Ruth Fielding Down East | Page 2

door and peered out.
The creeper fluttered away. The robin continued to shout his warning.
Had it really been a rustling in the vines she had heard? Was there
somebody lurking about the summer-house?
She stepped out and looked on both sides. It was then she saw how
threatening the aspect of the clouds on the other side of the river were.
The sight drove from her thoughts for the moment the strange sound
she had heard. She did not take pains to look beneath 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,