The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1877-04-20


efforts usually amount i'll cases of disap-
pearance.
Mrs. Danford knew the city was
her best hiding-place. Nowhere could
human being sink as securely
out of sight as in the monoto-
nous blocks of Philadelphia, with
their million of inhabitants. There was
little that was distinctive about Lizzie
A thin, oldish-looking woman, who wore
cap and spectacles, lodged in room
over a bakers shop in Kensington, and
earned dollar or two week by slop-
work. She brushed against policemen
every day. Sometimes at night, wrapped
in a cloak, she carried basket filled
with with shoe-laces and pins to the de-
pot, and sat i'll dark corner until the
passengers to Germantown had gone
out. She usually fell asleep, when her
sun-bonnet covered her face. Richard
and Charley came to that depot once or
twice. Danford saw the wan, white hand
which held the basket, stopped, and then
went ON. Another night Charley asked
her the price of something, but she made
no answer
After that she was not able to leave
biIC lOI WCthS, unbll Ollt ulRlU,
feeling that the end was near, she took
her basket, covered herself in a large
cloak, and found her way out to the de-
pot She sat down outside in the dark
shadow made by a freight-car, and wait
ed for the trains. Danford was in the
last. Some people stopped him close
beside her. She could have touched him
by putting out her hand.
1t was her husband whose clothes
brushed hers-the man whose head had
rested on her bosom. With feverish
swiftness the old days when he was her
lover came back to her-all the romance,
the passion of her life she was girl,
beautiful, beloved she heard that soft
music again which sounds but once in
life. Then she was conscious of the
horrible death whose grip was on her,
of even the miserable cloak in which she
was wrapped. 1t seemed to her cruel
that when she was an outcast, her body
given up to slow decay, Danford
should be coming home from his work
quietly, as though nothing had happened
He was dressed carefully, as usual his
whiskers neatly trimmed. Out of the
car, too, stepped the very Annie Ward of
whom she had thought so often lately.
She stopped and shook hands with
Richard.
When he went up to his own house,
his wife followed him. He opened the
door with his latch-key, went in and shut
it, she standing opposite. The wind
blew fiercely the snow and sleet full in
her face. The shades were not down in
his room. She saw him turn up the
light and stoop over the crib. Then he
walked across the floor with little
white-gowned figure in his arms.
"Nelly Nelly y cried her mother.
She ran across the street; she raised her
hand to beat upon the door, and then
she turned quickly and went back to the
depot, and so to town. A stout, gray
haired man followed her, entered the
same car, left it as she did, and, a mo-
ment after she reached her room over the
bakery, was knocking at the door. She
opened it.
"Dr. Thayer |"
"Yes, Lizzy. Any fire? I'm half
frozen "-bustling forward to the stove,
SO as not to look at her.
"You-you had no right to follow
me standing at bay, her eyes blazing.
"Oh my God why didn't you come
sooner?" crouching on the floor beside
him, sobbing over his hand like hurt
child.
He said nothing for while, and then
gave a chuckle. " L said all along that
the way to find you was to keep Nelly
in sight. How often have you seen her."
Every day when / could walk"
"Lizzy," the doctor said, turning
sharply on her, "who told you your dis
ease was incurable ?"
"Dr. Prey"
Damned quack Now listen to me.
I'm not going to betray your secret. 1
don't want you to die at home, an object
of disgust to your husband. / can un-
derstand that feeling fully. But L do
mean to know if there is necessity for
your dying at all. "
It's too late" said LizZy.
OF course it was not too late, or this
history would never have been written.
Nobody has right to give unwary read
ers true bill of disease and death under
cover of a story. Lizzy's disorder took
another name, and disappeared slowly
under the old doctors care. After the
pink began to creep into her cheeks
again, one spring morning he took her
home, and placed her in her chair by
the fire, with Nelly in her arms, and
there her two boys found her when they
came home at night
Shadwell, one of the partners in the
Quaker firm which employs Danford,
heard the current report of the affair,
and was much scandalized 10y it. " 1t is
eccentric conduct in woman. l do not
like eccentric women. I'll drop in there
tonight and take look at her. Better
have no doubtful people connected with
the house.
The old Quaker dropped in to Dan
ford's little parlor several evenings after
that he talked with Richard. Lizzy
was busy helping Charley with his les
sons.
In the spring Danferd received notice
that the firm had given him junior
partnership.
"Thee has well deserved it of us"
said Shadwell, meeting him that day.
eff 1 were in thy place, Richard, " he
added, presently, "I would give thy wife
a journey. She is not rugged, and thee
can well afford it now. Thee has a re-
,,orkohIa woman for a wife Richard "