River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1874-09-18

gentle, fearful thing yet past her
teens, beautiful, despite the palor
which had driven the roses from her
cheeks-a timid, bashful creature, who
was evidently as y1t hardly alive to the
Importance of the step she was compul-
sorily taking. The bridegroom,
withered old man whose locks were
blanched with the SHOWS of sixty win
tiers, was already pressing forward to
assume his proper place, but paused
for an instant to drain canteen to
his friends, and that moment, brief "a
it was, decided his fate.
Hist, Fife, sweet Fife, whispered
a voice ut her side "have you forgot.
ten Arthur Calvsrly--that Arthur CAL
verify who shared your childish sports
and to whom, half in jest, half in earn
est, you plighted your maiden troth :
He has returned from his place of
exile and his books, u man and an
heir in his own free right, to renew the
old VOWS and to make you his own in
the laws despite. These nuptials are
evidently abhorrent TO you as they
must be in the sight of God. An in
slant and it will be too late to retract
Say then the word which makes you
mine.
Poor Efiie She did not see that he
who addressed her was half beside him
self with the effect of repeated pota.
tons, nor needed the glare of the eye
with which he regarded her. She
knew only that she had been offered
/ the means of escape from a terrible
fate, and that it was Arthur Calverly to
whom she was indebted for the offer.
The tide of olden recollection rolled
in upon her; their eyes met, and in q
trice she was in his arms and was borne
toward the door, the simple rustics be-
ing easily restrained from interfering
by the friends who crowded about him.
Old Adam Clayford went down in the
scufiie with cracked sconce, which
sent him to his bed, and ultimately to
his grave, and Effie was spirited away,
the Lord knows whittier.
Years fled by with lightning speed,
during which nothing was heard of the
heir to the Calverly estates, and old
Arthur Calverly lay on his bed of
death, miserable looking wreck of
what had once been man. Then was
learned, and only then, the nissan
thropic gloom which for so long time
had hung about the house of Calverly.
For years the male members of the
line had been hopelessly insane, the
malady invariably manifesting itself
just prior to the coming of age of the
unhappy victim, and young Arthur
Calverly, despite the fond hopes of his
father, had proved no exception to the
rule.
The breath was hardly out of old
Arthur's body when a stranger appear
ed, who presented papers emitting him
to the bulk of the estate 1t was no
less a person than Jack Delaplaine, who
had been the companion abroad of the
younger Calverly, and professed to
have furnished the money which had
supported his extravagances. He
brought with him new wife, who, in
her maturity, would hardly have been
recognized for the Ellie Walters of a
former day.
In the process of time there strayed
into the village an attenuated, hollow
visaged creature, clad in rags, who,
with his vacant look and sunken eyes,
attracted hardly a glance from the
numerous pedestrians whom he en-
countered. Yet many of them had
known him in former times, and it was
really the last of the Calverlys who
was found the next morning lying stiff
and dark upon the sod at the gate of
the tomb within which SO many of his
ancest tors were deposited