Pittston Gazette

              \ 4 IMa! IIHIkmI IR50. £ VOL.. XLS ill No. 10 » Oldest Newspaper in the Wyoming Valley. PITTSTON, LUZERNE COUNTY, PA., FRIDAY, NOVEHBER 26, 1897. A Weekly Local and Family Journal. 1 .OO per \ * a«" in A(ivaii( *i. on ttie neaped coin tongue 011 tne tombstone. Mrs. Fitzwilliams' last remark struck her as revolutionary. She was sorry to htsar such views advocated in Shingleton. It pained her doubly to hear them from the lips of her own sister-in-law.When Strong Martin had shifted his position, he had turned his back partially on Adrien. They never once looked at or spoke to each other. She was stamping her foot at him Adrien was calling him froiu the top of tho bank. The boll kept up its monotonous summons. The white winged crane lifted its slender body awkwardly and sailed away on frightened wings. He must go and face them alL It was a forced hand. completely obscuring another, was acting in a manner for which Duke could find no precedent. With gingerly deference the overseer took the imperial photograph into his freshly scoured hands, first making sure Here it is. What do you think of it?" ety looked down with placid, lovely eyes that were shaded by a broad straw hat whose brim cast RembrandUsh shadows over the smooth oval of her cheekf and the rounded perfection of a slender white throitt. It was the picture of a very beautiful girl. From where he sat facing it the overseer scanned it critically.at it, it will be 110 holiday affair. You are going to get licked out C f yC;ur boot s, Dalghren, and I only hope 1 iriay live long enough to say, 'I told you bD. ' " Shi* was shelling beans. Dried beans that rattled from the blunt extremities sf her active fingers in resounding volleys into a tin pan firmly clasped by her two knees. She was getting the dry lima beans ready for the seed bags in "the madam's storeroom" up at the big house. As through a veiling fog he saw the lawyer finally step backward to a table and lift a glass of water to his lips. The great speech was at an end. The plaintivo band up in the choir loft struck into "Nearer, My God, to Thee. " There was a rustle of women's garments and a movement of the crowd toward the door. Adrien Strong had risen with the crowd and stretched his long legs deliberately. Strong Martin alone remained "Upon my word and honor, Eben," Mrs. Martin said that night, when she was entertaining her "men folks" with a recital of all that had happened since dinner, "you would 'a' thought the fight was comin off t'morrer mornin, right there and then, to 'a' heard hiin. I left him rantin and prancin and shakin his fist now at Colonel Clemens, then bellerinat young Dalghren leal outrageous. He's one of 'em, the old nam is!" "Well, if this theft is traced to the door of that overseer's sou it will go a long way toward proving the folly of any attempt to educate the masses. Perhaps it may be as you say, the world is not bounded by Colonel Strong's plantation fence, but I still contend that it was a very uncalled for pulling down of social fences for him to have scut his own grandson and his overseer's son here on a footing of social equality that cannot possibly be maintained when they go home." With a flutter of ribbons Mamie disappeared behind a near pomegranate bush. Adrien came crashing forward over the pine needles that made the sloping ground slippery. His voice, tart and cross, reached Strong a second in advance of his hurrying feet: SffSKy? ®P fl5 BBUaWA EWS& "It must be the books and the planners and the nice clothes and the soft things all about her. It makes a good deal of difference, I reckon, to grow up to tine ways and smooth goin's. Liza didn't used to be too fine for her mammy and her daddy." Duke knew perfectly well the significance of that succulent hailstorm. He was familiar with the procession of industries that marched through the months, but he had never before known the dried limas to affect his mistress so obliviously. ev cfEAtMEWE "After all, the mystery is as great a mystery as it .was before old Seephar'g flow of oratory," Adrien said, with a light laugh, laying his hand on Strong's shoulder "The only effect it has produced on me is to render mo ferociously hungry Going out to dinner. Strong?' "D—dinner! No. " seated "Man alive, Strong Martin, you are acting like an imbecile! A positive idiot!"COPYRIGHT. 1897 Br THE AUTHOR He dragged his chair, a clumsy, splint bottomed affair, back to its place against the wall with his left hand. He was conspicuously picking his teeth with a long, gleaming quill pick. He offered his wife some clumsy comfort while he was filling his brierwood pipe from the bag of "tobacco" that stood on the dining room mantelpiece for his and the boys' convenience. Eben chuckled comfortably. He rather ynjoyed his wife's nervousness. It was not easy to upset Becky. CHAPTER L whispering pines, opens Its doors and its windows hospitably wide on these "I don't understand you." Five more precious, unreclaimable minutes lapsed, and Duke ventured upan a second protest. Laying his long pointed nose delicately on the plump arm from which Mrs. Martin had rolled back her blue calico sleeve, he sniffed suggestively. Commencement day is, so to speak, resurrection day in the good old college town of Shingltton, set among the red clay hills and the sweet smelling pines that belong to one of the oldest counties in the state of Mississippi. "Tho bovs are devoted to each other. " "Yon will," said Adrien, with a petulant laugh, "before the day is over. 1 have been doing what I could for you." Feminine ingenuity always exhausts itself upon the church decorations for commencement day. Conspicuous talent is displayed in the immense wooden arch that spans the brand new plank rostrum, which has for its underpinning the pulpit and the chancel rail. The startling crudeness of this material rainbow is softened to the eye by a wrapping of gray Spanish moss, into occasions. "Now—yes, perhaps. " "He wouldn't hurt a hair on a dog's back, the gov'nor wouldn't I do believe he's the one thing on top of the earth you're scared of, Beck." "Lawyer Seephar is to address the boys on the subject of those robberies when the exercises are over. I told Henriette to wave her handkerchief as soon as he took the stand I don't care to go inside before." "Thanks. Am sorry you louud it neoessary to do anything for me. " He was on hia feet now, looking slightly down into the delicate, boyish face before him. Side by side they entered tho old brick church. Through the crowd Strong Martin passed with his head erect, but with a certain hard look on his young face that had not been there before Lawyer Seephar had stirred h'is soul to its deepest depths. "I ain't goin t' admit that I'm scared of arer man that walks, Ebon Martin, but when it comes to good, hard common sense that keeps on a level, that knows how to regulate its voice and ain't liable to fly off at the handle C f you do but look at it, give me Mr*. Strong every time. The old man ain't a patchln to her." On commencement dny there is a general uprising of the population, ■pane and scattered as it is, to see that 8hingleton does credit to itself and honor to the college. Poor and rich, humlii rjad aatigh-$r, from the baker's baby burdened wife up to the president's childless "lady," every one makes common cause of the annual and stirring climax to a year of somewhat languid intellectual exertion. The touch of his oold nozzle secured him brief attention, but only increased his perplexity. He was not unused to being made a confidant of when his master and the boys were afield, and when his mistress turned her troubled blue eyes in his direction he assured her in advance of his full sympathy by dignified oscillations of his handsome tail. "You rung that bell like you teas in a hurry." "Is that all that Lawyer Seephar's speech has done for you, Adrien? Made you hungry?" "Don't you go to borrow in trouble in wholesale packages, Becky. After all, we are not such a bad lot at heart. " "Nor L 1 confess one does tire of the dear boys when one has been listening to them straight along for 15 unchanging years." by passing the backs of them carefully down his trousers legs, that no moisture could possibly cling to them. His wife stood silently at his elbow, gazing wistfully at the white throated, delicately featured face of the disconcerting picture. The overseer's long and silent inspection culminated in a prolonged whistle of amazement. which is stock, with happy irrelevance, hydrangeas, sunflowers, roses and gladioluses."All. Positively alL This whole infernal row is disgusting. If gentlemen's sons are to be harnngued like field hands, the college doors had much better be closed.'' "It's by our outsides Liza's goin to judge us, Martin." In due season a white handkerchief fluttered briefly in one of the open windows. Mrs. Fitzwilliams spread a pink mosquito bar carefully over the lemonade barrel and Mrs. Magmnis secured the cold tongue against the possible depredations of flies and spiders Then they were ready for the church. The tender radiance of a Juno afternoon filled t»very cranny of the old church, the slanting rays of the westering tod fell upon the wooden arch through the open windows, touching the bannerets of gray Spanish moss and the cedar wisps in the ladder of learning with a golden glow. The melancholy band played "See. the Conquering Hero Comes" in a spiritless after dinner fashion. He did not look an inch the conqueror or the hero as he mounted the steps to the rostrum and turned his pale, resolute face toward the crowd be- " Jedge us! By jingo! i don't see as she's got any right to jedge us at all." "Well?" From the keystone of this gorgeous arch springs always the symbol of aspiration, as interpreted by the lady decorators of Shingleton, a ladder made of cedar wisps, more or less successfully hiding from view an intrusive groundwork of white pasteboard. It is under this work of art that the pallid and quaking orators of the day take their staud, to make targets of themselves for countless bright eyes and for the crueler darts of rival Criticism. "Your master and rue have made a mistake, Duke, a terrible bad mistake, and I don't see any way out of the mess. That's what's pesterin me. We'd better av lef' well 'nough alone, Duke, but we didn' have the sense to see it at the right time." "It ain't a question of her rights. It's a question of what she's likely to do." Ebon tilted his chair back at a more secure angle against the gallery pC „»t. He was prepared to wait patiently for Mrs. Strong's views touching their Liza. Becky was apt to be discursive always, and today she was suffering from undue excitement A soft liusb had come into his cbeelca, his eyes—no longer resting cn Strong's face, but busied in a search for one par ticular girl's hat among the many Hut teriug with'n range of his vision—burned angrily "That our girl I That our little Eliza I used to take afield on 'the pommel of my saddle? You're foolin mo, Becky 1 Why, this here's the picture of a queen. She looks like a young empress.'' The overseer rumpled his thick, gray locks with an impatient hand. His frank eyes were filled with perplexity. It was not often he was called on to decide ethical points, and as a comforter he was consciously inefficient. Local pride and feminine ingenuity are evoked confidently and exercised without stint It is only once a year that Shingleton challenges public attention, and it strenuously endeavors to pose respectably on that one important date, putting out of sight, as far as possible, every indication of its ordinary out-at heelnesa "Keep your eye on that Martin boy, Nell, wbiie old Seephar is scoring the boys, and 1 will too. We will compare notes afterward.'' "Of course one of the negroes is the guilty party " Wiping her fingers free from the stains of pea pods, she reverently lifted an imperial photograph from where it had been propped against the back of the chair in front of her. "She does, indeed. That's what's pesterin me." "Well, I left the old man snortin and prancin and went straight todes tne storeroom, where I made sure of findin her. She ain't the one that finds time to tails politics and set on tront galleries. You ain't been through the house lately, have you, Eben?" "I don't know what to say for your comfort, old woman. She's our owu girl. I reckon we can't disown her. How would it do to take the picture up to the big house and talk you* trouble over with the madam?'' With this understanding the amateur detectives separated, each passing by a different aisle well up toward the hydrangeas and the sunflowers that were making a brilliant halo about Counsel or Seephar's sternly intellectual face. He turned toward the door abruptly, then stopixd as abruptly to say . "Pesterin you?" "Don't make yourself conspicuous, Strong. There are a score or two of fools here today resolved upon deciding who tho guilty man is. Don't give them a peg to hang their imbecility on. " "Yes. What are we goin to do with a queen in this hole, Martin? Look at that slim white neck of hers and that round bit of a waist She's Eben, from them jmrty waves falling over her forehead down to the tips of her toes, which we can't see in the picture." Shingleton frankly admits that its everyday methods may be open to criticism and is mildly convinced that in a hand to hand contest for municipal laurels with any one of the half dozen plebeian little towns that have sprung up since it reached its majority it would very likely come off second if not third best Girls are always out in force on commencement day, not that they take any abiding interest in the educational aspect of the occasion, but the brass band which occupies the choir loft and dispenses the most depressingly solemn music during the exercises is engaged to officiate at the dance in which commencement always culminates. "This is her picture, Duke, your little Miss Eliza's, that used to pull your ears mos' out by the roots, and you never even snapped 'bout it. She signs her name Liza now, like it was spelled with a double ee. How Martin laughed when she wrote us word how to pronounce our own child's name! But I reckon she's outgrowed you, Duke, along with tho old name. You used to watch over her mighty good, old boy, whenever I laid her down on the risin sun quilt she used to think the world and all on. When the pink crape myrtles was shading the sun from her purty eyes and the risin sun was just under her fat little fingers and you a-curled up nigh hrr, I could go up t' big house, if need bo, and stay hours with an easy Mrs. Martin carcssed Duke's silky ears abstractedly. Eben waited for his good adviee to be absorbed. "Not sence I help'd put up that big plaster Agger in the hole in the wall, jest whar the steps take a turn. It was a hefty flgger too.'' Each seated herself where she could get an unobstructed view of the valedictorian's face. He was seated on the front form, this overseer's son, who, by right of his plebeian extraction and so- The rustling of women's garments, the sound of hurrying feet stopped ab ruptly at the church door The grassy yard absorbed every sound. Tho June zephyrs, astray from the ripening fields of corn, disported themselves among the cedar wisps of the ladder ot learning and played about the moody brow of the overseer's son. "Will, I s'pose I might as well Sooner or latci 1 'm sure to come to it. There's three things iheio's no mo' use try in to get out f reach of than there is of flyin. One is Mrs. Strong's advice and the other two is her dose of castor oil and caloman if you're ailin. But I don't see clear how tie can help me outer this trouble, Eben." Eben was still studying the fair, unfamiliar face of his only daughter. The sweet, serious eyes looked at him unsmilingly. They did not know each other—that burly man and dainty girl. "That Agger's marble, Eben, solid marble. No plaster jirn cracks in that house. I hear her call it Dianner. Though 1 mus' say it don't look like any Diannor I ever saw. I'd mos' as lief set up a tombstone in my hall. But everybody to his taste. They've painted the walls beautiful, Eben, just beautiful. And the long parlor, that had the yellow satin curtains and things, is all been done over spick span new from the carpet up. It's crimson and gol' now." But the staid old college town does not medtate any such unseemly contest with the villages whose mushroom activities are an offense in its nostrils Shingleton stands upon its dignity in an attitude of perpetual aloofness from its neighbors. Shingleton has just cause for pride on these occasions, and some orator is sure to assert from the rostrum, without fear of contradiction, that so much of beauty and talent and grace could not possibly be gathered together in any other known spot on the earth. "I hope she won't be too fine for the home that's been good enough for her mother all these years," Eben said gently. He was the solitary occupant of the silent old rod brick church. "Neither do I, but mos' gen'rally she does come up to the scratch, and mebbe she will this time.'' "Her and me are cut out by different patterns, Eben. She ain't goin to fit in here. It'll be a shock to her, old man, a positive shock. We've done' wrong more than oncet by our own daughter, Martin, and I'm just in a tremble all over since I've seen what she's growed up to be." Marks of age and of pinching poverty pit its venerable face deeply. ItB paintless fences, its crumbling brick houses, its weather stained frame buildings, its patched and peeling stucco facades, are drearily suggestive of a badly pock. marked old face. After the declaiming is all safely through with there will be a dinner cut under the cedar trees in the yid churchyard. No one objects to the sombtsr presence of the occasional tombstones that crop above the tall weeds in the churchyard. They come rather bandy, in fact, the tall and conical ones as batracks, the flat ones as receptacles for the ice cream freezers and the lemonade buckets. The sunken and effaced inscriptions appeal to no unhealed griefs. They are at once too obscure and too familiar to flutter the faintest pulses. Shingleton'a resurrection day is for the quick, not for its dead. CHAPTER n. Presently there was nothing loft foi the June zephyrs to tease but the fluttering bannerets of gray Spanish moss pendent from the unfading wooden rainbow and the leaves of the big church Bible, that had been left open after the preliminary reading of a chapter. h "I'll give her a trial." V Eben looked relieved. Rebecca was already preparing for her visit to the governor's mansion. She had taken off her ample check apron and rolled her sleeves into normal position. Her husband, mounted on the most patient of uares, put his face in at the open winow of her bedroom for a last word: "They're fresh'nin up for Adrien." said the overseer with the air of imparting valuable information. mind " "Do mnooth ynur hair down a trifle." low him. If the beflowered arch had been a guillotine and the cedar ladder a gleaming ax blado, Strong Martin could not have experienced a more absolute sense of despair. Mrs. Martin sighed ponderously and flecked a grain of dust from the smooth surface of the picture. "I was sorry when the wind blowed the pink myrtle tree down, Duke, 'cause we always called it Liza's tree. The rising sun is packed away in the press right now. Its colors is as bright as when I put it on the gallery floor for you and baby t6 romp on, but you're a sight older than you was then, Duke, and I reckon she's outgrowed you along with lots of other things. It's eight years, Duke, goin on nine, siace I give my Liza up because they all said I had oughter." With a certain fierce regret she tapped the smooth oval _cheek of the photograph with her work roughened finger. "Yes, I know. For Adrien. Everything's for Adrien, and him a boy." If it were not for the college, Shingleton might have dropped out of the memory of every one but the mapmakers long aga But the college is, has been and will be a thing of today, yesterday and tomorrow, linking Shingleton's pathetic present with a splendid past and a problematical future. out?" '' Done wrong? How do you make that "Mammy!" Strong Martin had selected the banks ef the creek for bis battleground with eonscionoe. It would be pleasanter down there on the water's pebbly brim, where no one was likely to intrude today. He placed th« photograph conspicuously on the dining room mantelpiece, lodging it on top the wooden turrets in which the eight day clock culminated. A soft, rebuking sound from one of the recumbent forms on the hard wooden steps. "Oh, Beeky, I forgot to tell you to ell the gov'nor that I examined them ,in brushes good this mornin,and they're jTiawed all to pieces by the rats. Tell him please don't let any mail day pass without orderin new ones." In a few incoherent sentences it had been impressed upon him that suspicion rested on him. That he, the plebeian valedictorian, was accredited with the morals of a shoeblack or a chimney sweep. "Yes, Seth. I know what you mean, son. I can't help it always. I went with her up into his room, and helped her put the pink Marseilles spread on his bed, and helped her tie back the lace curtains at the windows with pink ribbon broad enough and good enough for a girl's,party sash. Black Suzanne was Allin the A replace with fresh ribbon grass and Mammy Wan was spnnKiin violets and rose leaves in every blessed drawer in the room. You would 'a' thought a king was comin to sleep in that room, Eben, you would indeed." "Ves, one." He was hidden from the view of the hungry churchyard f casters by the high, sandy banks of the creek that were fringed with trailing blackberry bushes and blue eyed periwinkles. From the spot he selected he oould hear the clatter of dishes and the lively chatter of the feeders and the fed "Thar. Leavtr it thar till the boys come in and make 'em guess who it is. I'm bound to eat and cut. 'v cial abasement must be the offender against all of Shingleton's proud traditions. He sat there with his arms quietly folded. Local pride clusters with considerable confidence about the two solemn eyed dingy red brick houses that are set squarely m the middle of vast acres of untilled and untillable ground in the suburbs of the town. These houses are brick and mortar twins. The same number of broad, squat windows in each, duplicate front doors, clumsy and ponderous, gloomy suggestions of jail facilities. The same number of blunt topped chimneys, whose growth might have been arrested by cyclone*, or whose stunted proportions might have been the exponents of the mason's groveling spirit. The same description of low oeiled, white finished, rectangular apartments in each. Every housekeeper within a radius of ten miles stands sponsor to the dinner spread that day on the long, precarious plank tables under the cedar trees, through whose breeze stirred branches the sunshine falls upon the white tablecloths in dots and checks. "Where are the boys, father?" "That is, if I can get speech of him. Mechanically he delivered himself of the speech he had prepared with sophomorio pride. Mechanically he listened to the coldly formal words of commendation spoken perfunctorily by the faculty. Thin he stepped down from the painful conspicuity of his jDosition and resumed his place on the front form amid profound silence. "Down in the new cut. Seth said he'd rather finish that bit o' fencin while he was down thar than t' hafter go back t'morrer, and Charlie's turned in t* help him. It ain't likely they'll get through before sundown." Lawyer Seephar was noted for his ferocious onslaughts upon wrongdoing in any shape The line of argument he employed on this occasion for probing the college mystery to its core was the value of testimony. He's got C-on'nel Clements and young Dalghren up there. They all three rid by just before you come in. He's mighty full of politics these days.'' With his eye closed he saw it all. She was tying the rumpled strings of a green gingham sun bonnet under her fleshy chin. The clumsiness of this piece of headgear presented a sharp contrast to the modish much beplunied hat that cast RembrandtLsh shadows over the pictured face she had wrapped carefully in a clean handkerchief before putting it iotp her pocket She sighed wistfully over her own comruonplaceness. Enforced attention for several hours to declamations, sometimes trite, always crude, is productive of ravening hunger. From the inevitable roast pig, with the red apple clinched in its fixed jaws, down to the lightest salads, everything is provided on a colossal scale by the experienced housewives of Shingleton, who for weeks past have merged private interests, personal dislikes, moldy disputes and inherited feuds in the one cause for which Shingleton moves and has its being. In an agony of indecision be flung hiB hands outward and upward and groaned aloud: "If I stood alone, it would be different It would be easy. But—the old folks—and—Liza.'' Then, with clinched fist and resolute lips, "It is a forced hand " And again in a voice almost of despair he said it: "A forced hand! A forced hand!" "We've done you a wrong, Liza, we can't never undo. We've sent you off and made a lady of you, and we hadn't oughter done no such thing. It's her doin's, all hers." He dragged a chair to the table. It grated harshly across the bare floor. Mrs. Martin disappeared with the coffeepot She went to put it on the kitchen stove. The boys liked their strong black fluid hot. Eben was cutting a liberal wedge out of the circular pone of egg bread when she got back. He accosted her with a full mouth. The flimsy sentiment that honor demanded the sheltering of a culprit he pierced tlirough and through with barbed arrows of scorn and denunciation. Not a hand was extended to him in congratulation. It was a barren triumph. One message of sympathy reached him. Only one. Over die heads of the audience there came hurtling a solitary spray of crimson pomegranate flowers. It came from the hand of a small boy, who grinned gleefully at his own dexterity. It was sent by the heart of a girl who blushed furiously at her own unsuspected agency in the matter. "Adrien's mare'n a king to his mother and his grandfather." Mrs. Martin shook her fist vindictive ly in direction of the governor's mansion, whose gleaming white walls, surrounded by clustering gardens and orchards, wore just visible from where she silt. "I couldn't help contrastin that sweet smell in, lace trimmed bedroom that was gettin ready for Adrien Strong with the room our girl was comin home to, old man, and, the Lord forgive me, I did feel ugly and bitter about it. I don't know but what I let some of it slip off'n my tongue." The first duty devolving upon every student there, who was but a citizen in embryo, was his duty to his state. The obligation to deliver up the guilty party, to be whipped of justice, no matter | how near or dear the culprit might be personally, was held up for grave con: sideration. Pushing his iron gray locks impaj tiently back, that he might the better sweep that row of youthful upturned faces, the old lawyer exhorted them j with impressive solemnity to perform their duty on this occasion, even though it demanded the iron resolution of a Brutus. | The sound of stertorous breathing j from the front form caught Mrs. Fitzwilliams' al*rt attention. She telegraph; ed Mrs. Maginnis with her fin: "Look at him!" Mrs. Maginnis looked at Strong Martin. His aspect of composed attention had been tuniultuously broken up. He had turned side wise on the bench, and the fixed gaze which he had at first planted on Lawyer Seephar's face waR now roving restlessly among the tops of ' the cedars that tapped the window frames with their dark fingers. From an ivory whiteness, that had lent a fine | touch of intellectuality to his features, ! his complexion had turned to a crimson j bordering on purplish. Occasional movepelling the conviction frnat some one 01 ments of a long, nervous hand to his the students was the culprit. necktie suggested physical discomfort in Shingleton accepted the possibility of that region. His handkerchief went ofcrime in connection with its college ten to his brow. Mrs. Maginnis teleslowly and incredulously. In view of graphed Mrs. Fitzwilliauis with her the fact that nearly all of the boys eyes: came from well known families of high "Did you ever see guilt more plainly social position, it was almost beyond revealed?" Upon the calm afternoon air the clangor of a bell smote sharply. It was the bell in the little wooden belfry of the red brick chnrcb calling the multitude back to the closing exercises. The oowb were slowly climbing the opposite bank of the creek. The blue crane untucked its small head to reconnoiter. Strong Martin got up and stretched his cramped legs, stamping vigorously with his benumbed feet "You ain't never explained yet what you meant by us doin Liza a wrong. I thought we was givin her the bes* chance in the world. Mrs. Strong said we didn't have no right to deny her the blessin's of a good education." "How will this poky old sunbonnet strike Liza? I reckon she won't think her mammy the finest lady she ever seen, but I can't make myself over brand new. She'll hafter take as jest as we are." One of these time defying creations Is the college proper, the other shelters the professors' families and the boarding studenta No ornamental vine or officious fig tree flings superfluous protection over the stern fronts of the two oollege houses They rise superior to all such effete requirements, and all day long the squat, square window panes, with their heavy green blinds plastered against the brick walls, stare unblinking at the sun. Tho odor of scorching meat smote upon her nostrils. Duke lifted up his voice in a howl of reproach. The dinner was burning up and no summons had yet been sounded on the big belL She came back to the sordid requirements of the hour with a violent start that sent the remainder of the beans, pods and all, into the pan like a rattle of musketry. Eben placidly knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the gallery post and put the evil smelling thing in his coat pocket Commencement day of 1859 was no exception to its predecessors. It came in June, as it always did. It was hot and dusty, as it always waa Everything and everybody who shared the social responsibilities of the occasion were in a state of smiling readiness, as they always were If now the boys would only "quit themselves like men," thingleton's proud record would remain unbroken. Strong Martin stooped and picked up the red winged messenger of sympathy with a hand that trembled visibly as he fastened it in a buttonhole of his coat He would have liked to press his lips to it in sheer gratitude, but feared to make himself ridiculous "Mrs. Strong! That's just it Mrs. Strong! She's been runnin the big house and the governor and the boys and the yard hands so long that she can't keep her finger out of anybody's CHAPTER IV. •'How will it strike Liza? "Won't she feel more like she belonged up here than down yonder?" "I hope you did not make a fool of yourself, Beck." "I skinned mighty close to it, Eben. I said, 'Seems like all this purple and fine linen was fitter for a girl's home comin than fur a boy's.' " "A profitable hour," he said bitterly "I came here to settle a matter of conscience. I am sure of only one thing: 1 am hungry. No, of two things. The knot is kr ottier than ever. It is a forced hand." The imposing white gate and the trim pyracantha hedge that shut from view the grasslesH trampled quarter lot were before her. The huge, unsightly corncribs, the clustered cabins, the overseer's unlovely house, were behind her. The big gate swung with smooth noiselessness on its strong hinges, the latch clicked against its hasp with well regulated gent leness, leaving her on the side of elegance, beauty, refinement. Commencement day of 1859 was over, and the college robbery that had shaken all Shingluton to its nervous center was still an unsolved mystery. "Good God! It's nigher 1 than 12. That picture's got me all upset—plum' outdone!" "You sound sorter snappish, Becky. You know they set a heap of store by book learn in up at the gov'nor's, and our girl was uncommon bright and purty. It was a sorter freak of nature our havin such a chill given to us, pie." Equidistant between these two self sufficient structures is a small oval inclosure known as "the garden." The gate to it is always locked and the whereabouts of the key always an inscrutable mystery. The designer of this solitary decorative touch evidently had leanings toward the enduring. "Purple! I thought you said the room was pink, mammy?" To the usual interest of this particular commencement at the eleventh hour was added an element of- painful surprise. An ominous whisper was afloat A foreshadowed disgrace threatened Shingleton. An illusive veil of mystery dropped like a pall over the familiar scene of the decorated church with its beflowered rainbow and the precarious tables with their load of comestibles. By way of remedying the irremediable, Mrs. Martin gave the bell pull two or three startling, vigorous jerks before proceeding to examine the incinerated dinner. "Don't take me so literal, Seth. I was talkin Scripture when I called it purple and fine linen. It was pink for true." As he clambered precipitately up the steep bank of the creek he suddenly came face to face with Mamie Colyer. In one hand she held a cup of coffee, in the other a loaded plate. Surprise and perplexity seized upon the very brutes in her kingdom when Manager Martin's wife forgot to pull the rope to the big plantation bell precisely as tho harsh voiced clock on her dining room mantelpieoe struck the hour of noon. CHAPTER m. "Oh!" Soon from out a cloud of dust, amid a mighty clatter of hoofs and trace chains, to the discordant accompaniment of yelping curs and hissing geese, Manager Martin's broad shoulders and florid face appeared. He was carrying his coarse straw hat in his hand and mopping his moist forehead with a dubious bandana handkerchief. wtUi her yellow curls and her great big eyes and little hands and feet" "Well, boys, I could 'a' gone through a auger hole when the madam turned around and looked at me vvith them great, soft, brown eyes of herjn, for all the world like a hurted doe's, and said, sorter ketch:n her breath: was Gabriella's room. It has yever been used since she left it I think Adrim will like the view.' Then .yjt walked over to the winder and stood there with her back to me You'd 'a' thought that was her first look at the duck pond and the lily pads and the blackberry patch, she stared at 'em so straight." Some on perishing box trees, a few long lived arbor vitals, a huge laune mundi or two, a tangle of pink and white azaleas, long since grown to the dimensions of trees, all clustered irregularly about the stem of a century plant whose blossom tide had occurred but once within the memory of Shin: gletou, but furnished then a sort of floral calendar back to which any event of local importance might be referred as having happened before or after the oollege century plant had blossomed. "I have been looking for you ever since you left the church. I saw you when you ca ne out Here, take it You must be dreadfully hungry." She was not looking at him. She could not She was so absurdly short and he so correspondingly tall that his grateful glance could only perch on the beflowered orown of her big hat "Strong is just as good lookin in his way." The scent of heliotrope and June roses was afloat on the air. Liza loved heliotrope the "best in the world" There was a struggling plant of it on the water shelf at heme that every member of the family wi.ii unsk&lal solicitude had tried to keep alive. "Maybe Liza wouldn't so much as look at it, let alone rememberin how she h.id fetched it home from the big house the day she went to say goodby to tiabriella." Poor Gabriella! who luul pined away and died in the citD b- -aiding - school such e little while after. "And I don't think it's for us to complain when the governor's kep' Strong at Shingleton college these years at his own cost" A robbery had been committed at the oollege. not only at the oollege, but in the college. Cash and valuables belonging to the professors and students had disappeared under circumstances cam- Duke, the overseer's favorite setter, as spokesman for his less privileged companions, got up from his recumbent posture on the lowest step, stalked toward her and looked into her face with reproachful solemnity. "That is because Strong is named for him, and he wants the respectability of the name kep' up. But Strong and Eliza is two different people, Eben, and I'm not sayin college is goin to harm our boy. He's got his way to make in the world, and all three of the boys can't oversee for Adrien when the governor's gona Strong don't expect to come home and spend the rest of his days starin out at them niggers' cabins, listenin to that everlastin slambang in the blacksmith's shop, and at a lot of mules switchin the flies off close to our very bedroom windows. Sometimes it sorter grates even on me, old man, if I've just come back from the big house, where it's all so different, but I've got used to it, and she's been out of it now for eight blessed years. And there, Eben, I done wrong in lettin Mrs. Strong send her all poor Gabriella's fine clothes and things." For Ae first time in her married life Mrs. Martin regarded her husband critically."I am hungrier than I thought It was good of you to think of me. Miss Mamie. I did not expect it of you." The occurrence was actually without precedent. There was no room for error on his part, for he had been educated by years of practical experience into a knowledge of the fact that when that clock struck 12 it was Mrs. Martin's imperious duty to seize tho big rope fastened to tho big clapper of the big plantation bell, planted on a post at the end of her front gallery, and set the bell into ponderous activity. "How would he strike Liza?" Everything in her microcosm was beginning to revolve about that test question. As he galloped past her point of view, conscientiously minded to see that the brutes had their feed before he enjoyed his own, she challenged his attention by waving her blue cotton apron vigorously at him. "Others have been thinking of you and talking about you." "Yes?" Occasionally gardeners who have been hired to nip any desultory tendencies on the part of the rigid shrubs and bushes within this rigid inclosure have brought to light specimens of petrified wood, which seem, curiously enough, to be the most natural product of the petrified garden. "And what did you do, mammy?" In front of her, stately and white pillared, the big house reared its crest proudly. It had sheltered many generations of Strongs, each one of whom had made his entrance and his exit upon the world's stage with unblemished propriety. Shining leafed japonica bushes crowded close up to the broad white stucco steps. Behind Chem she could hear the governor's voice raised in excited expostulation with an unseen auditor or auditors. Seth's interest in the answer to this question was sufficient to bring him into a sitting posture, with his broad back planted firmly against a post and his cuffless wrists clasped about his gaunt knees. Her hands were free now. He had taken the cup of coffee and gulped it in three or four mouthfuls. His utterance was somewhat impeded by sandwich. conception that any one of tbetn should But Lawyer Seephar's ringing voice stoop to the plebeian offense of staling, imperatively demanded undivided at- To a man they belonged to the slave- tention: holding aristocracy. They were the sons " Ju conclusion, young gentlemen, I of planters, doctors, lawyers. The off- have this to say: I make no apology for ipring of senators and congressmen had addressing you on the law of- testimony, drunk at the Sbingleton fountain of You know well what directed my choice learning, and, crowning boast, the of subjects this morning. A crime has grandson of a bishop was among the been committed, and some of you know dt-claimers booked for that identical by whom. If the knowledge could be mystery shadowed commencement day. traced home to you, you would, by the There was nothing commonplace law of your state, be liable to imprisonabout Shingletrra. Nothing shocking ment for failure to testify. As it is, 1 had ever happened there, and the possi- leave it to your own consciences. That bility of disgrace overtaking it through you cannot elude. And if it succeeds in the medium of any one of its young convincing you that it is your duty as aristocrats shook the congregated house- men of honor to shield one guilty nan wives to the very center of their nerv- and permit suspicion to rest on a score ous systems. or two of innocent ones, all I have to Mrs. Fitzwilliams, absently dipping nay is that it is a miserable, paltry, lya long handled gourd in and out of the xng conscience that will stand you in lemonade barrel, conveyed to Mrs. Ma- poor stead when you leave the shelterginnis, who was slicing cold tongue in- hag arms of your alma mater and go out to newspapers spread on a neighboring to an inevitable hand to hand struggle tombstone, her conviction that "the with the power of evil lying in wait for thing was impossibla There was not a you in the world." plebeian in the whole college, from The like of it had never been seen or President Hopkins down. , heard in the old red brick church before. Mrs. Maginnis poised her carving The June zephyrs, astray from the fields knife reflectively. "Yes, one. " of ripening corn, floated in at the open crn nican that young Martin?" windows and lifted the old man's long hair from his heated brow, then wan- Why, he is the valedictorian. They dered off to play at hide and seek in tho say he is dreadfully smart, studious artificial flowers of a girl's hat. The and ambitious beyond everything; mid- mocking birds were singing the very night oil sort of boy, you know." fullest throated sonata* out there in "His father is old Colonel Strong's their cedar branch swings. With folded overseer, said Mrs. Maginnis, stabbing arms the college boys gazed unmoved at the cold tongue severely. the old man eloquent "Ye s, that's true. But tho boy came Side by side Adrien Strong and here with Adrien Strong. That ought Strong Martin sat on the front form, to be indorsement enough. In fact, as I Adrien, aristocrat from the smallest understand it. Colonel Strong sent him wave of his light tawny hair to the tips with his grandson because the boys of his faultless boots; Strong, broad had grown up together on the planta- shouldered, massive, suggestive of a tion and the overseer had named this flue piece of sculpture rather than a boy for him, which inclined him to give crude, struggling lad, bitterly conscious him a better chanoe for an education ,ilready that he was to run his race than overseers' sons usually get." heavily handicapped. "Or need. I think Colonel Strong is Adrien'a clear, frank eyes never left doing wrong, very wrong indeed, in i the lawyer's face once. In point of fact, breaking down the barriers in this way not one of the students had followed What will that poor boy do with the J the harangue with more pointed intereducation he has spent four year in ac- est and unbroken oomposure. He nevor quiring when he goes back to the plan- once unlocked his placidly folded arms, teticni? _ __ _ On either side the pink nails of his well "No one has thought of me in this way. It was very sweet of you, Mamie." "But I am angry with you. Quite "Don't stay long at tho lot, Eben. I'm in a hurry for you." These specimens, duly classified and labeled, have been honored with conspicuous places in the rather meager geological collection which finds ample accommodation in a small showcase purchased at a milliner's bankrupt Bale. This collection of mineratein the showcase is called the college museum and is an object of respectful awe to the village urchins. In immediate consequence of which the silent and deserted quarter lot would become the arena of an activity thoroughly agreeable to Duke's degraded social instincts. "What did I do? Why, I just stepped close up to her and I held Liza's picture in front of her, and I said: 'That's what's pesterin me, Mrs. Strong. Look at it, please. What can I do with such a lookin girl in such a lookin home?' She took it in both hands, boys, and stared hard at it I could see she was all took back before she turned round and said, puzzled like: Across the clatter of hoofs, the yelping of curs and hissing of geese a clear, wholesome laugh floated to her. angry." She employed her liberated hands in putting her large Gainsborough hat far enough on the back of her head to give him the full benefit of an extremely stern gaze which she had carefully prepared for the occasion. "You rung that bell like you was in a hurry. Consult the shudders.'' Mules, burdened with loose jingling trace chains and whistling plowboys, would trot cheerfully through the lot, requiring no spur, in the direction of the cribs, piled high with their noonday allowance of fodder or sweet smelling pea hay. From the throats of 100 clumsy mud and earth chimneys the smoke of culinary preparation would ascend together, floating lazily over the waving plumes of the china trees that formed a long green avenue between the two rows of cabins. Responsive to the pungent odor of frying bacon and boiling mustard "greens," Duke's delicate nostrils would quiver appreciatively. She consulted the shadows. Eben had always told her whon she had any doubts about the harsh voiced clock that hud been her mentor for 15 years to consult the shadows about the roots of two sentinel (Jbina trees tnat Banned the front steps. If the shadows were "plumb round," she was to ring. The shadows were slanting toward the cart She had told Eben there would be folks to dinner at the mansion that day. "Gabriella was dead. She didn't want the frippery no longer." She wished she had made her entrance by the side gate. The governor had never ceased to be formidable to her, although 22 years of her life had been spent within sound of the imperious voice that floated angrily across the shining shrubbery. Mrs. Martin sniffed scornfully. "Adrien Strong says yon are acting like an imbecile. He is very much upset about you." "Yes, I reckon I knowed that as well as you do. But it has helped to spoil our Liza. She's got on a silk dress right there in that picture now, Eben. She used to say when she was a little girl that she loved to hear Mrs. Strong's silk dresses go swish swish along the hall at the big house. I remember that very dress. It's a little hlue and white check silk with lace—real laoe, old man—in the throat and sleeves. I don't think she'll care to hear it go swish swish over these rough plank floors, Martin, do you?" " 'You don't mean that this is Eliza Martin—that little, round cheeked girl with yellow hair and the quick wit that my Gabriella used to be so fond of bavin up here from the quarters?' Nothing but a barbed wire fence is between this arid nursery of learning and nature in her sweetest, wildest, most riotous mood. Close about the college grounds great forest trees crowd and fling soft, thick, soothing shadows far ■out over the bare, hot sod of the college inclosure. Wild grapevines and flaming "trumpeters" clamber tumultuously over the sharp barbs of the fence, adorning the rain washed gullies about tbem with a delicate, lacelike tracery of neen. Into the very nresence of the pundits the laughter of a babbling creek intrudes. It leaps untrammeled over its bed of shining pebbles in gleeful mockwry of man's laborious efforts to master nature's well kept secrets. The creek knows them all by heart, at least all .that it concerns it to know. As for the rest—poof! That for it! It lets them all alone. Wise babbler! There was a tang of wormwood in hisvoioe as he answered, "I think Adrien will not suffer much on my account" "Adrien Strong is very fond of you," she said decidedly. "It's tho picture. It got me all flustered up." "I didn't know whether to feel mad or prond at her astonishment, boys. Sonnded something like she didn't think onr Liza had any right to her good looks and her prond air. I think she seen that I wasn't particularly complimented, for she said very qnick and very sweet: "Politics! I knowed it Jest lis'n at him." His own name, shouted in Adrien's voice, came clearly and shrilly through the lacy screen of elder blossoms. The girl put her hand out hurriedly for the empty plate and cup. With (his apology for herself to herself she went inside and made ready for "the old man" and the boys with a great ado over her bone handled cutlery and her heavy queensware plates, all of which suddenly inspired her with an intense scorn of their clumsy coarseness. "No, sir, I am not for secession. I am for sticking to tho old flag—our flag as much as it is a Yankee flag. This infernal rumpus is all the work of a lot of hot headed, thin skinned fire eaters who would cheerfully send the whole country to the devil rather than submit to any fancied affront to their own precious selves. Gradual emancipation is what we want. Emancipation is inevitable. The voice of Christendom is against slavery. D—n the darkies; let them go. We are too infernally tendertoed. We are freezing for a fight—that is, you are, Clements, and you, Dalghren. Oh, don't look at me with those innocent blue eyes. And you need not trouble yourself to chew that blond mustache into fringe. The devil himself couldn't scare you. But if you don't get your fill of bluster and gore before we're out of this mess, then you may boil my head for a fiat Dutch cabbage. It is all wrong, sir, all wrong, this infernal twaddle alxrot our rights, our supremacy, our divinely appointed mastership. Well?" "There, go. Everything Is waiting on you. You are a beautiful looking valedictorian. Wait! I know it's dreadfully bold, but I can't let you go back looking like a defeated prizefighter." From his superior position on the gallery of the overseer's house he could take in all this delightful midday stir without detraction from his own digni ty. The crowning delight, however, the one in which he was himself most immediately concerned, was the hou * coming of Manager Martin and "the boys." " 'She was always very pretty and very bright, but this is the picture of a patrician beauty.' With spiteful emphasis she smoothed the wrinkles out of the red checkered tablecloth that never had shown such suspicions marks of hard usage as it did today, looked at with her newborn distrust of all her possessions. A few grease spots, more or less, wouldn't "feaze the old man" nor the boys, but she shouldn't wonder if Liza had forgot how to eat off a red tablecloth, and like as not she was used to napkins every day. "How would they strike Liza?" She caught her breath and went on more anxiously: '' And then, Eben, the worst wrong of all I've done her was lettin Mrs. Strong do all the letter writin, and when she comes home her mother—her own mot her'11 be the worse shock of all to her, old man." The words culminated in a hard, dry sob. "Then I says: 'I suppose you mean she don't look like she belonged to Martin and me. I reckon the books and the smooth days and ways has done a heap for her. Brooms and dishwater don't She stood on tiptoe close in front ol him. Hor slim brown fingors gave hitcravat a wivage little jerk, bringing tht bow around from under bis left ear. on ninw fonr. No leisurely dalliance before meal time, no luxurious refreshment of person before assembling at table, would intervene between the home coming of the overseer and the boys and dinner. Duke himself was not more indifferent to such troublesome exertions. A hasty hand washing at the tin basin, which oould be Reen of all men. on its snelf on the front gallery; brief, brisk conflict with the coarse roller towel, whose renewal was one of Mrs. Martin's Sabbath day ceremonies, and Overseer Martin, fresh and rosy, would be "ready for grub." "There, you look just one degree los disreputable. Do smooth your hair down a trifle." "But somehow when her first letter came home, lookin so sweet and clean and prim, I just couldn't bear to send her back one of my awful scrawls, and when Mrs. Strong said it sorter comforted her by makin hor feel as if she was writin to her own Gabriella, I just let things go on, never lookin far enough ahead to see the time when the child would get through school and hafter come home. And now, Eben, she'll find out what a cheat I am. I almost wish she did not hafter come back at all." 'J Hr of tD"e Globe for | RHEUMATISM.) ■ NEURALGIA and similar Complaint?, M and prepared under the strfngcut MEDICAL UWS.ig prescribed by eminent physicians in) DR. RICHTER'S tWM ANCHOR ■ PAIN EXPELLER1 | World renowned! Remarkably successful! ■ ■Only genuine with Trade Mark " Anchor."! ■F. id. Blchter *-Co., 816 Pearl St., New York. ■ 31 HIGHEST AWARDS. 1 13 Branch Houses, Own Glassworks, 0 50c. Endorsed & recommended  rsrrer Sc Peck. 80 Lnzerne Avenue. Mm U. C. Glick, 5(1 North Main St. MA H Honck. 4 North 11am St Pitttoton. Pa. TR'S I "ANCHOR" STOMACHAL beet fori On commencement day this creek is an important factor in the general festivities. All the day long vehicles of •11 sorts and condition toil collegeward over hot aud dusty clay roads, depositing a mixed cargo of anxious matrons, bright eyed girls, wondering infants and well stuffed hampers for the commencement collation. He was beaming on her in an ccstas-C of gratitude. It was so pleasant to bav* some one care whether he was hungn or satiated, trim or disreputable. Her preparations were still incomplete when Eben put his shining face through the open window nearest to the roller towel, which was just then in active "Do go. If you stand there mneh Ion »?er looking so ridicnlou-ly grateful, ! shall forget that I am angry witli you 1 am sorry, so sorry—for—everything But, of conrse, I don't believe it." At the opeti door of Shingleton's one church the cargoes are deposited with a minimum of consideration for the children and a maximum for the hampers, after which the straining beasts and the dust laden vehicles are driven into the creek for the rest and refreshment Far across its dimpling waters the •witch willows stretch their slender green wands, to the infinite oontent of the hot and panting brutes. service. "Short 'lowance of time for grub, Becky. How come you to forget us? Never knowed you do it before." "Don't b 'lieve what?" Strong asked vaguely interested in the voids, vivid ly in the speaker, whose soft, upturned eyes had altogether forgotten to look "I've been flustered all mornin, Eben —at leapt ever since Dan fetched the mail home." "Don't say that, Becky. She oughter be a real comfort to you when me and the boys has to leave you by yourself so much. She'll get used to things little by little." Mrs. Martin started nervously. She had emerged from behind the japonieas and was waiting for a chance to deliver Eben's message. This sudden turning of the governor's batteries on her unprotected front "flustered" her more than ever. She delivered herself briskly: Perhaps, after all, Duke's interest in Mrs. Martin's punctuality was self seeking. Reasoning from cause to effect, according to his lights, if no bellrope was pulled no dinner would ensua He raised his soft brown eyes reproachfully to his mistress' face aud sighed auiibly. Translated: stern "Don't believe anything. " Withsnd den passion she stamped her small foot "There, go. I have only made matters worse by coming here. Adrien is calling you. Adrien says it is ridiculous tc suppose you could have taken those things." "Mail? Anything wrong with Strong?" "Strong's all right, for anything I know to the contrary. It's about Liza, old man." "Well?" "Duke's fitter company for me than that slim, dainty thing, Eben. I'm goin to be afraid of her. She won't fit in here, Eben. Never, never, never! And if she don't reproach us in words she will in her heart. She'll pine away here, Martin.'' Commencement day partakes of the character of a rite; hence the entire propriety of holding the exercisea in the town's one consecrated building. The church, red, rectangular, respectable, fBMroned by da*k browed nalaw and "Eben wants some new brushes ordered Rats''— "He need not necessarily go back to i kept hands were restfully planteC the plantation. The world is not bound- agsiinst the bine serge sleeves of hif ed by Colonel Strong's plantation fenca coat. Occasionally, with a light toss of him strike out for himself." i his head he threw a wind blown Mrs. Maginnin fixed a troubled gazo 1 wiw» of fair "What could the woman be thinking ibout?" There was a sharp note of anxiety in the loud, fresh voice. Strong and Eliza were the objects about which all the family pride and homage revolved. "Hey? What? Gin brushes? Rats? The sume cry every year. Ask Martin if he thinks 1 am made of money. I tell you, sir, you are underestimating the magnitude of this thing. When we get "He did, did he?" The boy's voice was choked with the Budden up leaping of pasaion. Mrs. Martin, with her stoutly booted Feet planted on tbe round of one chair, the amplitude of her blue cotton skirts From its turreted perch on top of the wooden clock the cause of all this anxi- "Y#a and of mnne it— Go. an. «o!" "She's suit her Dicture home, Eben.