The Inn at the Red Oak | Page 3

fell to talking.
"Think of it!" exclaimed young Frost, as he took a great whiff at his pipe; "here we are--the middle of the winter--and not a guest in the house. Why we used to have a dozen travellers round the bar here, and the whole house bustling. I've known my father to serve a hundred and more with rum on a night like this. Now we do a fine business if we serve as many in a winter. Times have changed since we were boys."
"Aye," Tom agreed, "and it isn't so long ago, either. It seemed to me as if the whole county used to be here on a Saturday night."
"I'm thinking," resumed Dan musingly, "of throwing up the business, what's the use of pretending to keep an inn? If it wasn't for mother and for Nancy, I'd clear out, boy; go off and hunt my fortune. As it is, with what I make on the farm and lose on the house, I just pull through the year."
"By gad," exclaimed Tom, "I'd go with you, Dan. I'm tired to my soul with reading law in father's office. Why, you and I haven't been farther than Coventry to the county fair, or to Perth Anhault to make a horse trade. I'd like to see the world, go to London and Paris. I've wanted to go to France ever since that queer Frenchman was here--remember?--and told us those jolly tales about the Revolution and the great Napoleon. We were hardly more than seven or eight then, I guess."
"I would like to go, hanged if I wouldn't," said Dan. "I'm getting more and more discontented. But there's not much use crying for the moon, and France might as well be the moon, for all of me." He relapsed then into a brooding silence. It was hard for an inn-keeper to be cheerful in midwinter with an empty house. Tom too was silent, dreaming vividly, if vaguely, of the France he longed to see.
"Hark!" exclaimed Dan presently. "How it blows! There must be a big sea outside to-night."
He strode to the window, pushed back the curtains of faded chintz, and stared out into the darkness. The wind was howling in the trees and about the eaves of the old inn, the harsh roar of the surf mingled with the noise of the storm, and the sleet lashed the window-panes in fury.
"You will not be thinking of going home tonight, Tom?"
"Not I," Pembroke answered, for he was as much at home in Dan's enormous chamber as he was in his own little room under the roof at the Red Farm.
As he turned from the window, the door into the parlour opened, and a young girl quietly slipped in and seated herself in the chimney-corner.
"Hello, Nance," Dan exclaimed, as she entered; "come close, child; you need to be near the fire on a night like this."
"Mother is asleep," the girl answered briefly, and then, resting her chin upon her hands, she fixed her great dark eyes upon the glowing logs. She was Dan's foster-sister, eighteen years of age, though she looked hardly more than sixteen; a shy, slender, girl, lovely with a wild, unusual charm. To Tom she had always been a silent elfin creature, delightful as their playmate when a child, but now though still so familiar, she seemed in an odd way, to grow more remote. Apparently she liked to sit with them on these winter evenings in the deserted bar, when Mrs. Frost had gone to bed; and to listen to their conversation, though she took little part in it.
As Dan resumed his seat, he looked at her with evident concern, for she was shivering as she sat so quietly by the fireside.
"Are you cold, Nance?" he asked.
"A little," she replied. "I was afraid in the parlour with Mother asleep, and the wind and the waves roaring so horribly."
"Afraid?" exclaimed Tom, with an incredulous laugh. "I never knew you to be really afraid of anything in the world, Nancy."
She turned her dark eyes upon him for the moment, with a sharp inquisitive glance which caused him to flush unaccountably. An answering crimson showed in her cheeks, and she turned back to the fire. The colour fled almost as quickly as it had come, and left her pale, despite the glow of firelight.
"I was afraid--to-night," she said, after a moment's silence.
Suddenly there came the sound of a tremendous knocking on the door which opened from the bar into the outer porch, and all three started in momentary alarm.
Dan jumped to his feet. "Who's that?" he cried.
Again came the vigorous knocking. He ran across the room, let down the great oaken beam, and opened the door to the night and storm.
"Come in, travellers." A gust of wind and sleet rushed through the opening and stung