The young man from New England was a gentleman born. He neither asked questions nor raised objections.
"Of course, you may command me utterly," he said warmly. "I'll help; and I'll go with you, if you will let me."
"That is what I want," she said frankly. "Will you propose it? I—I can't explain, even to my cousin."
"Certainly," he agreed; and a little later, when the temperature dropped the necessary three degrees and the rain stopped, he calmly announced his intention of taking Miss Ardea out to see the devastation which, by this time, was beginning to be apparent on all sides.
There was a protest, as a matter of course, quite shrill on the part of Miss Euphrasia, but not absolutely prohibitory on the Major's. Morelock saw to it that his charge was well wrapped; in her haste and agitation Ardea would have overlooked the common precautions. They used the side door for a sally-port, and were soon slipping and sliding almost helplessly across the lawn. Walking was next to impossible, and the crashes of falling branches and trees came like the detonations of quick-firing guns. The minister locked arms with the determined young woman at his side and picked the way for her as he could.
"This is something awful for you," he said, when they had covered half the distance to the nearest pasture wall. "Does the necessity warrant it?"
"It does," she rejoined; and they pressed on in awe-inspired silence to the gate which opened on the pasture grove.
The quarter of a mile intervening between the gate and that side of the inclosure bounded by the lower slope of the mountain was truly a passage perilous. A dozen times in the crossing Ardea fell, and so far from being able to save her, Morelock could do no more than fall with her. Once a great limb of a spreading oak split off with a clashing of ice and came sweeping down to give them the narrowest of escapes; and after that they kept the open where they might.
At a rude rock stile over the limestone boundary wall at the mountain's foot they paused to take breath.
"Is there much more of it?" asked the escort, regretting for the first time in his life, perhaps, that he had so studiously ignored the athletic side of his seminary training.