“Hullo, Tom!” she cried.  “I told you I wouldn’t keep you waiting long.”

“How-do, Ruth,” he returned; but it must be confessed that he was not as bright and smiling as usual, and he looked away from Ruth and after Parloe the next moment.

As the girl reached the machine Uncle Jabez came to the mill door again.  He observed Ruth about to get in and he came down the steps and strode toward the Cameron automobile.  Jasper Parloe had clucked to his old nag and was now rattling away from the place.

“Where are you going, Ruth?” the miller demanded, sternly eyeing Tom Cameron, and without returning the lad’s polite greeting.

“She is going up to our house to lunch with my sister, Mr. Potter,” Tom hastened to say before Ruth could reply.

“She will do nothing of the kind,” said Uncle Jabez, shortly.  “Ruth, go back to the house and help your Aunt Alvirah.  You are going about too much and leaving your aunt to do everything.”

This was not so, and Ruth knew very well that her uncle knew it was not so.  She flushed and hesitated, and he said: 

“Do you hear me?  I expect to be obeyed if you remain here at the Red Mill.  Just because I lay few commands upon you, is no reason why you should consider it the part of wisdom to be disobedient when I do give an order.”

“Oh, Uncle! do let me go,” begged Ruth, fairly crying.  “Helen has been so kind to me—­ and Aunt Alvirah did not suppose you would object.  They come here—­”

“But I do not propose that they shall come here any more,” declared Uncle Jabez, in the same stern tone.  “You can drive on, young man.  The less I see of any of you Camerons the better I shall like it.”

“But, Mr. Potter—­” began Tom.

The old man raised his hand and stopped him.

“I won’t hear any talk about it.  I know just how much these Camerons have done for you,” he said to Ruth.  “They’ve done enough—­ altogether too much.  We will stop this intimacy right here and now.  At least, you will not go to their house, Ruth.  Do as I tell you—­ go in to your Aunt Alviry.”

Then, as the weeping girl turned away, she heard him say, even more harshly than he had spoken to her:  “I don’t want anything to do with people who are hand and glove with that Jasper Parloe.  He’s a thief—­ a bigger thief, perhaps, than people generally know.  At least, he’s cost me enough.  Now, you drive on and don’t let me see you or your sister about here again.”

He turned on his heel and went back to the mill without giving Tom time to say a word.  The boy, angry enough, it was evident from his expression of countenance, hesitated several minutes after the miller was gone.  Once he arose, as though he would get out of the car and follow Jabez into the mill.  But finally he started the engine, turned the car, and drove slowly away.

This was a dreadful day indeed for the girl of the Red Mill.  Never in her life had she been so hurt—­ never had she felt herself so ill-used since coming to this place to live.  Uncle Jabez had never been really kind to her; but aside from the matter of the loss of her trunk he had never before been actually cruel.