had issued from her lips. Then all at once
he realized what it had meant, that hideous feeling of loss when he
thought that she lay buried beneath the tree. It had come to them both,
revealed as by a flash of the lightning which was now traveling toward
the east, and in the wonder and joy of it he held her close for a moment
and then put her gently from him.

Sternly repressing the words which would have rushed from his heart, he
said quietly:

"Thank God we were both spared. Come, little Lou, we must find shelter."

CHAPTER VIII

Journey's End

The rain had ceased, and as they walked down the muddy road the sun came
out even before the final mutterings of the thunder had died away in the
distance, and so they came at last upon a little house which sat well
back among a group of dripping trees.

"Take your coat, Jim," Lou said, breaking a long silence which had
fallen between them. "That porch is so wet now that we can't get it any
wetter an' I'm goin' to ask for a chance to get dry."

But they had scarcely passed through the gate when the front door opened
and a young woman rushed out.

"Oh! Will you run to the next house for me and telephone for the
doctor?" she cried, all in one breath. Her eyes were staring and her
breast heaved convulsively.

Jim quickened his pace.

"Where is the next house, and what doctor shall I send for?" he asked
pleasantly.

"It's just over the ridge there; the Colberts. They know Dr. Blair's
number. My husband would go himself but he can't step on his hurt foot
and I don't dare leave. Tell the Colberts that it's the baby! He's
dying, and I don't know what to do!"

Jim turned, and hurried off over the ridge, but Lou took a step forward.

"Baby! I've been takin' care of babies all my life, seems like. You let
me look at it, ma'am."

"Oh, do you think you could do anything, a little thing like you?"

The young woman eyed the forlornly drenched figure before her rather
doubtfully, but something she read in Lou's steady, confident gaze
seemed to reassure her, and she threw wide the door. "Come in, please!
He's all blue."

Lou unceremoniously pushed past her down the clean little hallway and
paused for a moment upon the threshold of the room at its end. It was a
kitchen, small, but as immaculately clean as the hall, and in a
rocking-chair near the window sat an anxious-eyed young man with his
bandaged foot up on another chair before him, and in his arms a tiny,
rigid