"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 he 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 doses, 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.