The freckles were swamped in a deep flood of color, but Jim repeated insistently: "Hold up your foot, Lou." Reluctantly she obeyed, disclosing a battered sole through the worn places of which something green showed. "I--I stuffed it with leaves," she confessed, defensively. "They're real comfortable, honestly. I'm just stiff----" Jim groaned. "I suppose they will have to do until we reach the next town, but you should have told me." "I kin take care of myself," Lou asserted. "I've walked in pretty near as bad as these in the institootion. We'd better get along to where there's some houses 'cause it looks to me like a storm was comin' up." The sun was still blazing down upon them, but it was through a murky haze, and the air seemed lifeless and heavy. Great, white-crested thunder heads were mounting in the sky, and behind them a dense blackness spread. "You're right; I never noticed----" Jim paused guiltily. After leaving the vicinity of Parksville he had purposely led her on a detour back into the farming country to avoid the main highway, for along the river front were the estates of some people he knew and he shrank from meeting them in his tramplike condition if they should motor past. There was Lou, too, to be considered. He might have offered some possible explanation for his own appearance, but no interpretation could be placed upon her presence at his side save that which he must prevent at all costs. Rolling fields and woodland stretched away illimitably on both sides of the road, and not even a cow shed appeared as they hurried onward, while the clouds mounted higher, and the rumble of thunder grew upon the air. The sun had vanished, and a strange, anticipatory stillness enveloped them, broken only by that hollow muttering. "It's comin' up fast." Lou broke the silence with one of her seldomly volunteered remarks. "Shall we git into the woods? I'd as lief dodge trees as be drowned in the road." "No!" Jim shook his head. "There is some kind of a shack just ahead there; I think we can make it before the storm comes." They were fairly running now, but the darkness was settling fast and a fork of lightning darted blindingly across their path. The object which Jim had taken for a shack proved to be merely a pile of rotting telegraph poles, but no other shelter offered, and they crouched in the lee of it, awaiting the onslaught of rain. "Take this, Lou." Jim wrapped his coat about her in spite of her protestations. "You're not afraid, are you?" "No, I ain't--I'm not--but you're goin' to get soaked through! I heard you coughin' once or twice at the bottom of that haystack last night." He thrilled unconsciously to the motherliness in her tone. Then she added reflectively: "I don't guess I'm afraid of anythin' I've seen yet, but I ain't--I haven't seen much."