ors. I am coming downstairs. Maybe uncle Robert or William can tell
us what all this means."

But there was nothing to be learned in the great room below. The men of
the family were as helpless as the women. All were waiting and watching
for some nameless calamity, weighed down by that overwhelming,
paralyzing dread of the unknown which unnerves the bravest and makes the
most powerful utterly powerless. The old ladies, trembling and silent,
clung close to the chimney-corner, scarcely looking at one another. The
judge and his nephew were sitting in silence near the front door which
had been opened on account of the sudden heat. They got up hurriedly,
and turned nervously, startled even by the faint rustle of Ruth's skirts
on the stairs. And before they could speak, the strained stillness was
violently torn by a sudden loud, shrill sound, such as none of the
terrified listeners had ever heard before--a long, unearthly shriek,
which seemed to come from neither brute nor human. For a moment not a
cry was uttered, not a word was spoken, and terrified eyes stared
unseeingly into whitening faces. And then the judge, suddenly realizing
what the sound was, broke into shaken, painful laughter.

"It is the whistle of the steamboat--the first steamboat on the Ohio.
How could we have forgotten?" he said. "It is the _Orleans_ passing down
the river. Come to the door. We must see it go by. It doesn't stop here
and none of us should miss seeing it, for the sight of the first steamer
on western waters is something to be stored in memory. Never mind the
signs of the storm. There will be many other storms, but never another
first steamboat down the Ohio. Come out and see it."

"We can get a better view from the river bank," cried Ruth. "Come along,
David!"

Holding hands, the girl and the boy ran to the shore, leaving the others
to watch the great spectacle from the doorstep. And thus all stood,
marvelling like every living creature whose eyes followed it down that
long river. But only the judge could partly grasp the greatness of the
event; only he could partly realize what it meant to the West and the
world. Yet every one waited and watched as if spellbound, till the last
of those first victorious banners of blue smoke thus unfurled over the
conquered wilderness, had waved slowly out of sight around the great
river's majestic bend.

This had brought a momentary forgetfulness of the strange look of the
heavens and the earth; but the