A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

Myrtella standing helplessly before the terror-stricken girl, could
find no words of sympathy. In fact she appeared even more formidable and
bristling than usual.
“Well, he ain't dead yet,” she said shortly, “and any how, there ain't
no reason why you shouldn't have supper. Trouble always sets heavy on a
empty stomach.”

CHAPTER VII

The fatal accident which Phineas Flathers' misguided patriotism had
precipitated, changed the course of many a life, but to none did it
bring more far-reaching consequences than to the daughter of old Bob
Carsey.
Miss Lady could never clearly recall those first days after her father's
death. They seemed to her a confused nightmare of strange doctors
and nurses, of a strange man hovering between life and death in the
guest-room bed, of strange people coming and going, or sitting in hushed
groups on the stiff horsehair chairs in the hall, waiting for news. Two
facts alone remained fixed in the whirling chaos of unrealities; her
father was dead, and no letter had come from Donald Morley.
Each day when the mail arrived she roused from her apathy, and with
trembling fingers sorted out the letters, going over them again and
again, and never finding the one she sought. Gradually beneath the
poignant grief for her father, came the dull persistent pain of a first
disillusion. The belief and loyalty with which she had started out to
defend Donald began to weaken before his silence. In his trouble she had
been ready to rush to him, to succor and forgive, but he had not called
upon her. Now in her great need, she was calling to him, and he did not
come. Suspicion began to crowd on the heels of doubt.
Had he not acknowledged his instability? Had her father not seen it from
the first? Was his desire to settle down in the country but one of the
whims of which his life seemed made up? Perhaps she herself had
only been a passing fancy, something wanted for the moment, but soon
forgotten. At the end of a week her pride rushed to arms. Whatever
reason he might offer now would come too late.
The sudden plunge from irresponsible girlhood into this mysterious
region of grief and doubt, where one must tread the thorny path alone,
terrified and bewildered her. She did all the last sad, futile things
one can do for the dead; then when all was over, fled from the confusion
at Thornwood, and sought the silence of the woods. Here fierce outbursts
of rebellious grief were followed by hours of apathy when she tramped
for miles, seeing and hearing nothing, but urged on by an insistent
desire to be in motion.
It was at the end of one of these tramps that Noah Wicker found her late
one evening, on the grass by the river, sobbing out her heart at the
spot where the Colonel used to fish.
Noah's words of comfort were as scarce as his other words, so he sat on
a log near by and waited silently until she was ready to go home. At the
stile, where he left her, he handed her a letter.