"All alone save for Uncle Jabez."

She had come near to the old woman again. As she dropped quietly on her knees Aunt Alviry gathered her head close to her bosom; but Ruth did not weep any more. She only said:

"I know I shall love you very, very much, dear Aunt Alvirah. And I hope I shall help your back and your bones a great deal, too!"

CHAPTER VIII

h.o.a.rDING UP: Pa.s.sIONS--MONEY--WATER

This was Ruth Fielding's introduction to the Red Mill, its occupants, and its surroundings. The spot was, indeed, beautiful, and an hour after she had arrived she knew that she would love it. The Lumano River was a wide stream and from the little window of the chamber that Aunt Alviry said would be her own, she could look both up and down the river for several miles.

Uncle Jabez had a young man to help him in the mill. It was true, Aunt Alviry said, that Jasper Parloe had worked for some time at the Red Mill; but he was quarrelsome and Mr. Potter had declared he was not honest. When the mill owner was obliged to be absent and people had come to have corn or wheat ground, paying for the milling instead of giving toll, Jasper had sometimes kept the money instead of turning it over to Mr. Potter. This had finally resulted in a quarrel between the two, and Mr. Potter had discharged Parloe without paying him for his last month's work.

The young newcomer had learned a great deal about the big mill and the homestead, and about the work Aunt Alviry had to do, before the first meal was prepared. She was of much a.s.sistance, too, and when Uncle Jabez came in, after washing at the pump, but bringing a cloud of flour with him on his clothes, the old woman was seated comfortably in her chair and Ruth "dished up the dinner."

At the end of his meal her uncle spoke just once to Ruth. "You have l'arned to work, I see. Your Aunt Alviry has trouble with her back and bones. If you make yourself of use to her you can stay here. I expect all cats to catch mice around the Red Mill. Them that don't goes into the sluice. There's enough to do here. You won't be idle for want of work."

And this was every word of his welcome, in a tone that showed neither interest nor care for the girl. It was what help she could be and how much he could save by her. It was plain enough that Uncle Jabez Potter was as saving as a person could possibly be. There was none too much food on the table, and Ruth watched the ravenous hunger of the hired man, when he came in, with a feeling as though she were watching a half-starved dog at his meal.

Jabez Potter was not like the misers Ruth had read about, save in his personal appearance. He was not well dressed, nor was he very clean.

But naturally the mill-dust would stick to him and to his clothing. It seemed to have worked into the very texture of his skin during all the years he had controlled the mill, until he was all of a dead gray.

Sometimes there were half a dozen wagons or buggies waiting at the mill, and not all of them gave toll for their milling. Ruth, in the afternoon, and because it had begun to rain and she could not go out, went into the mill to quench her curiosity regarding it. She saw that there was a tiny office over the water, with a fireproof safe in it.

Her uncle brought the money he took from his customers and put it in a little locked, j.a.panned box, which he kept upon a shelf. The safe appeared to be full of ledgers.

Farther down the mill was a wide door and platform overhanging the water (this was below the dam) where flour and meal could be loaded upon barges for transportation to Osago Lake, some miles away. There were great bins of wheat and corn, many elevator pipes, several mills turning all the time, grinding different grains, and a great corn-sh.e.l.ler that went by power, and which the young man fed when he had nothing else to do.

All the time the building trembled and throbbed, and this throbbing was communicated to the house. As she sat with Aunt Alvirah, and sewed carpet-rags for a braided mat, the distant thunder of the mills and the trembling of the machinery made the whole house vibrate.

Late in the afternoon Ruth heard the honking of an auto horn and ran out upon the covered porch. Between the scuds of rain that drove along the valley she saw the gray automobile coming slowly past the mill.

There was a man driving it now, and he stopped and let Helen Cameron out so that she could run up to great Ruth under the shelter of the porch.

"Oh, you dear! How are you getting on?" cried Helen, kissing her impulsively and as glad to see Ruth as though they had been separated for days instead of for only a few hours. "Colfax wanted to drive down to the station alone for Daddy--for we won't bring poor Tom home in this rain--but I just couldn't resist coming to see how you were getting on." She looked around with big eyes. "How does the Ogre treat you?" she whispered.

But Ruth could laugh now and did so, saying, cheerfully: "He hasn't eaten me up yet! And Aunt Alvirah is the dearest little lady who ever lived."

"She likes you, then?"

"Of course she does."

"I knew she would, she was bound to love you. But I don't know about the Ogre," and she shook her head. "But there! I must run. We don't want to be late for the train. That will put Daddy out. And I must stop and see Tom at the doctor's, too."

"I hope you will find your brother ever so mach better," cried Ruth, as her friend ran down the walk again.

"You'll see him come by here to-morrow, if it quits raining," returned Helen, over her shoulder.

But it did not stop raining that night, nor for a full week. The scuds of rain, blowing across the river, slapped sharply against the side of the house, and against Ruth's window all night. She did not sleep that first night as well as she had in the charitable home of the station master and his good wife. The evening meal had been as stiff and unpleasant as the noon meal. The evening was spent in the same room-- the kitchen. Aunt Alviry knitted and sewed; Uncle Jabez pored over certain accounts and counted money very softly behind the uplifted cover of the j.a.panned cash-box that he had brought in from the mill.

She got in time to know that cash-box very well indeed. It often came into the house under Uncle Jabez's arm at dinner, too. He scarcely seemed willing to trust it out of his sight. And Ruth was sure that he locked himself into his room with it at night.

A loaded shotgun lay upon rests over the kitchen door all the time, and there was a big, two-barreled, muzzle-loading pistol on the stand beside Uncle Jabez's bed. Ruth was much more afraid of these loaded weapons than she was of burglars. But the old man evidently expected to be attacked for his wealth at some time although, Aunt Alvirah told her, n.o.body had ever troubled him in all the years she had lived at the Red Mill.

So it was not fear of marauders that kept Ruth so wakeful on this first night under her uncle's roof. She thought of all the kind friends she had left in Darrowtown, and her long journey here, and her cold welcome to what she supposed would be her future home. Without Helen, and without Aunt Alvirah, she knew she would have gotten up, put on her clothing, packed her bag, and run away in the rain to some other place. She could not have stood Uncle Jabez alone.

Jabez Potter was h.o.a.rding up something besides money, too. Ruth did not understand this until it had already rained several days, and the roaring of the waters fretting against the river banks and against the dam, had become all but deafening in her ears.

Then, during a lull in the storm, and on the afternoon that Tom Cameron was taken home from Dr. Davison's, the old doctor himself stopped at the mill and shouted for Jabez to come out. The doctor drove a very fast red and white mare and had difficulty in holding her in, for she was eager to be moving.

Uncle Jabez came out and seemed to look upon the doctor in no very friendly way. Ruth, standing at the open door of the kitchen, could hear Dr. Davison's voice plainly.

"Jabez," he said, "do you know how the river is at Minturn?"

"No," returned the miller, briefly.

"It's higher than it's ever been. That dam is not safe. Why don't you let your water out so that, if Minturn should break, she'd have free sweep here and so do less damage below? Let this small flood out and when the greater one comes there'll be less danger of a disaster."

"And how do I know the Minturn dam will burst, Dr. Davison?" asked Mr.

Potter, tartly.

"You don't know it. I'm only advising that precaution."

"And if it don't burst I'll have my pains for my trouble--and no water for the summer, perhaps. They wouldn't let me have water later, if I needed it."

"But you're risking your own property here."

"And it's mine to risk, Dr. Davison," said Potter, in his sullen way.

"But there are other people to think of--"

"I don't agree with you," interrupted the miller. "I have enough to do to attend to my own concerns. I don't bother about other people's business."

"Meaning that I do when I speak to you about the water; eh?" said the old doctor, cheerfully. "Well, I've done my duty. You'll learn some time, Jabez."

He let out the impatient mare then, and the mud spattered from his wheels as he flew up the road toward Cheslow.

CHAPTER IX

THE CREST OF THE WAVE

The rain could not last forever; Nature must cease weeping some time.

Just as girls, far away from their old homes and their old friends, must cease wetting their pillows with regretful tears after a time, and look forward to the new interests and new friends to which they have come.

Not that Ruth wept much. But the rainy days of that first week were necessarily trying. On Sat.u.r.day, however, came a clear day. The sun shone, the drenched trees shook themselves, and the wind came and blew softly and warmly through their branches to dry the tender foliage.

The birds popped out of their hiding-places and began to sing and chirp as though they never could be glad enough for this change in the weather.

There was so much to see from the kitchen door at the Red Mill that Ruth did not mind her work that morning. She had learned now to help Aunt Alvirah in many ways. Not often did the old lady have to go about moaning her old refrain:

"Oh, my back and oh, my bones! Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"