“It isn’t right to call Uncle Jabez names,” said Ruth, quietly.  “He is greatly to be pitied, I do believe.  And just now, particularly so.”

“You mean because of the loss of that cash-box?”

“Yes.”

“Do you suppose there was much in it?”

“He told me that it contained every cent he had saved in all these years.”

“My!” cried Helen.  “Then he must have lost a fortune!  He has been a miser for forty years, so they say.”

“I do not know about that,” Ruth pursued.  “He is harsh and—­ and he seems to be very selfish.  He—­ he says I can go to school, though.”

“Well, I should hope so!” cried Helen.

“But I don’t know that I can go,” Ruth continued, shaking her head.

“For pity’s sake I why not?” asked her friend.

Then, out came the story of the lost trunk.  Nor could Ruth keep back the tears as she told her friend about Uncle Jabez’s cruelty.

“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Helen, almost weeping herself.  “The mean, mean thing!  No, I won’t call him Ogre again; he isn’t as good as an Ogre.  I—­ I don’t know what to call him!”

“Calling him names won’t bring back my trunk, Helen,” sobbed Ruth.

“That’s so.  I—­ I’d make him pay for it!  I’d make him get me dresses for those that were lost.”

“Uncle is giving me a home; I suppose he will give me to wear all that he thinks I need.  But I shall have to wear this dress to school, and it will soon not be fit to wear anywhere else.”

“It’s just too mean for anything, Ruth!  I just wish—­”

What Miss Cameron wished she did not proceed to explain.  She stopped and bit her lip, looking at her friend all the time and nodding.  Ruth was busily wiping her eyes and did not notice the very wise expression on Helen’s face.

“Look out! here comes Tom,” whispered Helen, suddenly, and Ruth made a last dab at her eyes and put away her handkerchief in a hurry.

“Say! ain’t you ever going to get that thing done?” demanded Tom.  “Seems to me you haven’t done anything at all since I was here last.”

The girls became very busy then and worked swiftly until the pillow was completed.  By that time it was late afternoon and they started homeward.  Ruth separated from Helen and Tom at the main road and walked alone toward the Red Mill.  She came to the bridge, which was at the corner of her uncle’s farm, and climbed the stile, intending to follow the path up through the orchard to the rear of the house—­ the same path by which she and her friends had started on their little jaunt in the morning.

The brook which ran into the river, and bounded this lower end of Mr. Potter’s place, was screened by clumps of willows.  Just beyond the first group of saplings Ruth heard a rough voice say: 

“And I tell you to git out!  Go on the other side of the crick, Jasper Parloe, if ye wanter fish.  That ain’t my land, but this is.”