Litchfield enquirer., 1877-01-18

weight. But her father shuf1ed on, ani there was no step after his. The lony
 hours of the afternoon went slowly by
 shadows began to lengthen, and the hea
 and dnst of the day were tempered by th' appro ,ch of evening. ~
 Still Eilzaoeth fingered at the desk, un
 consciously held there by weight of sus
 pense, of vague and narrowing fear l
 was already twilight when a group o
 idlers gathered under the side window
 and the confused murmur of their voice!
 reached her troubled senses through tn,
 broken panes of glass. At last, with fata
 precision, these words fell upon her ear:
 ''Three thousand dollars! It was
 pretty good haul for Mat Gorse to mak,
 off with. The young scalawag somehow
 outwitted them all They do say tha
 the money belonged to Miss Truepen
 n.y. .....
 Then Miss Truepenny got down iron
 the stool. and, taking her hat from it
 accustomed peg, walked out the doc
 homeward. By the time her father came
 hot and hustered, with even more shuf fling step than usual, and took his seat al
 the table, Elizabeth was as calm and coo
 as ever. Her fingers held to hlm tn
 brimming cup of tea, and not drol
 therein quivered; her keen gray eye
 looked out beyond her father to the dus
 ky laburnums at the garden gate, ther
 they returned aga1n and settled them
 selves upon his face.
 "So Matthew Gorse took my money to
 day and ran away with itP" she said.
 ''Yes, yes,' replied the old man. hi.
 shaking hand spilling the tea upon the
 snowy cloth; ESQ they say, Bess. You shouldn't a trusted him. But it didn't
 matter he was thief and a,scoundre
 before."
 ''It did matter" said Elizabeth. "Ht took those three thousand dollars anG went away, did he, father?" '"
 Her voice grew shrill with sudder overpowering tone of yearning, and she looked steadily at the old man.
 ''Yes, yes," stammered Obadiah, his voice also getting shrill, and his chit shaking painfully. ''But don't mind, Bess; I'll make it up to you, every penny of it, and more."
 ''No. "she said, in hard, bitter voice, '.you can't give it to me-nobody can. You can't make it up to me-nothina can."
 And Obadiah found to his dismay that nothing could induce Elizabeth to take from h1m the three thousand dollars. Her own three thousand hidden away be. came curse to him. She made him feel like thief himself He had, after all, taken her money, as Matthew Gorse had taken his. No matter what the motive was, there the money lay-stolen from her, concealed, put out of her reach or knowledge. The thought was misery to him.
 The fact that he had done this thing to save her from falling into what he thought was snare of the devil, matter ed little to him now. If Matthew Gorse had told him. and he had known, that the money he had taken was spent Tn some righteous way, it wouldn't have raised the young man whit in his estimation. Money was money, and it must belong somewhere. If it was taken from it's rlghtful owner, the one who took it was a thief there lay the whole matter.
 This eplgrammatic way of settling it made the old mans hair white in year, took all the cunning out of his eyes, put In his face something weak and. pitiable, but changed it vastly for the better-won- derfully for the better. If Matthew Gorse could have met his uncle in the streets of parted with him, he wouldn't have knoRffi him. He would have lifted his hat to the bent, dropping, white-haired old man and passed reverently by.
 But these years that bent and shatter- ed the body and soul. of Obadiah True penny seemed to harden and petrify and preserve hls daughter. She grew straigh- ter and stifer and sterner and colder. till she might almost as we'll have been made out of stone.
 Obadiah could find no fault. She poured out his tea for him, at the age of thirty, with the same punctuality and accuracy that had marked that courtesy ten years before. She was now the cen- Ire of the business in Plimpton, which had greatly prospered now that the rail- road ran through the town. She bought and sold, bargained and traficked, with the long head and sagacious foresight he had credited her with when she was but a girl And legal culprits had the same reason to fear her that they found long ago with her father. She had no mercy, not even when he pleaded for them, as he did often and strenuously; so that, being 8 legal culprit himself, he began to trem- ble at her approach, and crept away to his own room, there to shlver and moan and vainly strive for courage to undo what he had done. For of what avail would it be now to make his daughter, the one being on earth dear to him, hate and despise him and cast him from her?"
 Obadiah meant to tell his daughter all as.he had sworn to do; but he had not stipulated when, the time was not in the bond, and the moment had never come hi rrhn possible, to fulfil his promise to Matthew. He determined he would tell her in five years-in ten; he put it off to fifteen, and then took the crime to his conscience to lie there curse forever
 Elizabeth was thirtY-seven years old when one morning Obadiah walked down the main street of Plimpton, leaning heav- fly on his gold-headed cane, and was sud- denly hailed from afar by voice that seemed familiar to him, and yet it did not appear possible that the disreputable and dilapidated tramp approaching could ever have been known to him. The mans head was bound mp in red handkerchief, and despite the freezing air, a woolen shirt and overalls seemed to comprise his wardrobe.
 ''You don't know me do you, deacon?" ne SaLu, coming clOSo to the OlQ man; ''and I'm blest if at first I could make you out. It don't seem as if living on the fat of the land and sleepin on beds of down has done much for you, any more'n starvation and campin' ont has done for me. The games pretty we'll played for both of us, I reckon; but l want to tell you deacon, that there's some body on the war-path. Unbeknown to myself, I did you bad turn out wonder "
 ''Out where, Dobson?' said Obadiah. Perhaps there was only one other face in the world so stamped upon his memory that he could have known it after these years of hardship and illustration. But in that scene down by the mill-dam. this man Dobson .was mute and unconsci- ous partaker, and Mir. Truepenny's mem- ory was keen to agony here.
 ''In the mines," said Dobson. ''I fell upon your nephew Mat out there. Yes, did, deacon, that's a fact and sheer i'll luck and misery folloa ed me from that moment. I'm blest if he wssn a regu- lar Jonah: he had the cussedest Ill luck in everything he undertook, and things went from bad 10 worse right straight along. One don't talk much of home out