Connecticut western news., 1878-05-09

only ID case Libby and Hltty dled With out leaving direct heirs could any thing more than the merest tri1e revert to poor little Tom. Hitty had been engaged to Anson Searle year when old MT. Thorne shuffled of the mortal coil and this unjust will came to light, and Searle himself was at that time only young lawyer wrestling with circumstances, with no great amount of funds at his command.
 And nothing for little Tom but this paltry hundred dollars P groaned Hitty, when the will had been read and the es- tate administered.
 "Of course I shall never marry" said Liddy, who was plain and old looking for her years, and whose one lover had tilted her many years ago, when the bloom of youth at least had been hers. There wasn't the smallest danger that Liddy would threaten Tom's interests by marrying.
 "No, you may never marry, Liddy, sighed her sister "but IT love An son, and oh love little Tom, too-my little motherless Tom I cannot rob him of his patrimony, and I cannot live without Anson. How can I wrong Tom to pleasure myself !? What will he have to go out into this old hard world with if-if-''
 " Hush, you silly girl he will have his head and hands like other men and then-you may never have any children to stand in h1s way"
 " But how unhappy it would make me to see them enriched at his expense i; to see him earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, while they fared like the lilies of the field; to ohave Tom envy and perhaps hate them, and feel bitter that life had been rendered so much easier for them by injustice p
 " Perhaps they would share with Tom."
 "Ah, it wouldn't be quite safe to trust to that pleasant perhaps.
 "You ought not to suspect your chil- dren of being less generous than your self"
 But their mother must have been first, you see."
 You have Anson to think of, Hitty, in this affair as we'll as Tom. If you don't love Tom better"
 don't-I don't but the will has made it impossible for me to marry An son with clear conscience-to marry him and be happy. If he were sure of fortune, with which we could make amends to little Tom, it would be different. But cannot count upon such an improbable contingency. AS you say Tom will have his head and bands to push his way, but the best head and the busiest hands do not always compel fortune and if any harm should come to him from want of capital, if he should be tempted to sin from lack of money, I T should have to answer for it it would be my guilt"
 '' Nonsense, Hitty your conscience is too tender. Marry Anson and trust to Fate, that's my advice. Supposing you refuse, and he marries somebody else, and-littfe Tom does not live to grow up!"
 shall not have wronged him."
 But you will have wronged Anson. |"
 Not if he-if he marries another. |"
 Many would perhaps approve Hitty Thorne's conduct at this crisis, more would condemn but she walked accord ing to her light in those cruel days. It was no easy task she had set herself. She was to receive no need for her sac rifice except self-approval-nothing but Gould she have seen all that would happen, she might have spared herself this cruelty. And how much can happen in this time how much to make our wisest forethoughts assume the aspect of improvidences. Property changes hands, values shrink, children grow up with wills of their own, people die and make room for remote heirs, or they outlive the sharp edge of sorrow and anger, and learn to bear the burden of the1r mistakes. Miss Hitty had faded in the meantime, while Anson Searle wore his years like garlands. The fortune of which her "not impossible children might have robbed little Tom had dwindled to the merest pittance through the knavery of the man to whose wisdom 1t WAS entrusted, while Anson Searle had unexpectedly stepped into possession of the Searle estate, with it's old stone mansion, it's orchards and out lying meadow-lands, and the income that had been rolling up since the Searles first set foot upon Plymouth Rock. Twenty years before there had been no shadow of such a possibility, no dream of it in Anson's mind or another's. Two healthy lives had barred the way against him, but Death had effected breach.
 "What a mistake Hitty Thorne made P people had commented these half dozen years. "She might have been mistress at Searle Hill if she'd had a mind to risk marrying a poor man. Folks get their come-up once in this world sometimes" with the usual charity commentators bestow upon the motives of others. Nobody had known the true cause of Hitty's refusal to marry Searle. It had been the town talk, to be sure-a riddle which no one had solved. She had not even confded her reasons to hel 11