What did they mean?  Or, was there no meaning at all to the muttering of the wounded boy?  Ruth saw that Parloe was looking at her in his sly and disagreeable way, and she knew that he, too, had heard the words.

“It was Jabe Potter—­ he did it!” Was it an accusation referring to the boy’s present plight?  And how could her Uncle Jabez—­ the relative she had not as yet seen—­ be the cause of Tom Cameron’s injury?  The spot where the boy was hurt must have been five miles from the Red Mill, and not even on the Osago Lake turnpike, on which highway she had been given to understand the Red Mill stood.

Not many moments more and the little procession was at the gateway, on either side of which burned the two green lamps.

Jasper Parloe, who had been relieved, shuffled off into the darkness.  Reno after one pleading look into the face of the hesitating Ruth, followed the stretcher on which his master lay, in at the gate.

And Ruth Fielding, beginning again to feel most embarrassed and forsaken, was left alone where the two green eyes winked in the warm, moist darkness of the Spring night.

CHAPTER V

 The girl in the automobile

The men who had gone in with the unconscious boy and the stretcher hung about the doctor’s door, which was some yards from the gateway.  Everybody seemed to have forgotten the girl, a stranger in Cheslow, and for the first day of her life away from kind and indulgent friends.

It was only ten minutes walk to the railroad station, and Ruth remembered that it was a straight road.  She arrived in the waiting room safely enough.  Sam Curtis, the station master, descried her immediately and came out of his office with her bag.

“Well, and what happened?  Is that boy really hurt?” he asked.

“He has a broken arm and his head is cut.  I do not know how seriously, for Doctor Davison had not finished examining him when I—­ I came away,” she replied, bravely enough, and hiding the fact that she had been overlooked.

“They took him to the doctor’s house, did they?” asked Sam.

“Yes, sir,” said Ruth.  “But—­”

“Mr. Curtis, has there been anybody here for me?”

“For you, Miss?” the station master returned, somewhat surprised it seemed.

“Yes, sir.  Anybody from Red Mill?”

Curtis smote one fist into his other palm, exclaiming: 

“You don’t mean to say that you was what Jabe Potter was after?”

“Mr. Jabez Potter, who keeps the Red Mill, is my uncle,” Ruth observed, with dignity.

“My goodness gracious me, Miss!  He was here long before your train was due.  He’s kind of short in his speech, Miss.  And he asked me if there was anything here for him, and I told him no.  And he stumped out again without another word.  Why, I thought he was looking for an express package, or freight.  Never had an idea he was expectin’ a niece!”