Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1873-07-31
BENJAMIN MAYS ANCIENT ENEMY.

around it. Overhead gray, dark
sky, that seems, if you gaze upon 1t
long enough to get the spirit of Its
expression, 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
window of that lonely log cabin,
standing there as solitary witness of
human life in the midst of the wild,
white dreariness of the plains.
Perhaps the little girl feels this
She is not old enough to consciously
think it-the little girl with thin,
sallow face, which somehow suggests
fever and ague, fiattened up against
the pane, looking out with a singular
alert usefulness over the wide, white
plains, and through the rushing gusts
of snow, until her gaze touches the
gray horizon afar off.
The winds come in furiously from
the east, like the roaring of the tides,
or the trampling of battalions of arm
ed men, and dash down with fierce
roar and cry on the thick clouds of
snow-hakes, and hunt and drive them
back and forth, and toss them up in
white focks, and tear them apart,
and ride back and forth over the
plains, making of the air one vast
trumpet through which they shrek
their choruses ofvictory.
Inside of the cabin, mans voice
asks suddenly-"Bessie, child, has
nobody comein sight YETI" A mans
voice, l said, and yet struck through
and through with some pain and hol-
lowness which made you feel that its
words were nearly ended.
"No, father" answered the little
girl, drawing her thin, sallow face
away from the window, "there is
nothing to be seen but the binding
snow
clark! don't you hear something's"
said the hollow voice, breaking in
here, sharp, hungry, impatient.
"No, father; the wind blows and
blows; that is ALL"
The tones were those of girl, but
there was nothing in the low, dreary
voice that was at all like that of girl
hood. Then the speaker turned to
the fire, placed some fresh wood on
the embers, and came back to her
watch by the window; dreary work
enough for any age, but doubly so TO
one whose life had not covered its
fourteenth summer.
The room had generally a comfort.
less expression. Yet there was not,
after all, so much lack of material as
want of care and arrangement dis
cernible throughout the apartment.
On the bed in one corner lay the
owner of the log-csbin. One look
into the shrunken face, the hollow
eyes all lying in that shadow of ashy
pallor, and you would have been GER
tain the man had laid himself down
to die, and that the one guest who
comes sooner or later over all houses
holds, had come now to that lonely
log.cabin out on the western plains.
None could know it better than 10.
siah 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 solemn, reproachful faces before
him.
For this mans life had not been a
good one. l cannot go into the de-
tails here of selfishness which had
marred, and passion which had de
fled his days; but the end had come
now, and the hard, strong, fierce will
had bowed itself at last before the
solemn voices of conscience eehoing
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, and
from it he in some sense dated the
commencement of his wrong career,
although the self-willed, reckless,
passionate boyhood and youth had
ripened into the hard, selfish, defiant
manhood.
Here, too, it is sufficient to say that
he had overreached his partner in a
manner which the law could not take
hold of; he had, to save his own for.
tune, 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 to
her grave.
Afterwards, Josiah Keep had pros.
pered for years, for sentence is not
always executed speedily against an
evil work." but at last his goods and
possessions began to fall away from
him.
He had passed the meridian of his
life when misfortunes overlook him.
Then his wife, and one and another
of his children died. iii health came
upon the strong man, and the lonely
log cabin on the plains, where he had
buried himself for a couple of years,
and the one little sallow checked
daughter who remained of all the
sons and fair girls who had called him
father, tell the rest of the sad story
of Josiah Keep.
In later life, the partner, whose
young manhood he had so cruelty
blighted, had prospered on every
hand-a good man, with ripe, ten.
der nature, full of broad sympathies,
such as one does not often see
Everybody said this of Benjamin
May.
And two or three weeks before, the
sick man had learned through a neigh
Dor that business had brought his for
mer partner to the town nearest to
his log cabin, and only fifty miles
away. At first it seemed to him that
the world itself could not hire him 10
look in the face of one whom he had
so wronged; but as the end drew
neal, and remorseful memories crowd.