The Lake County star., 1877-04-05
THE TRAMP'S REVENGE.
BY W. o. sTODDARD.

A great, fertile hollow, in the midland
bills, and one man owned it all. Five
hundred acres of level and upland, field
and forest, and well might Milly Van
Vleeck complain that she could not even
visit neighbor without climbing over
the hills.
But old Squire Van Vleeck had NO
use for neighbors.
Was not the land his own, and the
homestead and the sawmill itself, hall
way down the hollow?
Such barns!
Why, the biggest of them had scarcely
rival in the county. Ttere was twenty
feet of sheer fall, between the mows,
packed as they now were with tons on
tons of clover and timothy.
What did he or his need of neighbors
Not much, perhaps, but that Fall,
when his ambition goaded him to reach
out for the civic.honors he deemed the
rightful due of so much land and forest,
saw-mills and crops, and all that, he sud-
denly discovered that the people in the
other hollows and on the hills and in the
villages, all had neighbOrs of their own.
Such a snub they gave him!
No wonder the grim old squire went
back to his ample homestead and
growled at his patient wife, and even at
Milly, in spite of her gentleness and her
beauty, and behaved himself, generally,
like the old bear he had grown to be.
The first heavy SHOWS came earlier
than usual and the cold weather brought
with it immunity from the one thing the
squire hated most.
Not tramp Rad been seen in the
hollow for weeks, and no man troubled
himself to ask whittier they had flown.
All the more, however, that bitter
afternoon, did the old mans angry soul
stir itself within him when he met, at
his own gate, the most outrageous speci-
men of the abhorred breed that the whole
season had brought before him.
If other tramps had sometimes borne
only .he seal of misfortune or of common
vagabondage, this one was clearly and
undeniably a prince of his worthless
guild and chosen vessel of vice and
crime.
Plenty of bone and muscle had he,
and the very swing and spring of his
slouching gait proclaimed that no lack
of mere physical capacity had made him
what he was.
Can tramp have in him anything
like energy3
The squire would have said "No," at
any time before he gave that rowing
ruffian 30 large and 80 acrid piece of
his mind and temper.
He had scarcely dreamed of such
change as his words produced.
There was some magic in them, stir
rin0 mn evi1 into n power
The begging whine swelled into q
volume OF hoarse and strident vitupera-
ton. The relics of a mind ,glowered
6ercely through the hairy, filthy face.
The whole hulking frame seemed to
culver as the tramp strode away, with
the meaning of the threats and cures
with which the air was blue behind
him.
Fear is bitter ingredient to put in
the cup of anger, and Squire Van Vleeck
was in even worse humor than usual,
ten minutes later, when somewhat
fne-looking young man reined in his
horse at the gate, and seemed about to
spring from his sleigh.
GOod-morning, squire"
"Don't stop, Gil Morsel Drive right
oni' roared the old man. "Don't stop
agin anywhere in this holler. Yer
fathers son needn't quit the road any
where on my land. Eff it hedn't a. been
for him, might a-had the nomination"
More than that he said but while the
young mans face deepened to hot GRIM
son, he controlled his temper sufficiently
to give his horse the reins and do as he
was hidden without another word.
Atall, strong built, broad -shouldered
youth was Gilbert Morse, aud year in
city business-housc had made none the
less man of him. His greeting at the
squire's had been clearly altogether un-
expected, and he pulled his horse to q
walk, moment later, as IL he wanted to
give the matter some kind of considera.
tion.
How he would have driven IL he could
have looked along the road ahead of him,
just beyond where it entered the hem
lock-woodsi
Distant rs were her neighbors,
Milly Van Vleeck was too robust and
healthy-minded young lady to remain
housed up, even in winter weather, and
she had never looked roster or prettier in
all her life than she did that afternoon,
as she tripped along the frosty road
homeward.
Away beyond the saw-mill and into
the woods abe had been almoat al icsalv