Page:Barbour--Peggy in the rain.djvu/16

 glint of dare-deviltry in the brown eyes. For the rest, Gordon Ames was twenty-seven years of age, five feet and eleven inches in height and slender with the slenderness of hard muscles and firm flesh.

The dry sand of the path made hard walking, and the air had grown hot and heavy and humid. It didn't require the sullen rumble of thunder overhead to apprise him of the fact that he was probably in for a wetting. He had been coming to Aiken for many winters and had long since learned the symptoms heralding the approach of the brief but terrific thunderstorms of the South. He was not particularly concerned about getting wet, and it wouldn't have helped if he had been, for he was a good mile and a half from town. Farther along, however, there was a deserted cabin, which Garret Fessenden had neglected to pull down when he had bought the tract to round out his five hundred acres of game preserve, and Gordon decided to reach it if the storm would let him. He shifted his shotgun to his other shoulder and pushed on. The woods had become very still. Not a leaf stirred, not a bird chirped. The jasmine blooms had almost gone, but enough