The Elk advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Elk Co., Pa.) 186?-1868, 1867-09-12
Selected aAAisrellanp.
BENJAMIN MAYS ENEMY.

S 0apll OUT on the w Western
plains, with SHOWS that drift and drift
around 1T. Overhead a gray, dark sky
that seems, if you gaze up into it long
enough to get the spirit of its express.
Ion to hold some agony of despair or
death.
There is, however, kind of wild
strong life in the scene that lies be-
neath-spreading itself away from the
windows of that lonely log cabin,
standing there as a solitary witness of
human life in the midst of She wild,
white dreariness of the plains.
Perhaps the little girl feels this
She is not old enough to conscious.
ly think 1.-THE little girl with a thin
sallow face, which somehow suggests
fever and ague, hattened up against
the pane, looking out with a singular
alert wistfullness over the wide, white
plains and through the rushing gusts
OF snow until her gaze touches the gray
horizon afar off
The winds came in furiously from
the east like the roaring of tides, or
the trampling of battalions of armed
men, and dash down with fierce roar
and cry on the thick clouds of snow.
flakes, and hunt aud drive them back
and forth, and toss them apart, and ride
back and forth over the plains, max.
ing of the air one vast trumpet through
which they shrek their choruses of
victory.
Inside Of the cabin, a mans voice
asks suddenly Bessie, child, has no.
body came in sight yet 2 A mans
voice; l said and yet struck through
with some pain and hollowness, which
made you feel that it's words were
nearly ended.
No, father answered the little girl
drawing her shin sallow face away from
the window, there is nothing to be
seen but binding snow
Hark don't you hear something -
said the hollow voice breaking in here,
shary, hungry, impatient
No, father; the wind blows and
blows that is ALL
The tones were those of a girl, but
there was nothing in the low, dreary
voice that was ike girlhood. Then
the speaker turned to the fire, placed
some fresh wood on the embers, and
came back to her watch by the wins
dow dreary work enough for any age,
but doubly SO to one whose life had not
covered its fourteenth summer
The room lad generally comfort
less expression. Yet there was not,
after Ill, so much lack OF material but
want of care discernble throughout
the apartment.
o." ehu bou III vuc corner lay une
owner of the log.cabin, One look into
the shrurken face, the hollow eyes all
lying in that shadow Of ashy pallor,
and you would have been certain the
man had laid himself down to die, and
that the one guest who comes sooner or
later over allthreshholds, had come now
to that lonely log cabin out on the
western plains.
None could know it better that
Josiah Keep, as he lay there, with the
winter storm bowling outside, and the
years of his life coming up one after
another, and standing with their SOL
cmn, rcproachful faces before him.
For this mans life had not been
good one. | cannot go into the de.
tails here of selfshncss which had
marred, and passion which had dc6l.
ed his days but the ead had come
now and the hard, strong, fierce will
had bowed itself at last before the SOL
cmn voices of conscience echoing amid
all the tumult Of his soul, as it glared
face to face with death.
There was one deed of Josiah
Keeps life which somehow troubled
him more than all the others, aud
from it he in some sense dated the
commencement of his wrong career,
although the sclf.willed, reckless, pas
sionatc boyhood and youth had ripen.
cd into the hard, selfish, defiant man
hood.
Here, too, it is sufficient to say that
he had overreacbed his partner in q
manner which the law could not take
hold of he had, to save his own for.
time completely wrecked the others
and the wrong had not ended there.
1t had been the means Of driving his
partners young wife-a fine souled
sensitive woman-to madness and her
grave.
Afterwards Josiah Keep had pros
pcrcd for years, for sentence is not
always executed speedily against an
evil work but at last his goods aud
possessions began to fall away from
him.
He had passed the meridian of his
life when misfortune overlook him
Then his wife and one aud another of
his children died Ill health came
upon the strong man, and the lonely
log. cabin on the plains, where he had
buried himself for couple of years,
and the one little sallow- checked
daughter who remained of all the brave
sous aud fair girls who had called him