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