"Look! Look up the river!" he shouted as soon as he had come within hearing. "I was afraid you wouldn't see it. It's an army of squirrels marching steadily, just like soldiers, millions and millions of them! It has been like that for hours. I have been watching it since daylight. The squirrels are trying to cross the river, and thousands and thousands are already drowned. The water is brown with their bodies."
"The poor little things! What in the world can it mean, David? And look at the birds! They don't come at all when I call them. What is the matter with them? I don't see anything to disturb them, yet see how they look! And hear the waterfowl screaming! And the trees, too. Why do the leaves droop like that? How can it be so hot in December? It was never like this before. There isn't a breath of air."
"I have noticed how strange everything seems. The forest is stiller than I ever saw it, but the wild things that live in it are strangely restless. I have been watching them all the morning, and I heard them in the night."
"But what does it mean, dear? Surely some dreadful thing must be going to happen! I wish Paul would come. Have you seen him? He is always riding, and the woods are dangerous in a storm, and it can't be anything else. Why don't you answer? I asked if you had seen him."
The boy turned from gazing at the strange, dark line which was still wavering ceaselessly from the woods to the water.
"Yes, I saw him and Father Orin going home an hour or so ago. They had been out all night." He said this absently, with his eyes turning back to the wonderful spectacle.
"My Paul is wanted in many places at once," she said, forgetting her uneasiness in a woman's pride in the power of the man she loves. "But I hope he found time to visit the sick man on uncle Philip's boat," mindful even then of a woman's wish to draw together the men she loves. "Can you see any clouds, David? I can't—and yet this strange yellow vapor that thickens the air is certainly growing heavier every moment. What can it be? It isn't at all like a fog. I am frightened. Come indoors. 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!"