And while the busy tongues wagged all day over the scandal and the tragedy that had set the whole countryside agog, no one dreamed that as the day waxed old, and the winds raged, and the rain and snow drove through the bleak, bitter air, putting out the forest fires, and clearing the smoky atmosphere so that one could see the mountain tops again, that little Eva, freezing and starving, lost in the lonely wood, bereft of reason by the weight of her woe, was wandering back and forth beneath the bare trees, over the rustling leaves, wreathing her golden locks with blossoming briers and scarlet leaves. Miles and miles had she wandered from Stony Ledge, but though she had lost the road in the stifling smoke and darkness, she had indeed come upon the lands of Goody Brown’s lazy spouse, not more than a mile from their comfortable home. And that bleak afternoon, while the winds raged and the rain descended, the old woman was rating her partner: “See how cold it’s getting, Sam Brown, and not a dozen sticks in the woodpile to keep us from freezing till morning. Say no more about it, but hitch up the wagon and go to the woods for a load of wood, you shif’less mortial!” Lazy Sam having ignored this daily rating till they had come to almost the last stick in the woodpile, knew that even the rain would not save him now, but rather add to the fury of his spouse’s wrath. So he sighed and drew on his “slicker,” as he called his old rubber overcoat, and went out to the stable to help the chore boy hitch up the horses to the old wagon. And presently they drove toward the wood, the old man shouting back to his wife in the kitchen door: “If I catch my death o’ cold, it’ll be your fault, Goody!” “My back is broad enough to bear the blame!” she retorted nonchalantly, adding to herself: “He knows he’s as tough as a pine knot!” Sam Brown drove on into the wood, and by and by he pricked up his ears at a strange sound. “Lord a-massy, Jinkins, who can thet be singing like a loonytic yonder ’neath the trees?” he exclaimed. It was such a strange, eerie sound that they stopped the horses to listen to the weird chanting to the tune of the bleak wind. “Gosh, how crazy-like it sounds? Though pretty, too!” snorted Jinkins, as they drove on nearer and nearer into the wood, and came close enough for a sight of the singer. Eva, for it was she, was kneeling down, a slim, drenched figure, golden-haired and flower-crowned with the blossoming briers and scarlet leaves, the rain pouring down upon her through the bare boughs overhead, while she sang a weird song. * * * * * “I swan to goodness, I never had sech a turn in my life, Goody, as when I see that awful sight--little Eva that we always sot sech store by, a-singing like mad,” Sam confided to Goody that evening over the blazing logs that he had made a second trip to get.