CHAPTER XI

 Uncle Jabez is excited

So rapidly had all this taken place that the girls had remained in the mill.  But now Ruth, crying:  “Aunt Alvirah will be frightened to death, Helen!” led the way down the long passage and through the shed into the kitchen porch.  The water on this side of the building had swept up the road and actually into the yard; but the automobile stood in a puddle only and was not injured.

Aunt Alviry was sitting in her rocker by the window.  The old woman was very pale and wan.  She had her Bible open on her knees and her lips trembled in a smile of welcome when the girls burst into the room.

“Oh, my dears! my dears!” she cried.  “I am so thankful to see you both safe!” She started to rise, and the old phrase came to her lips:  “Oh, my back and oh, my bones!”

Then she rose and hobbled across the room.  Her bright little, birdlike eyes, that had never yet known spectacles, had seen something up the Cheslow road.

“Who’s this a-coming?  For the land’s sake, what recklessness!  Is that Jabez and his mules, Ruthie?  Bless us and save us! what’s he going to try and do?”

The two girls ran to the door.  Down the hill thundered a farm wagon drawn by a pair of mules, said mules being on the dead run while their driver stood in the wagon and snapped his long, blacksnake whip over their ears.  Such a descent of the hill was reckless enough in any case; but now, at the foot, rolled the deep water.  It had washed away a little bridge that spanned what was usually a rill, but the banks of this stream being overflowed for yards on either side, the channel was at least ten feet deep.

It was Jabez Potter driving so recklessly down the hill from Cheslow.

“Oh, oh!” screamed the old lady.  “Jabez will be killed!  Oh, my back and oh, my bones!  Oh, deary, deary me!”

She had crossed the porch and was hobbling down the steps.  Her rheumatic twinges evidently caused her excruciating pain, but the fear she felt for the miller’s safety spurred her to get as far as the fence.  And there Ruth and Helen kept her from splashing into the muddy water that covered the road.

“You can do no good, Aunt Alvirah!” cried Ruth.

“The mules are not running away with him, Mrs. Boggs,” urged Helen.

“They’ll kill him!  He’s crazy!  It’s his money—­ the poor, poor man!”

It was evident that Aunt Alvirah read the miller’s excitement aright.  Ruth remembered the cash-box and wondered if it had been left in the mill while her uncle went to Cheslow?  However that might be, her attention—­ indeed, the attention of everybody about the mill—­ was held by the reckless actions of Mr. Potter.

It was not fifteen minutes after the wave had hit the mill and torn away a part of the outer office wall and the loading platform, or wharf, when the racing mules came down to the turbulent stream that lay between the Cheslow road and the Red Mill.  The frightened animals would have balked at the stream, but the miller, still standing in the wagon, coiled the whip around his head and then lashed out with it, laying it, like a tongue of living fire, across the mules’ backs.