show it. He was as moody as ever and spoke no more to Ruth than
+before. But once or twice the girl found him looking at her with a
+puzzled frown which she did not understand.
+
+On Saturday, however, at dinner, Mr. Potter said: "Alviry, if the gal
+has got her work done she can go to town with me this afternoon."
+
+Ruth shrank a little and looked appealingly at the old woman. But Aunt
+Alvirah would not or did not, understand Ruth's pleading, and said,
+briskly:
+
+"She shall be ready when you've shaved and Ben's harnessed the mules,
+Jabez."
+
+"Oh, Auntie!" whispered Ruth, when the miller had gone out, "I don't
+want to go with him! I don't really!"
+
+"Now, don't say that, child," said Aunt Alvirah. "Don't do nothing to
+make him feel that ye air afraid of him. Go 'long. Ye can call on that
+leetle lame gal ye was tellin' us about while Jabez does his errands.
+Now hurry, deary."
+
+Ruth felt quite confused by this. It seemed that there must be some
+private understanding between Aunt Alvirah and the miller. She went
+slowly and changed her frock. The old lady, crying up the stairway
+after her, advised her to look her smartest--so as to please Jabez,
+forsooth! Indeed, she finally hobbled up stairs, with many
+ejaculations of "Oh, my back and oh, my bones!" for the purpose of
+satisfying herself that Ruth was as nicely dressed as she could be.
+
+And Uncle Jabez--or no other man--need have been ashamed of the
+appearance of Ruth Fielding when the mules came around hitched to the
+heavy farm-wagon which Mr. Potter usually drove. It was piled high
+with bags of flour and meal, which he proposed to exchange at the
+Cheslow stores for such supplies as he might need. The load seemed
+heavier than usual this day.
+
+It was not a bad wagon to ride in, though dusty; for there was a
+spring seat and over it a new hood to shield the riders from the sun.
+Ruth followed Uncle Jabez out of the house and climbed up over the
+wheel and into the seat when he nodded for her to do so. He followed
+her, took up the reins, and the boy, Ben, stood away from the mules'
+heads.
+
+Aunt Alvirah stood on the porch and waved her apron at Ruth every time
+the girl turned around, until the wagon had crossed the bridge and was
+way up the long hill on the Cheslow road. It was a delightful June
+afternoon and had Ruth been traversing this pleasant highway in almost
+any other way, she would have enjoyed the ride mightily.
+
+  CHAPTER XXI
+
+ THE END OF THE TERM
+
+But the companionship of the grim and glum proprietor of the Red Mill
+was not conducive--in Ruth's case, at least--to any feeling of
+pleasure. Uncle Jabez seemed about to speak to her a dozen times
+before they were out of sight of the mill; but every time Ruth turned
+toward him, half expecting to be addressed, his lips were grimly set
+and he was looking straight ahead over the mules' ears.
+
+It is doubtful if Uncle Jabez saw anything of the beauty of the day or
+the variety of the landscape. Looking as he did he could not have
+observed by his eyes of flesh much but the brown ribbon of road before
+them, for miles. And it is doubtful if, spiritually, he appreciated
+much of the beauty of the June day. The mules toiled up the long hill,
+straining in their collars; but they began to trot upon the other side
+of the ridge and the five miles to Cheslow were covered in a
+comparatively short time.
+
+Finally, when Uncle Jabez drew up before one of the largest stores,
+she felt that she must break the awful silence. And stumblingly she
+preferred her request:
+
+"If you are going to be some time trading, Uncle Jabez, can't I go
+down to call on Mercy Curtis? I can come here again and meet you at
+any time you say."
+
+"Who's that? Sam Curtis' gal--the cripple?" asked Uncle Jabez,
+shortly.
+
+"Yes, sir. She likes to have me come and see her."
+
+"Can't you find nothing more interestin' to do when ye come to town
+than go to see a sick gal?" was the miller's surprising inquiry.
+
+"I--I promised to call on her if I could whenever I was in town. She
+really likes to have me come," explained Ruth.
+
+"Well, you can go," grunted Uncle Jabez. "I'll stop there for ye when
+I'm done tradin'."
+
+He had already climbed down from the high seat. Ruth came lightly down
+after him and he actually turned and jumped her over the wheel so that
+her dress should not be soiled. Then, suddenly, he said:
+
+"Wait. I want you to go into this store with me first."
+
+He turned away abruptly, so that Ruth could not see what his
+countenance expressed. He carefully tied his mules to a hitching post
+and then stumped into the store without again glancing in her
+direction. Ruth followed him timidly.
+
+It was a big store with many departments, and on one side were dry
+goods and clothing, where the clerks were women, or young girls, while
+the groceries, provisions, hardware and agricultural tools were
+displayed upon the other side of the long room. Uncle Jabez strode
+straight to the first woman he saw who was disengaged.
+
+"This girl wants a dress to wear to the school graduating," he said,
+in his harsh voice. "It must be white. Let her pick out the goods, all
+the fal-lals that go with it, and a pattern to make it by. Ye
+understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the woman, smiling.
+
+"You know me?" asked Uncle Jabez. "Yes? Then send the bill to the
+other side of the store and I'll pay it when I sell my meal and
+flour." Then to the astounded Ruth he said: "I'll come to Sam Curtis'
+for you when I'm done. See you don't keep me waiting."
+
+He wheeled and strode away before Ruth could find her voice. She was
+so amazed that she actually felt faint She could not understand it. A
+white dress! And she to make her choice alone, without regard to
+material, or price! She could have been no more stunned had Uncle
+Jabez suddenly run mad and been caught by the authorities and sent to
+an asylum.
+
+But the shop woman awoke her, having asked her twice what kind of
+white goods she wanted to see. The repeated query brought Ruth to her
+senses. She put the astonishing fact that Uncle Jabez had done this,
+behind her, and remembered at once the importance of the task before
+her.
+
+She had not listened to the talk of the other girls at school for
+nothing. She knew just what was the most popular fabric that season
+for simple white dresses that could be "done up" when soiled. She had
+even found the style of a dress she liked in a fashion magazine that
+one of the girls had had at school. Ruth was self-posessed at once.
+She went about her shopping as carefully and with as little haste as
+though she had been buying for herself for years; whereas this was the
+very first frock that she had ever been allowed to have the choice of.
+
+There were costlier goods, and some of the girls of the graduating
+class were to have them; but Ruth chose something so durable and at so
+low a price that she hoped Uncle Jabez would not be sorry for his
+generosity. She saw the goods, and lace, and buttons, and all the
+rest, made up into a neat package and sent across to the other counter
+with the bill, and then went out of the store and up Market Street
+toward the railroad.
+
+She saw Uncle Jabez nowhere, or she would have run to him to thank him
+for the present. And she had been in Mercy Curtis' front window for
+quite an hour before the mules turned the corner into the street and
+the wagon rattled up to the house and stopped.
+
+"And is that ugly old man your uncle?" demanded Mercy, who had been
+less crusty and exacting herself on this occasion.
+
+"That is Uncle Jabez;" admitted Ruth, hastening to put on her hat.
+
+"He is an ugly one; isn't he? I'd like to know him, I would," declared
+the odd child. "He ain't one that's always smirking and smiling, I bet
+you!"
+
+"He isn't given much to smiling, I must admit," laughed Ruth, stooping
+to kiss the crippled girl.
+
+"There! Go along with you," said Mercy, sharply. "You tell that ugly,
+dusty man--Dusty Miller, that's what he is--that I'm coming out to
+the Red Mill, whether he wants me to or not."
+
+And when Ruth got out upon the street Mercy had her window open and
+cried through the opening, shaking her little fist the while:
+
+"Remember! You tell Dusty Miller what I told you! I'm coming out
+there."
+
+"What's the matter with that young one?" growled Uncle Jabez, as Ruth
+climbed aboard and the mules started at a trot before she was really
+seated beside him.
+
+Ruth told him, smiling, that Mercy had taken a fancy to his looks, and
+a fancy, too, to the Red Mill from her description of it. "She wants
+very much to come out there this summer--if she can be moved that
+far."
+
+Then Ruth tried to thank the miller for the frock--which bundle she
+saw carefully placed among the other packages in the body of the
+wagon--but Uncle Jabez listened very grumpily to her broken words.
+
+"I don't know how to thank you, sir; for of all the things I wanted
+most, I believe this is the very first thing," Ruth said, stumblingly.
+"I really don't know how to thank you."
+
+"Don't try, then," he growled, but without looking at her. "I reckon
+you can thank Alviry Boggs as much as anybody. She says I owed it to
+you."
+
+"Oh, Uncle--"
+
+"There, there! I don't wanter hear no more about it," declared the
+miller. But after they had rattled on for a while in silence, he said,
+pursuing the former topic: "There ain't no reason, I s'pose, why that
+gal can't come out an' see you bimeby, if you want her to."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Uncle Jabez!" cried Ruth, feeling as though something
+very strange indeed must have happened to the miller to make him so
+agreeable. And she tried to be chatty and pleasant with him for the
+rest of the way home. But Uncle Jabez was short on conversation--he
+seemed to have hoarded that up, too, and was unable to get at his
+stores of small-talk. Most of his observations were mere grunts and
+nods, and that evening he was just as glum and silent as ever over his
+money and accounts.
+
+Miss 'Cretia Lock arrived early on Monday morning and when Ruth came
+home from school in the afternoon the wonderful dress was cut out.
+They made it in two days and Aunt Alvirah washed and starched and
+ironed it herself and it was ready for appearance on the last Friday
+afternoon of the term, when the district school held its graduating
+exercises.
+
+  CHAPTER XXII
+
+ MERCY
+
+Ruth felt that she was not very successful at Miss Cramp's school. Not
+that she had fallen behind in her studies, or failed to please her
+kind instructor; but among the pupils of the upper grade she was all
+but unconsidered. Perhaps, had time been given her, Ruth might have
+won her way with some of the fairer-minded girls; but in the few short
+weeks she had been in the district she had only managed to make
+enemies among the members of her own class.
+
+There was probably no girl in the graduating class, from Julia Semple
+and Rosa Ball, down the line, who was not glad that the girl from the
+Red Mill--a charity child!--was not numbered in the regular class
+and had no part in the graduating exercises. Nevertheless, Ruth
+proposed, if it were possible, to enter the Cheslow High School in the
+fall, and to that end she was determined to work at her books--with
+Miss Cramp's help--all summer.
+
+When it came to the last day, however, and it was known that Ruth
+would not come back to that school again in the autumn, the smaller
+girls gathered about her and were really sorry that she was to go.
+Forced out of any part with her own grade of pupils, Ruth had taken
+the little ones about her and played and taught them games, had told
+them stories on rainy days, and otherwise endeared herself to them.
+And now the little folk made much of her on this last day, bringing
+her flowers, and little presents, and clinging about her before the
+afternoon session began and their parents and friends came to listen
+to the exercises, in a way that was very pretty to behold.
+
+Aunt Alvirah wanted to come to the closing exercises of the school;
+but to expect Uncle Jabez to leave the mill in business hours for any
+such thing as that was altogether ridiculous to contemplate. Uncle
+Jabez had, however, paid some small attention to Ruth in her new
+dress. Before she started for school that last day she went to the
+mill door and showed herself to the miller.
+
+"Well, I don't see but you look as fine as the rest of 'em," he said,
+slowly. "And the price ain't much. You used judgment in buying, Niece
+Ruth. I'll say that much for ye."
+
+This being the first word of approval the miller had ever given her,
+the girl appreciated it to its full value. Since he had given her the
+dress she had wished more than ever to become friendly with him. But
+he was so moody and so given up to his accounts and the hoarding of
+wealth, that it seemed next to impossible for the girl to get near
+Uncle Jabez. Besides, he had never recovered from the bitterness
+engendered by the loss of the cash-box. A heavy scowl rested upon his
+brow all the time. Sometimes he sighed and shook his head when he sat
+idle at the table, or on the porch in the evening; and Ruth believed
+he must be mourning the money which the flood was supposed to have
+swept away.
+
+But although neither of the old folks at the Red Mill came to see the
+graduating exercises, Ruth was not exactly unhappy. The little
+children showing her that they liked her so well, could not fail to be
+a lasting pleasure to Ruth. And Helen and Tom, with their governess,
+Mrs. Murchiston, attended the exercises, and Helen sat with Ruth.
+
+"And we're going to take you home; the carriage will come for us,"
+Helen whispered in her ear.
+
+"No," Ruth said, shaking her head, "I cannot go home with you. You
+know, Uncle--"
+
+"He is an ogre," whispered Helen, with vigor.
+
+That made Ruth smile a little, and she told Helen what Mercy Curtis
+called the owner of the Red Mill, and of the fancy the lame girl had
+taken for Uncle Jabez. "He is 'Dusty Miller' to Mercy, and I shouldn't
+be surprised if Uncle Jabez had her out for a day or two, if the
+doctor will let her come. And you mustn't call him names, I tell you.
+See how good he has been to me. He gave me this new dress."
+
+"That must have hurt him awfully," said Helen, sharply. "Not but that
+the dress is becoming and pretty, dear. But that's the only thing he's
+ever given you, I warrant--and he lost your trunk!"
+
+The Camerons insisted upon driving Ruth as far as the Red Mill, just
+the same. Mrs. Murchiston was a very pleasant lady, and Helen and Tom
+evidently thought a good deal of her.
+
+"I should have been glad to have you for Helen's playmate this summer,
+my dear," said the governess to Ruth. "And I wish you were fortunate
+enough to be able to go with Helen this fall. You have just the
+characteristics in your nature to balance dear Helen's impetuosity."
+
+"Oh, I wish indeed she was going to Briarwood Hall," cried Helen.
+
+"I shall be satisfied if the way is opened for me to go to high
+school," Ruth declared, smiling. "Uncle has said nothing against it,
+and I shall begin next week walking in to Miss Cramp's to recite."
+
+Helen asked very minutely about Ruth's plans for going to Cheslow to
+recite, and the very first day of the next week, when the girl of the
+Red Mill started for town, who should overtake her within half a mile
+of the mill, but Helen and her governess going to Cheslow on a
+shopping errand, and drawn by Tubby, the pony. Of course, there was
+room for Ruth in the phaeton, and Helen and Mrs. Murchiston remained
+in town as long as Ruth did and brought her back with them. Ruth had
+time to run in and see Mercy Curtis.
+
+"I'm coming out to the Red Mill, so now!" declared the lame girl. "I
+asked Doctor Davison, and he says yes. And if he says so, that uncle
+of yours, Dusty Miller, will have to let me. Folks have to do as
+Doctor Davison says, you know. And your uncle--isn't he just an ugly
+dear? Does he look just that cross all the time? I bet he never
+forgives his Enemy!"
+
+This novel reason for liking Uncle Jabez would have been amusing had
+there not been a serious side to it. This odd child, with her warped
+and twisted fancies, was to be pitied, and Ruth secretly pitied her
+with all her heart. But she was careful now not to show Mercy that she
+commiserated her condition; that way was not the way to the cripple's
+heart.
+
+Nevertheless, being a little less afraid of Uncle Jabez than she once
+was, that very evening she mentioned Mercy's desire to him. Uncle
+Jabez never smiled, but it could be said that his face relaxed when
+she called up the memory of Sam Curtis' crippled daughter.
+
+"Yes; why not?" rejoined Aunt Alvirah. "Have the poor leetle creetur
+out here, Jabez. She'll be no bother to you. And she kin sleep with
+Ruthie."
+
+"How'll she get up and down stairs?" demanded the miller, quite
+surprising Ruth and Aunt Alvirah by considering this phase of the
+matter. "You'll have to open the East bedroom, Alviry."
+
+"Jest as you say, Jabez," answered the old woman, very meekly, but her
+bright eyes sparkling as she glanced aside at Ruth. "She kin roll
+herself in her chair in and out of that room, and onto the porch."
+
+"I'll see Doc. Davison when he drives by to-morrer," promised Uncle
+Jabez, with his usual bruskness. "If he says it's all right, she can
+come. I'll bring her chair and her luggage out in the wagon on
+Saturday. The Doc. will arrange about her being brought out
+comfortably."
+
+All this was so amazing that Ruth could not speak. Except when he had
+been angry, or at the time his cash-box was lost when the flood came
+down the river, she had never heard Uncle Jabez make so long a speech.
+Aunt Alvirah was no person with whom she could discuss this great
+change in the miller; and when Doctor Davison was hailed by Mr. Potter
+the next day and stopped at the mill for quite half an hour to confer
+with him, Ruth was still more amazed.
+
+Every other day Ruth was to go to town, if it was fair. Uncle Jabez
+made no comment upon her absence; nor did he put himself out in the
+least to arrange for any means of transportation for his niece. He
+seldom went to Cheslow himself, save on Saturdays.
+
+Ruth's next trip to Miss Cramp's was on a very hot day indeed. There
+was a glare of hot sun on the long hill and just enough fitful breeze
+to sift the road-dust all over her as she walked. But--and how
+fortunate that was!--before she had gone far the purring of a
+motor-car engine aroused her attention and Tom Cameron ran along
+beside her in his father's auto and stopped.
+
+"Ain't I lucky?" he cried. "Get in here, Ruthie, and I'll take you to
+town in a jiffy."
+
+"I'm the lucky one, I think," said Ruth, smiling in return as she
+slipped into the seat beside him. "And I almost believe, Tommy
+Cameron, that you knew I was starting for town and came along just to
+give me a lift."
+
+He grinned at her. "Don't you think you're mighty important?" he
+teased. "Suppose I haven't anything else to think about but you
+girls?"
+
+Just the same, Ruth stuck to this belief. But she had to confess that
+she was glad of the ride to town. It would have been very, very hot in
+the sun and dust.
+
+"And it's real summer, now," she said. "It will be hot in town. I'm so
+glad Mercy is going to get out of it."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Tom. "Is she going to be taken away?"
+
+Ruth told him of the remarkable interest Uncle Jabez had taken in the
+crippled girl. Tom could scarcely have been more surprised.
+
+"Why, the old curmudgeon has got a decent streak in him, after all;
+hasn't he?" he exclaimed, rather thoughtlessly.
+
+"Don't speak that way of him, Tom," urged Ruth. "I know you've got
+reason for disliking him--"
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Tom, turning on her sharply.
+
+"Oh, I--Well, Tom, you know I believe I could easily find the man who
+almost drove the team over you the night you were hurt? And you've
+known it all the time, and kept still about it!"
+
+"That mean, contemptible Jasper Parloe! He's told!" gasped Tom.
+
+"Jasper Parloe told?" repeated Ruth. "Not me."
+
+"Then--"
+
+"You muttered it when they carried you to the doctor's house that
+night. You said it was my uncle," said Ruth, quietly. "I have known it
+all along, and so has Parloe, I suppose. He and I were the only
+persons who heard what you said when you were but half conscious.
+You've kept still about it so as to shield Uncle, and I thank you."
+
+Tom looked abashed; but he was angry, too. "Confound that Parloe!" he
+exclaimed again. "He's been bleeding me, too! Threatened to go to my
+father and tell about it--and Dad would have been pretty hot with
+your uncle, I expect."
+
+"It was just fine of you, Tommy," Ruth said, admiringly. "But I'd let
+that Parloe tell anything he liked. Uncle Jabez never meant to run you
+down, I'm sure."
+
+"I tell you what," said Tom. "I'll go to him myself and talk with him.
+Guess I can do a little bargaining on my own hook. If I don't make him
+any trouble about my accident, he ought to let you and Helen be spoons
+again. She's just about worrying herself sick over you."
+
+"It will come right, Tom, in the end," returned Ruth, quietly, and
+repeating Aunt Alvirah's favorite word of cheer. "Uncle is changed, I
+believe. Think of his taking so much interest in Mercy!"
+
+"I'll see Doctor Davison," said Tom, eagerly; "and perhaps I'll bring
+the sick girl out on Saturday. She ought to be very comfortable in
+this machine. Helen would be glad to do something for her, too."
+
+"But you don't want to make any show of doing anything for Mercy,"
+returned Ruth, shaking her head as she got out before the station
+master's cottage. "There she is at the window. She'll be curious about
+you, I've no doubt."
+
+She only ran in for a few moments to see Mercy before going on to Miss
+Cramp's.
+
+"That's that Cameron boy," said the crippled girl, in her sharp way.
+"I see him and that sister of his whizzing through this street before
+in their car. Wish it'd blow up some day when they're showing off."
+
+Ruth had got so now that she never showed surprise at Mercy's harsh
+speeches. She refused to admit that she took the lame girl seriously
+in her ugly moods.
+
+"Now, you'd better not wish that, Mercy," she laughed. "Tom wants to
+take you out to the Red Mill on Saturday in that same automobile.
+Uncle Jabez is going to take the wheel chair and your baggage. You'll
+like riding in the car well enough."
+
+For a moment the cripple was silent and her eyes fell before Ruth's
+gaze. Suddenly the guest saw that Mercy's shoulders shook and that
+tears were actually dropping from Mercy's eyes.
+
+"My dear!" she cried.
+
+"Go away!" murmured the crippled girl. "I want to be alone. I ain't
+never believed," she went on, with more vigor than grammar, "that I'd
+ever get out to your house. Is--is it really so that I can?"
+
+"Uncle Jabez is determined you shall come. So is Doctor Davison. So am
+I. Everybody is helping. Why, Mercy, you'd have to come to the Red
+Mill on a visit now, even if you didn't want to!" cried Ruth, laughing
+happily.
+
+  CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ IN OLAKAH GLEN
+
+And Mercy Curtis really came to the Red Mill. Perhaps it was because
+of Doctor Davison, for it was notorious that when the good physician
+set out to do a thing, or to have it done, it was accomplished.
+
+Yet in this case it seemed as though the miller himself had as much to
+do with the successful outcome of the plan as anybody. He had little
+to say about it--or little to say at first to the crippled girl. But
+he saw that Aunt Alvirah and Ruth had the east bedroom ready for
+Mercy's occupancy before he started to town with his usual load of
+flour and meal on Saturday afternoon; and he was at home in good
+season for supper with the empty grain sacks, the fruits of his
+Saturday's trading, and Mercy's wheel chair in the wagon. But before
+he returned to the Red Mill the Camerons' big car, with Helen and Tom
+and the chauffeur, flashed past the Red Mill on its way to town and in
+a remarkably short time reappeared with Mercy sitting beside Helen in
+the tonneau. Doctor Davison arrived at about the same time, too, and
+superintended the removal of the cripple into the house.
+
+Mercy was as excited as she could be. There was actually color in her
+face. She was so excited that she forgot to be snappy, and thanked
+them all for their kindness to her.
+
+"Into bed you go at once, Mercy," commanded Doctor Davison; "and in
+the morning you may get up as early as you please--or as early as
+Ruth gets up." For Ruth was to sleep on the couch in the sick girl's
+room during her visit to the Red Mill.
+
+The doctor drove the Camerons away then, and adjured Mercy to be
+quiet, leaving her to the tender nursing of Ruth and Aunt Alvirah.
+Mercy was in a mood to be friendly with everybody--for once. She was
+delighted with Aunt Alvirah. When Uncle Jabez arrived with the
+wheelchair she actually made him do errands for her and talked to him
+with a freedom that astonished both Ruth and Mrs. Alvirah Boggs.
+
+"There! I knew you'd do it, Dusty Miller," Mercy said to the old man,
+tartly. "You men are all alike--just as forgetful as you can be. It's
+all very well to bring this old wheelchair; but where are my two
+sticks? Didn't they give you my canes, Dusty Miller? I assure you I
+have to move around a bit now and then without using this horseless
+carriage. I've got to have something to hobble on. I'm Goody
+Two-sticks, I am. You know very well that one of my legs isn't worth
+anything at all."
+
+"Ha!" croaked Jabez Potter, eyeing her with his usual frown, "I didn't
+bring any canes; because why? There weren't any given me. They're not
+in the wagon."
+
+"My! do you always frown just like that?" demanded Mercy Curtis, in a
+manner which would have been impertinent in any other person, but was
+her natural way of speaking. "You don't waste your time in smiling and
+smirking; do you?"
+
+"I never saw any use in it--unless ye had something perticular to
+smile for," admitted Mr. Potter.
+
+"Then it won't spoil your smile if I tell you that you'll have to find
+me canes somewhere if I'm to help myself at all," she said.
+
+He gravely brought two rough staffs, measured them off at just the
+right height for her, and spent the bulk of the evening in smoothing
+the rough sticks and tacking on bits of leather at the small ends of
+the canes in lieu of ferrules.
+
+The east bedroom was at the end of the passage leading from the
+kitchen. It was right next to Uncle Jabez's own room. They all sat in
+the east room that evening, for its windows opened upon the wide,
+honeysuckle-shaded porch, and the breeze was cool. It was the
+beginning of many such evenings, for although Uncle Jabez sometimes
+retired to his bedroom where a lamp burned, and made up his cash-book
+and counted his money (or so Ruth supposed) not an evening went by
+that the miller was not, for a time at least, in the cripple's room.
+
+He did not talk much. Indeed, if he talked to anyone more than to
+another it was to Ruth; but he seemed to take a quizzical interest in
+watching Mercy's wry faces when she was in one of her ugly moods, and
+in listening to her sharp speeches.
+
+The outdoor air and sun, and the plentiful supply of fresh milk and
+vegetables and farm cooking, began to make another girl of Mercy
+before a week went over her head. She had actually some natural color,
+her hands became less like bird-claws, and her hollow cheeks began to
+fill out.
+
+On Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Curtis drove out to see her. The Red Mill had
+not been so lively a place since Ruth came to it, she knew, and, she
+could imagine; for many a long year before. Doctor Davison was there
+every day. Other neighbors were continually running in to see Mercy,
+or to bring something for the invalid. At first, in her old, snappy,
+snarly way, Mercy would say:
+
+"Old cat! just wanted to see how humpy and mean I look. Thought I was
+as ugly as a bullfrog, I s'pose. I know what they're after!"
+
+But as she really began to feel better, and slept long and sweetly at
+night, and altogether to gain in health, she dropped such sharp
+speeches and had a smile when visitors came and when they left.
+Everybody who drove by and saw her sitting on the porch, or wheeling
+herself, or being wheeled by Ruth, about the paths, had something to
+say to her, or waved a hand at her, and Mercy Curtis began to be
+pleasant mannered.
+
+She hobbled around her room more on the "two-sticks" Uncle Jabez had
+made for her; but she never liked to have even Ruth see her at these
+exercises. She certainly did get about in a very queer manner--"just
+like a crab with the St. Vitus dance," so she herself said.
+
+The doctor watched her closely. He was more attentive than he had been
+when she was much worse off in health; and finally, after Mercy had
+been at the Red Mill for nearly a month, he brought a strange
+physician to see her. This gentleman was a great surgeon from New
+York, who asked Mercy a few questions, but who watched her with so
+intent a look that the little crippled girl was half frightened at
+him. He inspired confidence, however, and when he said to her, on
+departing: "You are going to see me again before long," Mercy was
+quite excited about it. She never asked a question of Doctor Davison,
+or of anybody else, about the strange surgeon, or his opinion of her
+case; but Ruth often heard her humming an odd little song (she often
+made up little tunes and put words to them herself) of which Ruth did
+not catch the burden for some days. When Mercy was singing it she
+mumbled the words, or dropped her voice to a whisper whenever anybody
+came near. But one morning Ruth was bringing the beaten egg and milk
+that she drank as a "pick-me-up" between breakfast and dinner, and
+Mercy did not hear her coming, and the odd little song came clearly to
+the ears of the girl of the Red Mill:
+
+   "He's going to cure me! Oh, my back and oh, my bones!
+    He's going to cure me! Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"
+
+Ruth knew instantly to what the little doggerel song referred. It is
+true Mercy had filched Aunt Alvirah's phrase and made it her own--and
+it applied to the poor child as well as to the rheumatic old woman.
+But it was a song of joy--a song of expectation.
+
+Ruth tried to be even more kind to Mercy after that. She was with her
+almost all the time. But there were occasions when Helen and Tom
+Cameron really made her come out with them on some little jaunt. Since
+Mercy's arrival at the Red Mill the Camerons had fallen into the habit
+of calling occasionally, and Uncle Jabez had said nothing about it.
+Ostensibly they called on Mercy; but it was Ruth that they came for
+with the pony carriage one day and took away for a visit to Olakah
+Glen.
+
+This beautiful spot was not so very far away, but it called for a
+picnic lunch, and Tubby was quite two hours in getting them there. It
+was a wild hollow, with great beech trees, and a noisy stream chaffing
+in a rocky bed down the middle of the glen. There were some farms
+thereabout; but many of the farmers were no more than squatters, for a
+vast tract of field and forest, including the glen, belonged to an
+estate which had long been in the courts for settlement.
+
+Just before leaving all signs of civilization behind, Tom had pointed
+out a shanty and several outbuildings on a high hillock overlooking
+the road, and told the girls that that was where Jasper Parloe lived,
+all alone.
+
+"I came up here fishing with some of the other fellows once, and
+Jasper tried to drive us out of the glen. Said he owned it. Likely
+story! He won't trouble us to-day."
+
+Indeed, wild as the spot was, there was little likelihood of anybody
+troubling the young people, for they had Reno along. This faithful
+creature watched over the trio most jealously and, as they were eating
+on the grass, he found some sudden reason to become excited. He rose
+up, stiffening his back, the hair rising on his neck, and a low growl
+issuing from his throat. The girls were a little startled, but Tom
+sprang up, motioned to Helen and Ruth to keep still, and ran to the
+angry mastiff.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Reno?" demanded Tom, softly, but putting
+a restraining hand upon his collar.
+
+Reno lurched forward, and Tom gripped the collar tightly as he was
+dragged directly toward a thick dump of shrubbery not many yards away.
+
+  CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ THE INITIALS
+
+There was no sound that Tom Cameron or the girls could hear from the
+shrubbery; but Reno evidently knew that somebody was lurking there.
+And by the dog's actions Tom thought it must be somebody whom Reno
+disliked.
+
+"Oh, don't leave us, Tom!" begged Helen, running behind her brother
+and the mastiff.
+
+"Come on--both of you!" muttered Tom. "We'll see what this means.
+Stick close to me."
+
+He had picked up a stout club; but it was in the huge and intelligent
+mastiff that they all put their confidence. The dog, although he
+snuffed now and then as though the scent that had first disturbed him
+still came down the wind, had ceased to growl.
+
+They came to a path in the thicket and followed it for a few yards
+only, when Reno stopped and stiffened again.
+
+"Hush!" whispered Tom, and parted the bushes with one hand, his other
+still clinging to the mastic's collar.
+
+There was a tiny opening in the shrubbery. It surrounded the foot of a
+huge beech tree. In some past day a careless hunter had built a fire
+close to the trunk of this tree. It was now hollow at the base, but
+vines and creepers growing up the tall tree had hidden the opening.
+
+A man was on his knees at the foot of the tree and had drawn the
+matted curtain of creepers aside with one hand while with the other he
+reached in to the full length of his arm. He had no suspicion of the
+presence of the young people and Reno.
+
+Out of the hollow in the tree trunk he drew something wrapped in an
+old pair of overalls. He unwrapped it, still with his back to the spot
+where the dog and his master and the girls stood. But the three
+friends could see over his shoulder as he knelt on the ground, and saw
+plainly that the object he had withdrawn from the tree trunk was a
+flat black box, evidently japanned, and there was a fair-sized brass
+padlock which fastened it.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" chuckled the man to himself, as he wrapped the box up
+again in the old clothes, and then thrust it hastily into the hollow
+tree. "Safe yet! safe yet!"
+
+He rose up then and without even looking about him, started directly
+away from the glen. He plainly had no suspicion of the presence of the
+dog and the trio of young folks. When he was quite out of sight and
+sound, Tom whispered, patting Reno:
+
+"I declare, girls! That was Jasper Parloe!"
+
+"That mean thing!" returned his sister. "I guess he's a miser as well
+as a hermit; isn't he?"
+
+"Looks like it. I've a good mind to take that thing he put in there
+and hide it somewhere else. He wouldn't be so sure about it's being
+safe then; would he?"
+
+"No! Don't you touch his nasty things, Tom," advised Helen, turning
+away.
+
+But Ruth still stared at the hidden hollow in the tree and suddenly
+she darted forward and knelt where Parloe had knelt.
+
+"What are you going to do, Ruth?" demanded her chum.
+
+"I want to see that box--I must see it!" cried the girl from the Red
+Mill.
+
+"Hold on!" said Tom. "I'll get it for you. You'll get your dress
+dirty."
+
+"I wouldn't touch it," cried Helen, warningly.
+
+"I must!" gasped Ruth, greatly excited.
+
+"It don't belong to you," quoth Helen.
+
+"And I'm very sure it doesn't belong to Jasper Parloe," declared Ruth,
+earnestly.
+
+Tom glanced at the girl from the Red Mill suddenly, and with close
+attention. He seemed to understand her excitement.
+
+"Let me in there," said the youth. "I can reach it, Ruthie."
+
+He pushed her gently, and while Ruth and Helen held aside the mass of
+vines the boy crawled in and reached the bundle of rags. He carefully
+hauled it all forth and the japanned box tumbled out of its loose
+wrappings.
+
+"There it is!" grunted Tom, getting up and wiping his hands on a tuft
+of grass. "What do you make of it?"
+
+Ruth had the box in her hands. Helen, looking over her shoulder,
+pointed to two faded letters painted on the cover of the box.
+
+"That belongs to Jasper Parloe. His initials are on the box," she
+said.
+
+"'J. P.'--that's right, I guess," muttered Tom.
+
+It could not be gainsaid that Parloe's initials were there. Ruth
+stared at them for some moments in silence.
+
+"Better put it back. I don't know what he can possibly have to hide in
+this way," Tom said. "But we wouldn't want to get into trouble with
+him. He's a mean customer."
+
+"It isn't his box!" said Ruth, quietly.
+
+"Why isn't it?" cried Helen, in amazement.
+
+"I never noticed the letters on the box before. The box has been
+cleaned since I saw it--"
+
+"You don't mean that it is your uncle's cash-box, Ruth?" interrupted
+Tom, in excitement.
+
+"Why, you ridiculous boy!" declared Helen. "You know that was lost in
+the flood."
+
+"I don't know. Do you?" Tom demanded, shortly.
+
+"But, Ruth!" gasped Helen.
+
+"It looks like Uncle Jabez's box," Ruth whispered.
+
+"But the letters! Jasper Parloe's initials," cried the
+hard-to-be-convinced Helen Cameron.
+
+"They're uncle's initials, too," explained Ruth, quietly.
+
+"Whew!" ejaculated Tom. "So they are. 'J. P.--Jabez Potter.' Can't
+get around that."
+
+"Well, I never!" gasped Helen.
+
+"Do you suppose all old Jabe's money is in this?" muttered Tom,
+weighing the cash-box in his hands. "It can't be in coin."
+
+"I do not know that he had much money in coin," said Ruth. "I think he
+used to change the gold and silver for notes, quite frequently. At
+least, Aunt Alvirah says so."
+
+"But suppose it should be Parloe's after all?" objected Helen.
+
+"Let's find that out," said Tom, vigorously. "Come on, girls. We'll
+finish eating, pack up, and start back. We'll drive right up to
+Parloe's and show him this box, and ask him if it is his. If he says
+yes, we'll make him come along to the mill and face Mr. Potter, and
+then if there is any doubt of it, let them go before a magistrate and
+fight it out!"
+
+The girls were impressed with the wisdom of this declaration, and all
+went back to rescue the remains of their luncheon from the birds and
+from a saucy gray squirrel that had already dropped down to the lowest
+limb of the tree under which they had spread their cloth, and who sat
+there and chattered angrily while they remained thereafter, as though
+he considered that he had been personally cheated out of a banquet.
+
+The girls and Tom were so excited that they could not enjoy the
+remainder of the nice things that Babette had packed in their lunch
+basket They were soon in the carriage, and Tubby was startled out of a
+pleasant dream and urged up the hilly road that led through the woods
+to the squatter's cabin, where Jasper Parloe had taken up his quarters
+after he had been discharged from employment at the Red Mill.
+
+  CHAPTER XXV
+
+ ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
+
+When the pony carriage drove into the little clearing about the
+squatter's hut, Parloe was pottering about the yard and he stood up
+and looked at them with arms akimbo and a growing grin upon his sly
+face.
+
+"Well, well, well!" he croaked. "All together, air ye? Havin' a
+picnic?"
+
+"We've been down yonder in the glen," said Tom, sternly.
+
+For an instant Jasper Parloe changed color and looked a bit worried.
+But it was only for an instant. Then he grinned again and his little
+eyes twinkled just as though he were amused. But Tom kept on, bluntly,
+saying:
+
+"We found something there, Parloe, and we came up here to see if it
+belongs to you."
+
+"What's that?" asked the man, drawing nearer. "I ain't lost nothing."
+
+"Don't say that," said Tom, quickly. "At least, don't say you haven't
+hidden something."
+
+But he could not catch Mr. Parloe again. The man shook his head slowly
+and looked as though he hadn't the least idea of what Tom was driving
+at.
+
+"Look here," continued the boy, and drew forth the japanned box.
+
+"Well! Well!" and Jasper's mean little eyes twinkled more than ever.
+"You don't mean to say you found that down yonder?"
+
+"We did," said Tom, tartly.
+
+"Now, where was it?"
+
+"Where it had been hidden," snapped Tom, quite disgusted with the old
+man. "Where it was supposed to be very safe, I reckon."
+
+"Like enough, Tom," said Jasper, mildly. "What do you reckon on doing
+with it?"
+
+"You don't claim it to be yours, then?" demanded Tom, in some
+surprise.
+
+"No-o," said Parloe, slowly.
+
+"It has your initials on it," said Helen, quickly.
+
+"That's odd, ain't it?" returned Parloe, standing where he was and not
+offering to touch the box. "But other people have the same initials
+that I have." His grin grew to huge proportions, and he looked so sly
+that nothing but his high, bony nose kept his two little eyes from
+running together and making one eye of it. "Jabe Potter, for
+instance."
+
+"Then you think this is likely to be Mr. Potter's?" queried Tom.
+
+"Couldn't say. Jabe will probably claim it. He would take advantage of
+the initials, sure enough."
+
+"And why don't you?" asked Helen.
+
+"'Cause me and Jabe are two different men," declared Parloe,
+righteously. "Nobody ever could say, with proof, that Jasper Parloe
+took what warn't his own."
+
+"This is my uncle's cash-box, I am very sure," interposed Ruth, with
+some anger. "It was not swept away the day of the flood. You were
+there in his little office at the very moment the waters struck the
+mill, and we saw you running from the place as though you were
+scared."
+
+"Jefers-pelters!" croaked Jasper. "It was enough to scare anybody!"
+
+"That may be. But you weren't too scared to grab this box when you
+ran. And you must have hidden it under your coat as you left the mill.
+I am going to tell my uncle all about it--and how we saw you down the
+hill yonder, looking at this very box before you thrust it back in its
+hiding place."
+
+Jasper Parloe grew enraged rather than frightened by this threat.
+
+"Tell!" he barked. "You tell what ye please. Provin's another thing. I
+don't know nothin' about the box. I never opened it. I don't know
+what's in it. And you kin tell Jabe that if he tries to make me
+trouble over it I'll make him trouble in a certain locality--he knows
+where and what about."
+
+"I shall give him the box and tell him how it came into my
+possession," repeated Ruth, firmly, and then she and her friends drove
+away.
+
+They hurried Tubby back to the Red Mill and Ruth ran in ahead of her
+friends with the cash-box in her hands. The moment Uncle Jabez saw it
+he started forward with a loud cry. He almost tore the box from her
+grasp; but then became gentle again in a moment.
+
+"Gal!" he ejaculated, softly, "how'd ye git this away from Parloe?"
+
+"Oh, Uncle! how did you know he had it?"
+
+"I've been suspicious. He couldn't scarce keep it to hisself. He ain't
+opened it, I see."
+
+"I don't think he has."
+
+"We'll see. Tell me about it," urged the miller, staring at Helen and
+Tom as they approached.
+
+Ruth told him all about it. She pointed, too, to the fact that Helen
+and Tom--and especially Tom's dog--had had more to do with the
+recovery of the cash-box than she had. Uncle Jabez listened and nodded
+as though he appreciated that fact. Meanwhile, however, he hunted up
+the key to the japanned box and unlocked it.
+
+It was plain that the contents of the box were for the most part
+securities in the shape of stocks and bonds, with a good deal of
+currency in small notes. There was a little coin--gold and silver--
+packed into one compartment. Uncle Jabez counted it all with feverish
+anxiety.
+
+"Right to a penny!" he gasped, when he had finished, and mopped the
+perspiration from his brow. "The rascal didn't touch it. He didn't
+dare!"
+
+"But he'll dare something else, Uncle," said Ruth, hastily. "I believe
+he's going right to Mr. Cameron to make you trouble."
+
+"Ah-ha!" exclaimed Uncle Jabez, and looked hard at Tom.
+
+"I'm sorry if he makes trouble about that old thing, Mr. Potter," said
+Tom, stumblingly. "I've tried to keep his mouth shut--"
+
+"Ah-ha!" said Uncle Jabez, again. Then he added: "And I shouldn't be
+at all surprised, young man, if you'd given Jasper money to keep his
+mouth shut--eh?"
+
+Tom flushed and nodded "I didn't want any row--especially when Helen
+and I think so much of Ruth."
+
+"You wouldn't have bought Jasper off for my sake, I reckon," said
+Jabez, sharply. "You wouldn't have done it for my sake?"
+
+"Why should I?" returned Tom, coolly. "You never have been any too
+friendly towards me."
+
+"Hah!" said the miller, nodding. "That's true. But let me tell you,
+young man, that I saw your father about the time I ran you down. We
+don't get along very well, I admit. I ain't got much use for you
+Camerons. But I had no intention of doing you harm. You can believe
+that, or not. If you will remember, the evening you went over that
+embankment on the Wilkins Corners road, I came up behind you. My mules
+were young, and your dog jumped out at them and scared them. They
+bolted, and I never knew till next day that you had been knocked over
+the embankment."
+
+"We'll let bygones be bygones, Mr. Potter," said Tom, good-humoredly.
+"I came out of it all right."
+
+"But you had no business to pay Jasper Parloe money for keeping still
+about it," said the miller, sourly. "Being bled by a blackmailer is
+never the action of a wise man. When he threatened me I went to your
+father at once and got ahead of Parloe. We agreed to say nothing about
+it--that's about all we did agree on, however," added Mr. Potter,
+grimly. "Now you children run along. Ruth, come here. I figger I owe
+you something because of the finding of this box. Yes! I know how much
+the others had to do with it, too. But they'd never been over there in
+Olakah Glen if it hadn't been for you. I'll make this up to you. I
+never yet owed a debt that I didn't repay in full. I'll remember this
+one, gal."
+
+But so much happened in those next two weeks, following the finding of
+the cash-box, that Ruth quite forgot this promise on her uncle's part.
+She realized, however, that he seemed really desirous of being kind to
+her, and that much of his grimness had disappeared.
+
+Everybody at the Red Mill--and many other people, too--had their
+thoughts fixed upon Mercy Curtis at this time. She had been getting
+stronger all the while. She had been able to hobble on her two sticks
+from her bedroom to the porch. She had been to ride half a dozen times
+in the Camerons' automobile. And then, suddenly, without other
+warning, Doctor Davison and the strange surgeon who had once examined
+Mercy, appeared in a big limousine car, with a couch arranged inside,
+and they whisked Mercy off to a sanitarium some miles away, where she
+was operated on by the famous surgeon, with Doctor Davison's help, and
+from which place the report came back in a few days that the operation
+had been successful and that Mercy Curtis would--in time--walk
+again!
+
+Meanwhile, Ruth had kept up her recitations to Miss Cramp, often
+walking back and forth to town, but sometimes getting "a lift," and
+the teacher pronounced her prepared to enter the Cheslow High School.
+She had taken the studies that Helen Cameron had taken, and, on
+comparing notes, the chums found that they were in much the same
+condition of advancement.
+
+"Oh, if you were only going to Briarwood with me, instead of to
+Cheslow High!" wailed Helen, one day, as they sat on the porch of the
+Red Mill house.
+
+"Ah, dear!" said Ruth, quietly, "don't talk about it. I want to go
+with you more than I ever wanted to do anything in my whole life--"
+
+"What's that?" exclaimed Uncle Jabez's gruff voice behind them.
+"What's that you want to do, Ruth?"
+
+"To--to go to boarding school, Uncle," stammered his niece.
+
+"Hah!" grunted the miller. "Ain't you calculatin' on going to high
+school?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Potter!" broke in Helen, frightened by her own temerity.
+"That isn't the school Ruth wants to go to. I am going to Briarwood
+Hall, and she wants to go, too. Do, do let her. It would be--it would
+be just heavenly, if she could go there, and we could be together!"
+
+Jabez Potter came out upon the porch and looked down upon his niece.
+The grim lines of his face could not relax, it seemed; but his eyes
+did seem to twinkle as he said:
+
+"And that's the greatest wish of your life; is it, Ruth?"
+
+"I--I believe it is, Uncle Jabez," she whispered, looking at him in
+wonder.
+
+"Well, well!" he said, gruffly, dropping his gaze. "Mebbe I owe it ye.
+My savin's of years was in that cash-box, Ruth. I--I--Well, I'll
+think it over and see if it can be arranged about this Briarwood
+business. I'll--I'll see your Aunt Alvirah."
+
+And that Uncle Jabez Potter "saw about it" to some purpose is proven
+by the fact that the reader may meet Ruth and her friends again in the
+next volume of this series to be entitled "Ruth Fielding at Briarwood
+Hall; Or, Solving the Campus Mystery."
+
+"Perhaps he isn't such an ogre after all," whispered Helen, when she
+and Ruth were alone.
+
+"Not after you get to know him," replied the girl of the Red Mill,
+with a quiet smile.
+
+ THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill, by Alice B. Emerson
+
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