ately; but pine timber's more takin'
then good looks tew some folks."

"Likely ez not Drusy won't hev nothin' tew say tew him," said the girl.
"That gawky-lookin' John Barker 'pears tew be hangin' raound her
consid'able. 'Twould be kind er funny ef she should like him better."
And she laughed scornfully.

Barker overheard this, and the girl's words, and, above all, her
laughter, stung him to the quick. He leaned against the patriotic wall
and meditated bitterly.

Reube came over and stood by Drusy's side, and they talked in a low,
interested tone. She never talked to him in that way, never listened to
what he had to say with such half-shy, half-coquettish attention. But
she would not dance, even with Reube.

The sleigh-bells of some late-comers came tinkling up to the door.

"Why, Sam, what's kept ye so? It's 'most nine o'clock," exclaimed one of
the lumbermen to a red-shirted comrade who came hurrying into their
midst.

"Sick man at the camp. The doctor from the Mills hez jest been ter see
him, but said he couldn't do nothin' fur him; reckoned he'd be a goner
before mornin'."

"Sho! Who is it?"

"A feller by the name o' Seth Hardin'; boss in some lumber-consarn
daown-river; stopped ter the camp over-night on his way up ter Grand
Falls, 'n' was took with fever 'n' ravin' like a muskeeter 'fore
mornin'."

Drusy's face, which was rosy and smiling as she stood watching the
movements of a contra-dance, suddenly blanched, and she grasped a wooden
pillar as if for support. Her very lips were white.

"What's the matter, Drusy?" said Wetherbee, in a tone of gentle
solicitude.

She beckoned him aside.

"Reube," said she, the color surging into her cheeks again, "I must go
out to Fernald's camp. I must go at once. Oh, Reube! could you take me
there? Tom's gone over to the Point after his aunt Harriet with our
team, and there's no knowing when he'll get back. I _can't_ wait! I
_must_ go, this moment!" She clasped her hands tightly together and
looked pleadingly up into his face. "Don't hesitate, Reube. That dying
man is my husband."

"Your husband!" he exclaimed, with a strange flash in his mild blue
eyes, and with a pallor which almost equalled her own overspreading his
face for an instant. "I don't think you'd better set out for Fernald's
camp to-night, Drusy, 'Tis fifteen miles at the shortest, over the worst
road in the county. But if you think you must" (he glanced at Henrietta
Blaisdell, who was looking re