"They took him to the doctor's house, did they?" asked Sam.

"Yes, sir," said Ruth. "But--"

"Mr. Curtis, has there been anybody here for me?"

"For you, Miss?" the station master returned, somewhat surprised it seemed.

"Yes, sir. Anybody from Red Mill?"

Curtis smote one fist into his other palm, exclaiming:

"You don't mean to say that you was what Jabe Potter was after?"

"Mr. Jabez Potter, who keeps the Red Mill, is my uncle," Ruth observed, with dignity.

"My goodness gracious me, Miss! He was here long before your train was due. He's kind of short in his speech, Miss. And he asked me if there was anything here for him, and I told him no. And he stumped out again without another word. Why, I thought he was looking for an express package, or freight. Never had an idea he was expectin' a niece!"

Ruth still looked at him earnestly. The man did not suspect, by her appearance, how hard a time she was having to keep the tears from overrunning those calm, gray eyes.

"And you expected to go out to the Red Mill to-night, Miss?" he continued. "They're country folk out there and they'd all be abed before you could get there, even if you took a carriage."

"I don't know that I have enough to pay for carriage hire," Ruth said, softly. "Is--is there any place I can stop over night in the village?

Then I can walk out in the morning."

"Why--there's a hotel. But a young girl like you--You'll excuse me, Miss. You're young to be traveling alone."

"Perhaps I haven't money enough to pay for a lodging there?" suggested Ruth. "I have a dollar. It was given me to spend as I liked on the way. But Miss True gave me such a big box of luncheon that I did not want anything."

"A dollar wouldn't go far at the Brick Hotel," murmured the station agent. He still stared at her, stroking his lean, shaven jaw. Finally he burst out with: "I tell you! We'll go home and see what my wife says."

At the moment the station began to jar with the thunder of a coming train and Ruth could not make herself heard in reply to his proposal.

Besides, Sam Curtis hurried out on the platform. Nor was Ruth ready to a.s.sert her independence and refuse any kind of help the station master might offer. So she sat down patiently and waited for him.

There were one or two pa.s.sengers only to disembark from this train and they went away from the station without even coming into the waiting room. Then Curtis came back, putting out the lights and locking his ticket office. The baggage room was already locked and Ruth's old trunk was in it.

"Come on now, girl--What's your name?" asked Curtis.

"Ruth Fielding."

"Just so! Well, it's only a step to our house and wife will have supper waiting. And there's n.o.body else there save Mercy."

Ruth was a little curious about "Mercy"--whether it referred to abounding grace, or was a person's name. But she asked no questions as they came out of the railroad station and Sam Curtis locked the door.

They did not cross the tracks this time, but went into the new part of the town. Turning a corner very soon as they walked up what Curtis said was Market Street, they reached, on a narrow side street, a little, warm-looking cottage, from almost all the lower windows of which the lamplight shone cheerfully. There was a garden beside it, with a big grape arbor arranged like a summer-house with rustic chairs and a table. The light shining on the side porch revealed the arbor to Ruth's quick eyes.

When they stepped upon this porch Ruth heard a very shrill and not at all pleasant voice saying--very rapidly, and over and over again: "I don't want to! I don't want to! I don't want to!" It might have been a parrot, or some other ill-natured talking bird; only Ruth saw nothing of the feathered conversationalist when Sam opened the door and ushered her in.

"Here we are, wife!" he exclaimed, cheerfully. "And how's Mercy?"

The reiterated declaration had stopped instantly. A comely, kind-faced woman with snow-white hair, came forward. Ruth saw that she was some years younger than Curtis, and he was not yet forty. It was not Father Time that had powdered Mrs. Curtis' head so thickly.

"Mercy is--Why, who's this?" she asked espying Ruth. "One of the girls come in to see her?"

Instantly the same whining, shrill voice began:

"I don't want her to see me! They come to stare at me! I hate 'em all!

All girls do is to run and jump and play tag and ring-around-a-rosy and run errands, and dance! I hate 'em!"

This was said very, very fast--almost chattered; and it sounded so ill-natured, so impatient, so altogether mean and hateful, that Ruth fell back a step, almost afraid to enter the pleasant room. But then she saw the white-haired lady's face, and it was so grieved, yet looked such a warm welcome to her, that she took heart and stepped farther in, so that Sam Curtis could shut the door.

The father appeared to pay no attention to the fault-finding, shrill declamation of the unhappy voice. He said, in explanation, to his wife:

"This is Ruth Fielding. She has come a long way by train to-day, expecting to meet her uncle, old Jabe Potter of the Red Mill. And you know how funny Jabe is, wife? He came before the train, and did not wait, but drove right away with his mules and so there was n.o.body here to meet Ruthie. She's marooned here till the morning, you see."

"Then she shall stay with us to-night," declared Mrs. Curtis, quickly.

"I don't want her to stay here to-night!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the same shrill voice.

Mr. and Mrs. Curtis paid no attention to what was said by this mysterious third party. Ruth, coming farther into the room, found that it was large and pleasant. There was a comfortable look about it all.

The supper table was set and the door was opened into the warm kitchen, from which delicious odors of tea and toast with some warm dish of meat, were wafted in. But the shrill and complaining voice had not come from the next room.

In the other corner beside the stove, yet not too near it, stood a small canopy bed with the pretty chintz curtains drawn all about it.

Beside it stood a wheel-chair such as Ruth knew was used by invalids who could not walk. It was a tiny chair, too, and it and the small bed went together. But of the occupant of either she saw not a sign.

"Supper will be ready just as soon as our guest has a chance to remove the traces of travel, Sam," said Mrs. Curtis, briskly. "Come with me, Ruth."

When they returned from the pleasant little bed-chamber which the good-hearted lady told Ruth was to be her own for that night, they heard voices in the sitting room--the voice of Mr. Curtis and the querulous one. But it was not so sharp and strained as it seemed before. However, on opening the door, Mr. Curtis was revealed sitting alone and there was no sign of the owner of the sharp voice, which Ruth supposed must belong to the invalid.

"Mercy has had her supper; hasn't she, wife?" said the station master as he drew his chair to the table and motioned Ruth to the extra place Mrs. Curtis had set.

The woman nodded and went briskly about putting the supper on the table. While they ate Mr. Curtis told about Reno stopping the train, and of the search for and recovery of the injured Cameron boy. All the time Ruth, who sat sideways to the canopied bed, realized that the curtains at the foot were drawn apart just a crack and that two very bright, pin-point eyes were watching her. So interested did these eyes become as the story progressed, and Ruth answered questions, that more of Mercy Curtis' face was revealed--a sharp, worn little face, with a peaked chin and pale, thin cheeks.

Ruth was very tired when supper was ended and the kind Mrs. Curtis suggested that she go to bed and obtain a good night's rest if she was to walk to the Red Mill in the morning. But even when she bade her entertainers good-night she did not see the child in the canopy bed and she felt diffident about asking Mrs. Curtis about her. The young traveler slept soundly--almost from the moment her head touched the pillow. Yet her last thought was of Uncle Jabez. He had been in town some time before the train on which she arrived was due and had driven away from the station with his mules, Mr. Curtis said. Had he driven over that dark and dangerous road on which Tom Cameron met with his accident, and had he run down the injured boy, or forced him over the bank of the deep gully where they had found Tom lying unconscious?

"It was Jabe Potter--he did it," the injured lad had murmured, and these words were woven in the pattern of Ruth's dreams all night.

The little cottage was astir early and Ruth was no laggard. She came down to breakfast while the sun was just peeping above the house-tops and as she entered the sitting room she found an occupant at last in the little wheel-chair. It was the sharp, pale little face that confronted her above the warm wrapper and the rug that covered the lower part of the child's body; for child Mercy Curtis was, and little older than Ruth herself, although her face seemed so old.

To Ruth's surprise the first greeting of the invalid was a most ill-natured one. She made a very unpleasant face at the visitor, ran out her tongue, and then said, in her shrill, discordant voice:

"I don't like you at all--I tell you that, Miss!"

"I am sorry you do not like me," replied Ruth, gently. "I think I should like you if you'd let me."

"Yah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the very unpleasant, but much to be pitied invalid.

The mother and father ignored all this ill-nature on the part of the lame girl and were as kind and friendly with their visitor as they had been on the previous evening. Once during breakfast time (Mercy took hers from a tray that was fastened to her chair before her) the child burst out again, speaking to Ruth. There were eggs on the table and, pointing to the golden-brown fried egg that Mrs. Curtis had just placed upon Ruth's plate, Mercy snapped: