There had been no stormier night during the winter. Isabel's old house creaked and rattled and groaned like a ship in a whole gale, and the wind sent great waves of rain along the veranda. A northern window had been blown in and hastily patched. Although but nine o'clock the sky was as black as midnight. For several days there had been merely a quiet steady fall, but during the afternoon the northern rain belt had sent down another great storm and it had been rising ever since.
Isabel, unable to go out, had washed her hair, and was still sitting on the hearth-rug, drying it, when she heard a shout outside, then the slam of a door at the back of the house, and voices in the kitchen. She was too warm and comfortable to be interested. If it were a tramp he was welcome to the shelter of the h
