“You say she ain’t nothin’ to you folks?”
“But she is alone, and frightened.”
“Wal, I expect so. She did give me a start for fair. I don’t know where she could have come from ’nless she belongs over toward Ridgeton at old Miz Abby Drake’s. She’s got some city folks stopping with her—”
“There she is!” cried Ruth, under her breath.
A hobbling figure appeared for a moment on the side of the ravine. The rain had ceased now, but it still dripped plentifully from the trees.
“I’m going after her!” exclaimed Ruth.
“All right, Ma’am,” said Mr. Peterby Paul. “I guess she ain’t no Whosis, after all.”
Ruth could run much faster than the strange person who had so startled both the woodsman and herself. And running lightly, the girl of the Red Mill was almost at her quarry’s elbow before her presence was suspected by the latter.
The woman turned her face toward Ruth and screeched in evident alarm. She looked wild enough to be called a “Whosis,” whatever kind of supernatural apparition that might be. Her silk dress was in rags; her hair floated down her back in a tangled mane; altogether she was a sorry sight, indeed.
She was a woman of middle age, dark, slight of build, and of a most pitiful appearance.