Priscilla knocked and waited. No reply or sound came in response, and presently a low muttering of distant thunder broke.
"That will bring them in short order," she said, "and surely they will not object if I make myself comfortable until they come."
She went inside. The room had the appearance of one from which the owner had long been absent, that unaccountable, vacant look, although a work-bag hung on the back of a chair by the roaring fire, and a blot of oil lay on the table near the lamp which had evidently been recently filled. Back of these tokens lay a wide sense of desolation.
For a moment Priscilla hesitated before sitting down; her courage failed, but a second thought reconciled conditions with a brief stay after long absence, and she decided to wait.
And while she waited, suddenly and alarmingly, the storm burst! The darkness of the room and the wooded space outside had deceived her: there was no escape now!
She was concerned for the people she had come to see. Jerry-Jo, she knew, would crawl under his boat and be as dry as a tortoise in its shell. But those others!
With this thought she set about, mechanically, making the room comfortable. She piled on fresh wood and noticed that it was so wet that it sputtered dangerously. Presently the wind changed sharply, and a blast of almost icy coldness carried the driving rain halfway across the floor.
It was something of a struggle to close the heavy door, for it opened outward, and Priscilla was drenched by the time it was made secure. Breathing hard, she made her way to the fire and knelt before it. The glow drew her attention from the darkness of the space back and around her.
It was unfortunate and depressing, and she had no choice but to make herself as comfortable as she might, though a sense of painful uneasiness grew momentarily. At first she imagined it was fear of what she must encounter upon her return home; then she felt sure it was her dread of meeting the people for whom she had risked so much. Finally Jerry-Jo loomed in the foreground of her thought and an entirely new terror was born in her soul.
"Jerry-Jo!" she laughed aloud as his name passed her lips. "Jerry-Jo, to be sure. My! how thankful I'd be to see him this instant!"