The Wind Before the Dawn. Dell H. Munger
intended to avoid the necessity for it, but had forgotten himself.
“There’s Carter now,” was all the reply the old man gave as he moved toward the door, which he could dimly see now that he had been in the darkness long enough for his eyes to become accustomed to it. The splashing footsteps of a horse and the voice of a man cautioning it came from toward the road.
“That you, Carter?” Silas called.
“Yes. This ground’s fairly greasy to-night,” answered the voice.
“Bring your horse in here; there’s room under cover for it,” was the rejoinder.
They tied it in the darkness, feeling their way from strap to manger. “The Farnshaw girl’s here waitin’ fur th’ school.”
“Glad of that,” replied the newcomer. “I don’t know her very well, but they say she can handle youngsters. She’s had some extry schoolin’ too. Don’t know as that makes any difference in a summer term, but it’s never in th’ way.”
The young man slipped out of the stable, intending to get a word with the new teacher before the others came to the house. The school was assured to her with two members of the board in her favour, he reflected. Liza Ann had gone to the other room, and finding the way clear he asked in a half whisper:
“Did you lame your horse badly?” And when Elizabeth only nodded and looked as if she hoped her hostess had not heard, John Hunter was filled with joy. The mutuality of the reticence put them on the footing of good fellowship. There was no further opportunity for conversation, as they heard Silas and Carter on the step and a third party hail them from a distance.
There was a moment’s delay and when the door did at last open Elizabeth Farnshaw gave a glad cry:
“Uncle Nate! Where in the world did you come from?”
She caught Nathan Hornby by the lapels of his wet overcoat and stood him off from her, looking at him in such a transport of joy that they were the centre of an admiring and curious group instantly.
While Nathan explained that they had only last month traded their wooded eighty for a hundred and sixty acres of prairie land in this district, and that it had been their plan to surprise her the next Sunday by driving over to see her before she had heard that they were in that part of the state, Elizabeth sat on the edge of the wood-box and still held to his coat as if afraid the vision might vanish from her sight, and asked questions twice as fast as the pleased old man could answer them, and learned that Nathan had been appointed to fill out the unexpired term of the moderator of the Chamberlain school district, with whom he had traded for the land. The business of the evening was curtailed to give the pair a chance to talk, and when the contract was signed, Elizabeth said that she would go home with Nathan, and John Hunter thrust himself into the felicitous arrangement by taking the young girl over in his farm wagon, it being decided that Patsie’s lameness made it best for her to remain housed in Silas’s barn for the night.
It was a mile and a half along soggy roads to Nathan Hornby’s, and John Hunter made as much of the time fortune had thrown at him as possible. They sat under one umbrella, and found the distance short, and John told her openly that he was glad she was to be in his neighbourhood.
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