"Why should I?" returned Tom, coolly. "You never have been any too friendly towards me."
"Hah!" said the miller, nodding. "That's true. But let me tell you, young man, that I saw your father about the time I ran you down. We don't get along very well, I admit. I ain't got much use for you Camerons. But I had no intention of doing you harm. You can believe that, or not. If you will remember, the evening you went over that embankment on the Wilkins Corners road, I came up behind you. My mules were young, and your dog jumped out at them and scared them. They bolted, and I never knew till next day that you had been knocked over the embankment."
"We'll let bygones be bygones, Mr. Potter," said Tom, good-humoredly. "I came out of it all right."
"But you had no business to pay Jasper Parloe money for keeping still about it," said the miller, sourly. "Being bled by a blackmailer is never the action of a wise man. When he threatened me I went to your father at once and got ahead of Parloe. We agreed to say nothing about it—that's about all we did agree on, however," added Mr. Potter, grimly. "Now you children run along. Ruth, come here. I figger I owe you something because of the finding of this box. Yes! I know how much the others had to do with it, too. But they'd never been over there in Olakah Glen if it hadn't been for you. I'll make this up to you. I never yet owed a debt that I didn't repay in full. I'll remember this one, gal."
But so much happened in those next two weeks, following the finding of the cash-box, that Ruth quite forgot this promise on her uncle's part. She realized, however, that he seemed really desirous of being kind to her, and that much of his grimness had disappeared.
Everybody at the Red Mill—and many other people, too—had their thoughts fixed upon Mercy Curtis at this time. She had been getting stronger all the while. She had been able to hobble on her two sticks from her bedroom to the porch. She had been to ride half a dozen times in the Camerons' automobile. And then, suddenly, without other warning, Doctor Davison and the strange surgeon who had once examined Mercy, appeared in a big limousine car, with a couch arranged inside, and they whisked Mercy off to a sanitarium some miles away, where she was operated on by the famous surgeon, with Doctor Davison's help, and from which place the report came back in a few days that the operation had been successful and that Mercy Curtis would—in time—walk again!
Meanwhile, Ruth had kept up her recitations to Miss Cramp, often walking back and forth to town, but sometimes getting "a lift," and the teacher pronounced her prepared to enter the Cheslow High School. She had taken the studies that Helen Cameron had taken, and, on comparing notes, the chums found that they were in much the same condition of advancement.
"Oh, if you were only going to Briarwood with me, instead of to Cheslow High!" wailed Helen, one day, as they sat on the porch of the Red Mill house.
"Ah, dear!" said Ruth, quietly, "don't talk about it. I want to go with you more than I ever wanted to do anything in my whole life—"
"What's that?" exclaimed Uncle Jabez's gruff voice behind them. "What's that you want to do, Ruth?"