ridge and drive straight to Hamblin, where there was a little deserted
house he wanted to see; but shyness and pride held her back. "He'd
better know what kind of folks I belong to," she said to herself, with
a somewhat forced defiance; for in reality it was shame that kept her
silent.

Suddenly she lifted her hand and pointed to the sky. "There's a storm
coming up."

He followed her glance and smiled. "Is it that scrap of cloud among the
pines that frightens you?"

"It's over the Mountain; and a cloud over the Mountain always means
trouble."

"Oh, I don't believe half the bad things you all say of the Mountain!
But anyhow, we'll get down to the brown house before the rain comes."

He was not far wrong, for only a few isolated drops had fallen when they
turned into the road under the shaggy flank of Porcupine, and came
upon the brown house. It stood alone beside a swamp bordered with alder
thickets and tall bulrushes. Not another dwelling was in sight, and it
was hard to guess what motive could have actuated the early settler who
had made his home in so unfriendly a spot.

Charity had picked up enough of her companion's erudition to understand
what had attracted him to the house. She noticed the fan-shaped tracery
of the broken light above the door, the flutings of the paintless
pilasters at the corners, and the round window set in the gable; and she
knew that, for reasons that still escaped her, these were things to
be admired and recorded. Still, they had seen other houses far more
"typical" (the word was Harney's); and as he threw the reins on the
horse's neck he said with a slight shiver of repugnance: "We won't stay
long."

Against the restless alders turning their white lining to the storm the
house looked singularly desolate. The paint was almost gone from the
clap-boards, the window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and the
garden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks and tall swamp-weeds
over which big blue-bottles hummed.

At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like Liff
Hyatt's peered over the fence and then slipped away behind an out-house.
Harney jumped down and helped Charity out; and as he did so the rain
broke on them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying shrubs and
young trees flat, tearing off their leaves like an autumn storm, turning
the road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunder
rolled incessantly through the roar of the