Mr. Yocomb followed her, and Reuben went down to the barn.

"If you live to grow like your mother, Miss Adah, you will be the most beautiful woman in the world," I said frankly, for I felt as if I could speak to her almost as I would to Zillah.

Her eyes drooped and her color deepened as she shook her head and murmured:

"I'd rather be Emily Warren than any other woman in the world."

Her words and manner so puzzled me that I thought she had not fully recovered from the effects of the shock, and I replied, in an off-hand way:

"After a few weeks of teaching stupid children to turn noise into music you would gladly be yourself again."

She paid no heed to this remark, but, with the same intent, exploring look, asked:

"Thee was the first one I saw when I came to last night?"

"Yes, and you were much afraid of me."

"I was foolish--I fear mother's right, and I've always been foolish."

"Your manner last night was most natural. I was a stranger, and a hard-looking customer, too, when I entered your room."

"I hope I didn't look very--very bad."

"You looked so like a beautiful piece of marble that I feared you were dead."

"Thee wouldn't have cared much."

"Indeed I would. If you knew how anxious I was about Zillah--"

"Ugh!" she interrupted, with an expression of strong disgust, "I might have been a horrid, blackened thing if it hadn't been for thee."

"Oh, hush!" I cried; "I merely threw a couple of pails of water on the roof. Please say no more about it."

She pa.s.sed her hand over her brow, and said hesitatingly:

"I'm so puzzled--I feel so strangely. It seems an age since yesterday."

"You've had a very severe shock, Miss Adah."

"Yes, that may be it; but it's so strange that I was afraid of thee."

"Why, Miss Adah, I was wet as a drowned rat, and had a black mark across my nose. I would have made an ideal burglar."

"That oughtn't to have made any difference; thee was trying to save my life."

"But you didn't know it."

"I don't believe I know anything rightly. I--I feel so strange--just as if I had waked up and hadn't got anything clear. But I know this much, in spite of what Reuben said," she added impulsively; "Emily Warren doesn't owe thee any more than I do." And she turned like a flash and was gone.

"Poor child," I muttered, "she hasn't recovered so fully as the others."

I had been holding one of Zillah's hands during the interview, and she now pulled me down and whispered:

"What's the matter with thee, Richard Morton?"

"Heaven grant you may never know, little one. Good-by." I had scarcely left the piazza, however, before Mrs. Yocomb called:

"Richard Morton, thee must be famished. Come to supper."

CHAPTER II

"IT WAS INEVITABLE"

I ought to have had a ravenous appet.i.te but I had none at all. I ought to have been glad and thankful from the depths of my heart, but I was so depressed that everything I said was forced and unnatural. My head felt as if it were bursting, and I was enraged with myself and the wretched result of my bright dream. Indeed I found myself inclined to a spirit of recklessness and irritation that was wellnigh irresistible.

Miss Warren seemed as wholly free from any morbid, unnatural tendencies as Mr. Yocomb himself, and she did her utmost to make the hour as genial as it should have been. At first I imagined that she was trying to satisfy herself that I had recovered my senses, and that my unexpected words, spoken in the morning, were the result of a mood that was as transient as it was abnormal. I think I puzzled her; I certainly did not understand myself any better than did poor Adah, whose mind appeared to be in solution from the effects of the lightning, and I felt that I must be appearing worse than idiotic.

Miss Warren, resolutely bent on banishing every unnatural constraint, asked Mr. Yocomb:

"How is my genuine friend, Old Plod? Did the lightning wake him up?"

"No, he plods as heavily as ever this morning. Thee only can wake him up."

"You've no idea what a compliment that is," she said, with a low laugh.

"Old Plod inspires me with a sense of confidence and stability that is very rea.s.suring in a world full of lightning flashes."

"Yes," I said, "he is safe as a horse-block, and quite as exhilarating.

Give me Dapple."

She looked at me quickly and keenly, and colored slightly. She evidently had some a.s.sociation in her mind with the old plow-horse that I did not understand.

"Exhilaration scarcely answers as a steady diet, Mr. Morton."

"Little chance of its lasting long," I replied, "even in a world overcharged with electricity."

"I prefer calm, steady sunshine to these wild alternations."

"I doubt it; 'calm, steady sunshine' would make the world as dry and monotonous as a desert."

"That's true, Richard Morton," said Mr. Yocomb. "I like peace and quiet more than most men, but even if we had all burned up last night, this part of the world would have been wonderfully the better for the storm.

I reckon it was worth a million or more dollars to the county."

"That's the right way to look at it, Mr. Yocomb," I said carelessly.

"The greatest good to the greatest number. Individuals are of no account."