and Mercy's wheel chair in the wagon. But beforehe returned to the Red Mill the Camerons' big car, with Helen and Tomand the chauffeur, flashed past the Red Mill on its way to town and ina remarkably short time reappeared with Mercy sitting beside Helen inthe tonneau. Doctor Davison arrived at about the same time, too, andsuperintended the removal of the cripple into the house.
Mercy was as excited as she could be. There was actually color in herface. She was so excited that she forgot to be snappy, and thankedthem all for their kindness to her.
"Into bed you go at once, Mercy," commanded Doctor Davison; "and inthe morning you may get up as early as you please--or as early asRuth gets up." For Ruth was to sleep on the couch in the sick girl'sroom during her visit to the Red Mill.
The doctor drove the Camerons away then, and adjured Mercy to bequiet, leaving her to the tender nursing of Ruth and Aunt Alvirah.Mercy was in a mood to be friendly with everybody--for once. She wasdelighted with Aunt Alvirah. When Uncle Jabez arrived with thewheelchair she actually made him do errands for her and talked to himwith 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'sall very well to bring this old wheelchair; but where are my twosticks? Didn't they give you my canes, Dusty Miller? I assure you Ihave to move around a bit now and then without using this horselesscarriage. I've got to have something to hobble on. I'm GoodyTwo-sticks, I am. You know very well that one of my legs isn't worthanything at all."
"Ha!" croaked Jabez Potter, eyeing her with his usual frown, "I didn'tbring any canes; because why? There weren't any given me. They're notin the wagon."
"My! do you always frown just like that?" demanded Mercy Curtis, in amanner which would have been impertinent in any other person, but washer natural way of speaking. "You don't waste your time in smiling andsmirking; do you?"
"I never saw any use in it--unless ye had something perticular tosmile for," admitted Mr. Potter.
"Then it won't spoil your smile if I tell you that you'll have to findme canes somewhere if I'm to help myself at all," she said.
He gravely brought two rough staffs, measured them off at just theright height for her, and spent the bulk of the evening in smoothingthe rough sticks and tacking on bits of leather at the small ends ofthe canes in lieu of ferrules.
The east bedroom was at the end of the passage leading from thekitchen. It was right next to Uncle Jabez's own room. They all sat inthe east room that evening, for its windows opened upon the wide,honeysuckle-shaded porch, and the breeze was cool. It was thebeginning of many such evenings, for although Uncle Jabez sometimesretired to his bedroom where a lamp burned, and made up his cash-bookand counted his money (or so Ruth supposed) not an evening went bythat 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 toanother it was to Ruth; but he seemed to take a quizzical interest inwatching Mercy's wry faces when she was in one of her ugly moods, andin listening to her sharp speeches.
The outdoor air and sun, and the plentiful supply of fresh milk andvegetables and farm cooking, began to make another girl of Mercybefore a week went over her head. She had actually some natural color,her hands became less like bird-claws, and her hollow cheeks began tofill out.
On Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Curtis drove out to see her. The Red Mill hadnot been so lively a place since Ruth came to it, she knew, and, shecould imagine; for many a long year before. Doctor Davison was thereevery 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 wasas 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 atnight, and altogether to gain in health, she dropped such sharpspeeches and had a smile when visitors came and when they left.Everybody who drove by and saw her sitting on the porch, or wheelingherself, or being wheeled by Ruth, about the paths, had something tosay to her, or waved a hand at her, and Mercy Curtis began to bepleasant mannered.
She hobbled around her room more on the "two-sticks" Uncle Jabez hadmade for her; but she never liked to have even Ruth see her at theseexercises. She certainly did get about in a very queer manner--"justlike a crab with the St. Vitus dance," so she herself said.
The doctor watched her closely. He was more attentive than he had beenwhen she was much worse off in health; and finally, after Mercy hadbeen at the Red Mill for nearly a month, he brought a strangephysician to see her. This gentleman was a great surgeon from NewYork, who asked Mercy a few questions, but who watched her with sointent a look that the little crippled girl was half frightened athim. He inspired confidence, however, and when he said to her, ondeparting: "You are going to see me again before long," Mercy wasquite excited about it. She never asked a question of Doctor Davison,or of anybody else, about the strange surgeon, or his opinion of hercase; but Ruth often heard her humming an odd little song (she oftenmade up little tunes and put words to them herself) of which Ruth didnot catch the burden for some days. When Mercy was singing it shemumbled the words, or dropped her voice to a whisper whenever anybodycame near. But one morning Ruth was bringing the beaten egg and milkthat she drank as a "pick-me-up" between breakfast and dinner, andMercy did not hear her coming, and the odd little song came clearly tothe 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 istrue Mercy had filched Aunt Alvirah's phrase and made it her own--andit 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 heralmost all the time. But there were occasions when Helen and TomCameron really made her come out with them on some little jaunt. SinceMercy's arrival at the Red Mill the Camerons had fallen into the habitof calling occasionally, and Uncle Jabez had said nothing about it.Ostensibly they called on Mercy; but it was Ruth that they came forwith the pony carriage one day and took away for a visit to OlakahGlen.
This beautiful spot was not so very far away, but it called for apicnic lunch, and Tubby was quite two hours in getting them there. Itwas a wild hollow, with great beech trees, and a noisy stream chaffingin a rocky bed down the middle of the glen. There were some farmsthereabout; but many of the farmers were no more than squatters, for avast tract of field and forest, including the glen, belonged to anestate which had long been in the courts for settlement.
Just before leaving all signs of civilization behind, Tom had pointedout a shanty and several outbuildings on a high hillock overlookingthe 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, andJasper tried to drive us out of the glen. Said he owned it. Likelystory! He won't trouble us to-day."
Indeed, wild as the spot was, there was little likelihood of anybodytroubling the young people, for they had Reno along. This faithfulcreature watched over the trio most jealously and, as they were eatingon the grass, he found some sudden reason to become excited. He roseup, stiffening his back, the hair rising on his neck, and a low growlissuing from his throat. The girls were a little startled, but Tomsprang up, motioned to Helen and Ruth to keep still, and ran to theangry mastiff.
"What's the matter with you, Reno?" demanded Tom, softly, but puttinga restraining hand upon his collar.
Reno lurched forward, and Tom gripped the collar tightly as he wasdragged 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 theshrubbery; but Reno ev
idently knew that somebody was lurking there.And by the dog's actions Tom thought it must be somebody whom Renodisliked.
"Oh, don't leave us, Tom!" begged Helen, running behind her brotherand 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 intelligentmastiff that they all put their confidence. The dog, although hesnuffed now and then as though the scent that had first disturbed himstill came down the wind, had ceased to growl.
They came to a path in the thicket and followed it for a few yardsonly, when Reno stopped and stiffened again.
"Hush!" whispered Tom, and parted the bushes with one hand, his otherstill clinging to