f lightning had
illumined the woody wilderness; and now just as the chair stopped, drops
began to fall which seemed as large as cherry-stones, mingled with hail
a good deal larger. Their patter sounded on the leaves a minute or two;
then ceased.

"That will do, Logan," said the doctor. "Bring the chair in under
shelter if you can; and come in yourself. This will be a shower." And
he led Daisy into the house.

If ever you saw a dark-looking place, that was the room into which the
house door admitted them. Two little windows seemed at this instant to
let in the darkness rather than the light; they were not very clean,
besides being small. A description which Daisy would have said applied
to the whole room. She stood still in the middle of the floor, not
seeing any place to sit down, that she could make up her mind to take.
The doctor went to the window. Logan took a chair. Sam was sitting
disconsolately in a corner. It was hard to say to what class of people
the house belonged; poor people they were of course; and things looked
as if they were simply living there because too poor to live anywhere
else. A slatternly woman stared at the intruders; a dirty child crawled
over the hearth. Daisy could not endure to touch anything, except with
the soles of her shoes. So she stood upright in the middle of the floor;
till the doctor turned round.

"Daisy!--are you going to stand there till the shower is over?"

"Yes, sir,"--Daisy answered patiently. A smile curled the doctor's lips.
He opened the door and lifted in the chair with its long poles, which
indeed half filled the little room; but Daisy sat down. The woman looked
on in astonishment.

"Be she weakly, like?" she asked at length of the doctor.

"Has been--" he answered.

"And what be that thing for?"

"It is for going up and down mountains."

"Have you come from the mountings!" she asked in great surprise. The
doctor was in for it. He was obliged to explain. Meanwhile the darkness
continued and the rain did not yet fall. A breath of wind now and then
brushed heavily past the house, and sunk into silence. The minutes
passed.

"It will be a happiness if they get here before it begins," said Dr.
Sandford; "it will come when it comes!"

"Be there _more_ comin'?" said the woman.

"A houseful. We are only the beginning."

She moved about now with somewhat of anxiety to get sundry things out of
the way, which yet there seemed no other place for; a frying pan was s