Her uncle brought the money he took from his customers and put it in a little locked, japanned 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-sheller 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 japanned cash-box that he had brought in from the mill.

She got in time to know that cash-box very well indeed. It often 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, nobody 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 hoarding 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 Saturday, 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!"

The housework was all done and the kitchen swept and as neat as a new pin when the gay tooting of the Cameron automobile horn called Ruth to the porch. There was only Helen on the front seat of the car; but in the tonneau was a bundled-up figure surmounted by what looked to be a scarlet cap which Ruth knew instantly must be Tom's. Ruth did not know many boys and, never having had a brother, was not a little bashful. Besides, she was afraid Tom Cameron would make much of her connection with his being found on the Wilkins Corners road that dark night, after his accident.

And there was another thing that made Ruth feel diffident about approaching the boy. She had borne it all the time in her mind, and the instant she saw Tom in the automobile it bobbed up to the surface of her thought again.

"It was Jabe Potter-- he did it."

So, for more reasons than one, Ruth approached the motor car with hesitation.

"Oh, Ruth!" cried Helen, putting out a gauntleted hand to her. "So this horrid rain has not washed you away? You won't like the Red Mill if the weather keeps this way. And how do you get on?" she added, lowering her voice. "How about the Ogre?"

"He has not ground me into bread-flour yet," responded Ruth, smiling.

"I see he hasn't. You're just as plump as ever, so he hasn't starved you, either. Now, Ruth, I want you to know my brother Tom, whom you have met before without his having been aware of it at the time," and she laughed again.

Tom's left arm was in a sling, and the scarlet bandage around his head made him look like a pirate; but he grinned broadly at Ruth and put out his lean brown hand.

"When I heard about you, Miss Fielding, I knew you were a spunky one," he said. "And anybody that Reno takes to, the way she did to you, is all right. Besides, Nell is just spoons on you already, and Nell, like Reno, doesn't take to every girl."

"The doctor said an outing in the car wouldn't hurt Tom," went on Helen, "and we're going to run up the valley road a way. Now Ruth