BY SARAH O. JEWETT.
Part II.
The wind suddenly grew very cold, and blew the trees angrily, and turned their leaves the wrong way, until it seemed like a furious storm. It had been still, and the sun had been hot and glaring, but suddenly the air felt like autumn, and our friends looked around every now and then to see the shower chasing them, and covering the hills and woods with heavy white mist. The fragrance of the wet pine woods was very sweet, and the coolness was delightful, but the clouds looked strangely yellow, and as if a great deal of rain would pour out of them presently, while there were flashes of lightning every now and then, and distant thunder began to growl among the mountains.
"It will be here in a few minutes," said Jack, looking at his sister anxiously. "I'm awfully sorry, Alice." And they both hurried; as if by walking fast they could get away from the rain. "And our clothes have all gone to North Conway! how shall we ever get dry?" he added, ruefully; but Alice laughed.
"You know we were all drenched coming home from Gorham that day. It wasn't very bad, and it won't be chilly like this for very long, at any rate."
The first great drops of the rain began to spatter among the leaves, and our friends found the shower at first very refreshing, but when their clothes became so soaked that the weight of them was something surprising, and streams of water began to run along the road, they did not like it so well; but they made the best of it, and laughed heartily, though they were both beginning to feel very tired, and wondered if there would never be an end to the woods. It was growing darker too, and if some one did not drive by before long, it would be most discouraging. Early in the afternoon they had passed several loaded carts, besides pleasure parties that were driving to or from the Glen House, but for some time there had not been a traveller on that part of the road except themselves.
The rain ceased falling; it had been a heavy shower, but luckily it did not last long. They had taken shelter under a great beech-tree when it had become altogether too hard work to walk, and Alice wrung the water out of her skirts as well as she could, and they started on again.
The clouds looked very heavy, and the sunset was a very pale one, and it seemed to be growing dark early. In that deep valley the twilight begins much sooner than out in the open country, and Jack and Alice had lost so much time already that they were a good way from the house they meant to reach by seven o'clock, and just after that time Alice said, despairingly:
"I don't believe I can walk much further, Jack. I'm ashamed to give in, but I don't think I ever was so tired in all my life."
"I'm tired myself," said Jack; "it's the hardest walking I ever did; but I suppose there is nothing to do but to go on. I think it's very odd that it is so long since we have passed anybody."