The Planters' banner. [volume] (Franklin, Attakapas Co., Lou.) 1849-1872, 1870-01-19
Over the hills q little crowd was coming
slowly. something in Is midst,

Over the hills q little crowd was coming
slowly, something in Is midst.
"DOn't be too Frightened, Mrs. ROmer,''
gasped the mal at list. at may not be as
bad as they think. ne herse shied just be-
fore the post office and the doctor was
thrown. He hasn't come to yet. oh, no,
no ~ for she had thrown herself on her knees,
and cried out that h was dead; mot dead
not dead yet, Mrs. Rmer."
| But the wretched woman knew that death
was very near, and the flood of agony that
swept across her hart told her that she had
not ceased to love kr quiet husband
They brought him in-and from that mo
ment, for long d.ys and nights, she kept
watch beside his bed, thinking of no other
thing on earth, leaying only that he might
be spared to her. She suffered agonies of re-
morse. Every ia be thought pursued her
with revengefal tab.
The gray Overc9at hanging on the wall,
which she had thought old manish and like
him, as he rode away, seemed to taunt her
with the thought that it would never be
worn again. She could not bear the sight OF
If il 1SSngs1 SsF r, it il ccffai. closet
shu -; s6mething fell from Que Of the
pOckets-a' letter or q paper. She stopped to
recover it, and saw fanciful envelope, with
bright seal, and her name upon it. Such
were tho valentines that came to her. This
was surely one of them. What did it mean .
Had her husband discovered the writer Had
there been some cause for the accident, of
which she knew nothing? She looked at the
valentine again. 1t had never been posted
Ethel began to tremble violently from
head to foot. She sank down upon her knees,
clasping the valentine between both palms.
and held it thus WHILE Could it be .-oh.
could it be I She opened it. The same glow
ing verse, but salder and more hopeless, tell
ing of love unretmned. The same measure
in the same feigne1 hand, yet not all un-
known. Had she never before seen that little
hOurish-that peculiar formation of letter ?
"Oh, heaven! make me surew sobbed
Ethel, and she found her way somehow to
her husbands desk, and opened it,
Within lay envelopes like those upon the
valentine, a little box of such gay seals, and
fragments of verse-the proofs that the
writer of those passionate poems-of those
wild protestatlons of love-was no other than
Ralph ROmer.
She crept back to his bedside, and kissed
his face and unconscious eyes. She PRAYED
heaven to give him back to her. She prayed
to be forgiven, with a sense of remOrse and
shame such as she might have felt had she
been much more wicked, and heaven listened
to her. The crisis passed in safety, and
Ralph ROmer's eyes opened ON face pallid
with grief and worn with watching, but beau
tfnl with holy love and cOnstancy. When
one day, her head upon his bosom, she told
him all, he also had his tale to tell
Il am old and gray, you see," he said, 'and
such love seems only to belong to youth.
could not speak it. but 1 felt If, and 1 put my
thoughts into verse-and l sent them to you,
my darling, with a hope that you would
know whence they came some time, though
hardly with hope that you could give me
more than a child's respect and duty"
But she had given him more-she had
given him all woman might, and this she
told him.
They are together still. 1 think they have
forgotten that one is young and the other
OLD, in the immortal yough of both their
hearts. After that one long talk, they said
little more; but their love was an assured
thing. He tells her, as of yore, all his schol-
ar's dreams, and talks of the stars and the
flowers rather tha .sf themselves. But E.L.a
ttfeasHfed valentines, which lie bound together
with blue ribbon in her most sacred hiding
place, to feel assured of her happiness. There
is no empty nook in her warm heart, and the
angels Of love and duty clasp hands beside
their hearthstone.