Ruth Fielding Down East | Page 2

the summer-house on the water side.
Instead, another sound assailed her ears. This time one that she could not mistake for anything but just what it was--the musical horn of Tom Cameron's automobile. Ruth turned swiftly to look up the road. A dark maroon car, long and low-hung like a racer, was coming along the road, leaving a funnel of dust behind it. There were two people in the car.
The girl beside the driver--black-haired and petite--fluttered her handkerchief in greeting when she saw Ruth standing by the summer-house. At once the latter ran across the yard, over the gentle rise, and down to the front gate of the Potter farmhouse. She ran splendidly with a free stride of untrammeled limbs, but she held one shoulder rather stiffly.
"Oh, Ruth!"
"Oh, Helen!"
The car was at the gate, and Tom brought it to a prompt stop. Helen, his twin sister, was out of it instantly and almost leaped into the bigger girl's arms.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" sobbed Helen. "You are alive after all that horrible experience coming home from Europe."
"And you are alive and safe, dear Helen," responded Ruth Fielding, quite as deeply moved.
It was the first time they had met since separating in Paris a month before. And in these times of war, with peace still an uncertainty, there were many perils to fear between the port of Brest and that of New York.
Tom, in uniform and with a ribbon and medal on his breast, grinned teasingly at the two girls.
"Come, come! Break away! Only twenty seconds allowed in a clinch. Don't Helen look fine, Ruth? How's the shoulder?"
"Just a bit stiff yet," replied the girl of the Red Mill, kissing her chum again.
At this moment the first sudden swoop of the tempest arrived. The tall elms writhed as though taken with St. Vitus's dance. The hens began to screech and run to cover. Thunder muttered in the distance.
"Oh, dear me!" gasped Ruth, paling unwontedly, for she was not by nature a nervous girl. "Come right into the house, Helen. You could not get to Cheslow or back home before this storm breaks. Put your car under the shed, Tom."
She dragged her friend into the yard and up the warped flag stones to the side door of the cottage. A little old woman who had been sitting on the porch in a low rocking chair arose with difficulty, leaning on a cane.
"Oh, my back, and oh, my bones!" murmured Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who was not long out of a sick bed herself and would never again be as "spry" as she once had been. "Do come in, dearies. It is a wind storm."
Ruth stopped to help the little old woman. She continued pale, but her thought for Aunt Alvirah's comfort caused her to put aside her own fear. The trio entered the house and closed the door.
In a moment there was a sharp patter against the house. The rain had begun in big drops. The rear door was opened, and Tom, laughing and shaking the water from his cap, dashed into the living room. He wore the insignia of a captain under his dust-coat and the distinguishing marks of a very famous division of the A. E. F.
"It's a buster!" he declared. "There's a paper sailing like a kite over the roof of the old mill----"
Ruth sprang up with a shriek. She ran to the back door by which Tom had just entered and tore it open.
"Oh, do shut the door, deary!" begged Aunt Alvirah. "That wind is 'nough to lift the roof."
"What is the matter, Ruth?" demanded Helen.
But Tom ran out after her. He saw the girl leap from the porch and run madly down the path toward the summer-house. Back on the wind came a broken word or two of explanation:
"My papers! My scenario! The best thing I ever did, Tom!"
He had almost caught up to her when she reached the little pavilion. The wind from across the river was tearing through the summer-house at a sixty-mile-an-hour speed.
"Oh! It's gone!" Ruth cried, and had Tom not caught her she would have dropped to the ground.
There was not a scrap of paper left upon the table, nor anywhere in the place. Even the two fat notebooks had disappeared, and, too, the gold-mounted pen the girl of the Red Mill had been using. All, all seemed to have been swept out of the summer-house.
CHAPTER II
THE MYSTERY OF IT
For half a minute Tom Cameron did not know just what to do for Ruth. Then the water spilled out of the angry clouds overhead and bade fair to drench them.
He half carried Ruth into the summer-house and let her rest upon a bench, sitting beside her with his arm tenderly supporting her shoulders. Ruth had begun to sob tempestuously.
Ruth Fielding weeping! She might have cried many times