expressed his feelings by his hoarsest screech. He did so now [Pg 19]and, by so doing, recalled Margot from sky-gazing and his enemy from doubt. [Pg 19] “Ah! Angelique! Watching for me? How kind of you. Hush, Tom. Let her alone, good Angelique, poor Angelique!” The eagle flapped his wings with a melancholy disdain and plunged his beak in his breast. The old woman on the beach was not worth minding, after all, by a monarch of the sky—as he would be but for his broken wing—but the girl was worth everything, even his obedience. She laughed at his sulkiness, plying her paddle the faster, and soon reached the pebbly beach, where she sprang out, and drawing her canoe out of the water, swept her old nurse a curtsey. “Home again, mother, and hungry for my supper.” “Supper, indeed! Breakin’ my heart with your run-about ways! and the hoorican’, with ever’thin’ ruined, ever’thin’! The master—— Where’s he, I know not. The great pine [Pg 20]broken like a match; the coops, the cow-house, and Snowfoot—— Ah, me! Yet the little one talks of supper!” master—— [Pg 20] Margot looked about her in astonishment, scarcely noticing the other’s words. The devastation of her beloved home was evident, even down on the open beach, and she dared not think what it might be further inland. “Why, it must have been a cyclone! We were reading about them only yesterday and Uncle Hugh—did you say that you knew—where is he?” Angelique shook her head. “Can I tell anythin’, me? Into the storm he went and out of it he will come alive, as you have. If the good Lord wills,” she added reverently. The girl sprang to the woman’s side, and caught her arm impatiently. “Tell me, quick. Where is he? where did you last see him?” “Goin’ into the hoorican’, with wood upon [Pg 21]his shoulder. To make a beacon for you. So I guess. But you—tell how you come alive out of all that?” Sweeping her arm over the outlook. [Pg 21]
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