“Did David have to go through the big deadening, William?” she asked suddenly, speaking over her shoulder, without leaving her anxious post in the doorway, though the wind was whipping her skirts about her slender figure and loosing her long, black hair.  “I wish he would come.  He should be back by this time.  I am afraid—­the great trees fall so in a storm.  Father Orin and the doctor, too, often ride through there.  And it is such a dangerous place when the wind blows.  Oh!” with a cry of relief, “there’s David now!  Here he comes.  David, David dear—­I am so glad!”

She sprang down the steps and ran to meet the boy.  The rush of the rising storm kept from hearing William Pressley’s call for her to come back.  He stood still for a moment, hesitating, and then, seeing that she flew on, he followed and overtook her just as she reached David, who was getting down from the pony and taking the empty bag from the saddle.  The wind was now very violent, and the darkened air was thick with the dead leaves of the forest swirling into the river which was already lashed into waves and dashing against the shore.  Waterfowl flew landward with frightened cries; a low, dark cloud was being drawn up the stream over the ashen face of the water—­a strange, thick, terrible black curtain, shaken by the tempest and bordered by the lightning—­pressed onward by the resistless powers of the air.

There was a lull just as William Pressley reached Ruth’s side.  It was one of those tense spaces which are among the greatest terrors of a storm by reason of their suddenness, their stillness, and their suspense.  He grasped her hand, and she clung to his as she would have clung to anything that she chanced to touch in her fright.  He said rather sternly that she must come to the house at once, and she turned obediently, following the motion of his hand rather than the meaning of his words.  He spoke to David also, without looking at the boy, but she was clinging to him and hiding her face on his arm whenever the lightning flashed, and did not notice what he had said until he repeated his words:—­

“You have of course brought back the doeskin string.”

Ruth suddenly lifted her face from his arm, loosed her grasp upon it and stood away from him.  Yet in that first dazed instant she could not believe that she had heard aright.  It was impossible for her, being what she was, to understand that he had never in all his life done anything more true to his nature, more thoroughly characteristic, than to ask this question at such a time.  She forgot the lightning while she waited till he asked it for the third time.  And then, straining her incredulous ears again, she heard the boy murmur something, and she saw him hurriedly and confusedly searching his pockets for the string.

“I can’t find it,” he stammered.  “I must have dropped it when I poured out the wheat.  I am so sorry—­I will go to-morrow—­”

“You will go now;” said William, calmly.  “The string will be lost by to-morrow.  And then,” judicially, “you will remember a needed lesson better if you go at once.”