A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

a part. It was because a beautiful young lady had taken his part, and
put her arms about him, and refused to believe that he was as bad as
Skeeter Sheeley said he was.

CHAPTER V

During the rest of the week the rainstorm, that had started all the
trouble, continued to hover ominously, breaking forth day after day in
fierce, petulant showers. Out at Thornwood the aspect was most dreary;
the low-lying ground in front of the house was under water for a quarter
of a mile, trees, limp and draggled, stood disconsolate in an unfamiliar
lake, the bridge below the dam was washed away, and horses going to the
creek for water were constantly being caught by the current, and having
to be rescued by ropes. In the flower garden dirty-faced little blossoms
lay in the mud, vines trailed across the paths, all the fragrance and
color seemed to be soaked out of everything by those continuous, pelting
showers.
Within the house it was not much gayer. The front hall, with its steep,
narrow stairway, and floor-covering of highly ornate landscape oilcloth,
was in a perpetual twilight. An occasional glint from white woodwork, or
the gold molding of a picture, strove in vain to dispel the gloom. The
parlor, at the right of the hall, was sepulchral with its window cracks
stuffed with paper, and the shutters securely closed. To be sure, the
living-room on the other side of the hall did its best to look cheerful,
but even that comfortable spot with its low ceiling and battered
mahogany furniture, its high cupboards flanking the wide, stone
fireplace, and its friendly litter of every-day necessities, was not
equal to the occasion.
One afternoon when the Colonel came in from the chicken yard where
he and Uncle Jimpson had constituted themselves a salvage corps, he
surprised Miss Lady sitting in the dusk on the floor before the empty
fireplace, with suspicious traces of tears upon her face.
“Make a light,” blustered the Colonel; “you mustn't sit around in the
dark like this, you know. Where's my pipe?”
She sprang up and found the missing article, and with a great show of
cheerfulness lit the lamp and held the match out for him to light his
pipe.
“What's the matter?” asked the Colonel; “sort of trembly, ain't you?”
“Me? Watch me!” She held the match very straight and very tight, then
as it wavered, blew it out and dropped it down his sleeve. “There's some
mail over there on the table for you, Daddy dear. Noah brought it down
from town in his buggy.”
She said it very carelessly, and even enumerated the contents as she
handed it to him:
“Two circulars, a letter from the seed man, the Confederate Veteran
and the newspapers.”
“Nothing for you?”
“Nothing.”
Under his scrutiny Miss Lady's eyes fell, and she turned abruptly to the
window, while the Colonel, mouth open, pipe in hand, watched her.
He had never seen his girl like this in her life! What business had her