texture of his skin during all theyears he had controlled the mill, until he was all of a dead gray.
Sometimes there were half a dozen wagons or buggies waiting at themill, and not all of them gave toll for their milling. Ruth, in theafternoon, 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 thatthere 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 alittle locked, japanned box, which he kept upon a shelf. The safeappeared to be full of ledgers.
Farther down the mill was a wide door and platform overhanging thewater (this was below the dam) where flour and meal could be loadedupon barges for transportation to Osago Lake, some miles away. Therewere great bins of wheat and corn, many elevator pipes, several millsturning all the time, grinding different grains, and a greatcorn-sheller that went by power, and which the young man fed when hehad nothing else to do.
All the time the building trembled and throbbed, and this throbbingwas communicated to the house. As she sat with Aunt Alvirah, and sewedcarpet-rags for a braided mat, the distant thunder of the mills andthe trembling of the machinery made the whole house vibrate.
Late in the afternoon Ruth heard the honking of an auto horn and ranout upon the covered porch. Between the scuds of rain that drove alongthe valley she saw the gray automobile coming slowly past the mill.There was a man driving it now, and he stopped and let Helen Cameronout so that she could run up to great Ruth under the shelter of theporch.
"Oh, you dear! How are you getting on?" cried Helen, kissing herimpulsively and as glad to see Ruth as though they had been separatedfor days instead of for only a few hours. "Colfax wanted to drive downto the station alone for Daddy--for we won't bring poor Tom home inthis rain--but I just couldn't resist coming to see how you weregetting on." She looked around with big eyes. "How does the Ogre treatyou?" she whispered.
But Ruth could laugh now and did so, saying, cheerfully: "He hasn'teaten me up yet! And Aunt Alvirah is the dearest little lady who everlived."
"She likes you, then?"
"Of course she does."
"I knew she would, she was bound to love you. But I don't know aboutthe Ogre," and she shook her head. "But there! I must run. We don'twant to be late for the train. That will put Daddy out. And I muststop 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," returnedHelen, over her shoulder.
But it did not stop raining that night, nor for a full week. The scudsof rain, blowing across the river, slapped sharply against the side ofthe house, and against Ruth's window all night. She did not sleep thatfirst night as well as she had in the charitable home of the stationmaster and his good wife. The evening meal had been as stiff andunpleasant as the noon meal. The evening was spent in the same room--the kitchen. Aunt Alviry knitted and sewed; Uncle Jabez pored overcertain accounts and counted money very softly behind the upliftedcover 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 cameinto the house under Uncle Jabez's arm at dinner, too. He scarcelyseemed willing to trust it out of his sight. And Ruth was sure that helocked 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 standbeside Uncle Jabez's bed. Ruth was much more afraid of these loadedweapons than she was of burglars. But the old man evidently expectedto be attacked for his wealth at some time although, Aunt Alvirah toldher, nobody had ever troubled him in all the years she had lived atthe Red Mill.
So it was not fear of marauders that kept Ruth so wakeful on thisfirst night under her uncle's roof. She thought of all the kindfriends she had left in Darrowtown, and her long journey here, and hercold welcome to what she supposed would be her future home. WithoutHelen, 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 someother place. She could not have stood Uncle Jabez alone.
Jabez Potter was hoarding up something besides money, too. Ruth didnot understand this until it had already rained several days, and theroaring of the waters fretting against the river banks and against thedam, had become all but deafening in her ears.
Then, during a lull in the storm, and on the afternoon that TomCameron was taken home from Dr. Davison's, the old doctor himselfstopped at the mill and shouted for Jabez to come out. The doctordrove a very fast red and white mare and had difficulty in holding herin, for she was eager to be moving.
Uncle Jabez came out and seemed to look upon the doctor in no veryfriendly way. Ruth, standing at the open door of the kitchen, couldhear 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 youlet your water out so that, if Minturn should break, she'd have freesweep here and so do less damage below? Let this small flood out andwhen 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 nowater 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 doto attend to my own concerns. I don't bother about other people'sbusiness."
"Meaning that I do when I speak to you about the water; eh?" said theold doctor, cheerfully. "Well, I've done my duty. You'll learn sometime, Jabez."
He let out the impatient mare then, and the mud spattered from hiswheels 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 theyhave come.
Not that Ruth wept much. But the rainy days of that first week werenecessarily trying. On Saturday, however, came a clear day. The sunshone, the drenched trees shook themselves, and the wind came and blewsoftly and warmly through their branches to dry the tender foliage.The birds popped out of their hiding-places and began to sing andchirp as though they never could be glad enough for this change in theweather.
There was so much to see from the kitchen door at the Red Mill thatRuth did not mind her work that morning. She had learned now to helpAunt Alvirah in many ways. Not often did the old lady have to go aboutmoaning 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 newpin when the gay tooting of the Cameron automobile horn called Ruth tothe porch. There was only Helen on the front seat of the car; but inthe tonneau was a bundled-up figure surmounted by what looked to be ascarlet cap which Ruth knew instantly must be Tom's. Ruth did not knowmany boys and, never having had a brother, was not a little bashful.Besides, she was afraid Tom Cameron would make much of her connectionwith his being found on the Wilkins Corners road that dark night,after his accident.
And there was another thing that made Ruth feel diffident aboutapproaching the boy. She had borne it all the time in her mind, andthe instant she saw Tom in the automobile it bobbed up to the surfaceof her thought again.
"It was Jabe Potter--he did it."
So, f
or more reasons than one, Ruth approached the motor car withhesitation.
"Oh, Ruth!" cried Helen, putting out a gauntleted hand to her. "Sothis horrid rain has not washed you away? You won't like the Red Millif 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 starvedyou, either. Now, Ruth, I want you to know my brother Tom, whom youhave met before without his having been aware of it at the time," andshe laughed again.
Tom's left arm was in a sling, and the scarlet bandage around his headmade him look like a