The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1877-11-17
OUR STORY TELLER.
IT'S AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS
NOBODY GOOD.
detroit Free Press. /
BY MARGARET EYTINGE.

sultry-the leaves of the trees which
have hung heavy and motionless for
hours, beginning to rustic and tremble-
the birds flying with shrill notes of
warning to their nests-cattle vending
their way homeward in search of shell
ter-the tall corn bending lightly and
gracefully toward the earth-a low
storm-murmur telling the bee and but
terfiy to leave the honey feast and hide
the skies growing dark with threaten
ing clouds-tangled skeins of lightning
in the east-distant sounds of thunder
young woman, with pretty, fair hair,
small, feline mouth, and bright, shrewd,
green-blue eyes, writing at desk beside
the open window of handsome coun-
try house; one sheet of paper closely
covered lies before her-she finishes a
second and a third, chances over them,
places them in an envelope, reaches out
her hand for the one upon the desk +;
pauses moment to lean from the win
dow and watch the awful glory of the
heavens; when, all its forces gathered
comes the wind like young hurricane !;
snatches the envelope from her grasp,
and bears it with shrek of triumph
far away.
A gentleman at least quarter of a
mile distant from the handsome house
toward which he is fastening; tall,
broad-shouldered with a scholarly stoop
mild, gray, truthful eyes-gentle, re-
fined mouth, honest, serious face-hair
and beard slightly silvered and hands
filled with treasures gathered in the
woods.
The fierce wind meets him-battles
with him moment-then suddenly
dies away and dying drops an unad-
dressed envelope at his feet. He bends
and picks it up-regards it moment
acknowledgements it-takes out frag-
ment OF letter-in another moment
lets the forest treasures slip from his
grasp-steps back a pace or two-leans
against the sturdy trunk of an old
chestnut tree and with puzzled look and
knitted brow reads what the wind has
brought him slowly and carefully
through from beginning to end, and this
is what he reads:
Not introduce you to Uncle Maurice
until SIX months are past. / want him
to believe that | have been thoroughly
devoted to him for the last two years
ever since he took me from the convent
school where | became pupil-teacher
when my father died.
cat the end of the six months. on nv
twenty-first birthday, he has half prom
lsed to make over to me this house and
grounds and all they contain, and the
probability OF ne half-promise becom-
ing whole one and being fulfilled is
Gerry much stronger if he be kept in
happy ignorance of our loye-affair than
1t would be if he even suspected my
year engagement to you. So YOU see.
my dear boy, it is all nonsense-roman-
tic nonsense-your urging me to confess
to my uncle in hopes of fastening our
marriage.
1t would be consummate folly to run
such risk, for there's no telling what
these very good people will do when all
their lifelong prejudices receive a sud
den shock
Uncle Maurice finding that | had
deceived him might Danish me to the
obscurity from which he took me-
Then we could neuer marry, for YOU
have but small income, scarcely suffi-
cient to procure the comforts and lux
urles absolutely necessary to man of
society, and | have nothing but love
for comfort and luxury commensurate
with your own.
Be patient, trust to me and vour
patience shall soon be rewarded. And
really, when one comes to consider, qo,t
nave much less to complain of than l.
You have no disagreeable old uncle to
find fault with you. For, as have told
you before, Uncle Maurice, though a
great favorite with most people, is ex-
tremely disagreeable to me. We haven't
taste, a feeling in common, and were
it not for the benefits accruing. would
not remain beneath the same roof with
him another week.
In the fisrst place he is unpleasantly
truthful, and thereby getting one con-
stantly into awkward scrapes; in the
next, he looks with perfect horror on
round dances, believing them inventions
OF his Satanic Majesty, and |. who dote
upon them, have to tell our guests-how
you would laugh to hear me-that do
not allow them. Do Won rememhep
our first galop?)
"As for our jolly, rolling French
operas, he has made an auto do fe of INV
Grand Duchesse and Barbe BIeu'
music, and he would have added all the
rest OF my. Offenbach collection to the
pile had | not hidden them away and
declared, in tone and with face that
would have suggested the Father of his
Country that had no more.
Then he receives every month some
fifty dreadful children whom he gathers
from the surrounding villages. and 7 am
compelled to assume the part of the
lovely, charitable young mistress of the
mansion, in white decorated with blue
ribbons, and preside over the feast. the
money expended on which / can't helm
thinking all the time would have added
some nice little trife to my wardrobe or
jewel-case.
Just think of It'll Pouring ont tea
and cutting cake for half a hundred
pauper children who hate poverty in
any form and only like children in
poetry.
+" But to go back to the subject. You
can make your appearance as soon as
the house is mine, and / will introduce
you as an acquaintance made in town at
one Of Ida Cranston's receptions. And
when you do appear you must get rid Of