Читать книгу The Ark of 1803. A Story of Louisiana Purchase Times онлайн

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“You didn’t come back to school,” she said. “We missed you.”

“I’ll never go back to that school,” he answered. She could see the flush creep over his dark face.

“Oh, Jimmy!” she said. “When there’s hardly a month more before everybody will be going off on the ark?”

“That’s why.”

Milly reddened. She had forgotten in the excitement of the fire the trouble of the morning that had brought the quarrel between Jimmy and Louis Gist. She was about to tell him that Marion would change his mind, when the door flew open and her brother Mose and Shadwell Lincoln burst in.

“The ark is all safe,” they both cried at once. “The men are going to stay about and watch, though. Everything’s gone. All the flax, and the Hoyt’s corn, and the Claiborne whisky. And pretty near all the carpentering tools of the neighborhood.”

It was a grave loss. Tools were expensive and hard to get, and the rotted flax that had been stored in the shed had been intended to clothe the settlement for a year.

“Has anyone found out who started it?” asked Mrs. Royce, to turn the thoughts of the others from their common loss.