rain.

CHAPTER III

THE OLD MILL

The two boys, thus most unexpectedly evicted, stood disconsolately on
the porch of the Half Way House, peering out into the storm. The
character of it had changed somewhat, the rain driving fiercely now and
then, with an occasional quick flaw of wind, instead of falling
monotonously. And now there came a few rumblings of thunder, with faint
flashes of lightning low in the sky.

"Well, Jack," said Henry Burns, at length, speaking with more than his
customary deliberation, "wet night luck seems to be worse even than wet
day luck. But who'd ever thought we'd have such tough luck as to run
across Col. Witham up here, and a night like this? The boys never said
anything about his being here."

"No--and he's got no right to put us out!" cried Harvey. "If you'll
stand by, I'll go back into that office and tell him what I think of
him."

"He knows that already," replied Henry Burns, coolly. "Wouldn't be any
news to him. Say, I see a light way up on the hill to the left. Suppose
we try them there. I wish we could see the road and the paths better,
so as to know where we are."

As though almost in answer to this wish, a brilliant flash of lightning
illumined the whole sky; and, for a brief moment, there stood clearly
outlined before them, like a huge magic-lantern picture, the prominent
features of the landscape.

Past the hotel where they stood, the highway ran, gleaming now with
pools of water. Some way down the road, the land descended to a narrow
intervale through which a brook flowed, with a rude wooden bridge thrown
across in line with the road. Farther still down the road, and a little
off from it, beside the larger stream which they had travelled all day,
an old mill squatted close to the water, hard by the brink of a dam.
Away up on the hillside, some three quarters of a mile off, a farmhouse
gave them a fleeting glimpse of its gables and chimneys. Then the
picture vanished and the black curtain of the night fell again.

"All right," assented Harvey, to the reply of his comrade, "I suppose we
better go without a fuss. It isn't getting out in the rain here that
makes me maddest. It's to think of Col. Witham chuckling over it in
there, snug and dry."

"He isn't," said Henry Burns. "He never chuckles over anything. He's
madder than we are, because we got our suppers and a drying out. Come
on, dive in. It's always the first plunge that's worst."

They stepped forth int