Litchfield enquirer., 1879-07-31
~3 es- From scribner's Magazire.l
 FRIEND BARTON'S CONCERN
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IfrOm ocfionef E MaSdziHt.1
 FRIEND BARTON's CONCERN"
 CONCLUDED.
 Dorothy knelt by her bed in the low cham Der under the caves, crying to herself that she was not the child of herfnether any more. !
 She felt she had lost something, which, in truth, had never been hers. It was only the unconscious poise of her unawakened girlhood which had been stirred. She had mistaken it for that abiding peace which is not lost or won in day.
 Dorothy could not stifle the spring thrills in her blood any more than sEe could crush it's color out of her cheek or brush the nipples out of her bright hair, but she longed for the cool grays and the still waters. She prayed that the "grave and beautiful damsel called Discre- tion" might take her by the hand and lead her to that upper chamber, whose name is Peace. {" She lay awake, listening to the music from the barn, and waiting through breathless siences for it to begin again. She wondered if Fanny Jordan had grown any prettier since she had seen her as a half-grown girl; and then she despised herself for the thought. The katy aids seemed to beat their wings upon her brain and all the noises of the night, far and near, came to her strained senses, as if her silent chamber were a whispering gallery. The clock struck twelve, and in the silence that followed she missed the music: but voices, talking and laughing, were coming down the lane. There was clink of horses hoof on the stones; now it was lost on the turf; and now they were all dropping nolsily past the house. She buried her head in her pillow, and tried to bury with itthe consciousness that she was wondering if Evesham were there, laughing with the rest.
 Yes, Evesham was there. He walked with farmer Jordan, behind the young men and girls, and discussed with him. somewhat ab- sently, the war news and the prices of grain.
 As they passed the dark old house spread ing it's wide roofs, like hen gatheIing her chickens under her wing, he became suddenly silent. A white curtain Tapped in and out of an upper window. It was the window of the boys room; but Evesham' instincts failed him there.
 "Queer kinks them old Friend preachers git into their heads sometimes !'' said farmer Jor- dan, as they passed the empty mlll. "Now what do you spose took Uncle Tommy Barton off right on top of plantin', leavin' his wifen critters n chlld'en to look after themselves :? Mighty good preachln' it ought to be- to make up for such practicin'. Wonderful set agin the war, Uncle Tommy is! He's a-preachin' up peace now. But Lord! all the preachin' sence Moses won't keep men from fghtin' when their blood's up and there's tertory in itr
 1t makes saints of the women," said Eve sham shortly.
 Wal yes! Saints in heaven before their | time, some of 'em. There's Dorothy, now. She'H hoe her row with any saint ip the king dom or out of it. never see hulsomer look in gal. My Luke, he run the furrers in her corn patch, last May. Said it made him sick tN a UaI a cta m, ofto n y>lo She wouldn't more'n ha!f let him She's a proud little piece. They're all proud, Quakers is. never could see no 'poorness of spirit, come to git at 'em! And they're wonderful clannish, too My Luke, he'd a notion he'd like to run the hull concern - Dor othyn' all but 1 told him he nights we'll pint off. Them Quaker gals don't never mar ry out O meetin'. Besides, the farms too poor!"
 Goodnight, MT. Jordan p said Evesham suddenly. ''lm off across lots '" He leapcd the fence, crashed through the alder hedge row. and disappeared in the dusky meadow Evesham was by no means satisfied with his experiments in planetary distances. Some where, he felt sure either in his orbit or hers, there must be point where Dorothy would be less insensible to the attraction of atoms in the mass Thus far. she had reversed the laws of the spheres, and the greater had fol- lowed the less. When she had first begun to hold permanent place in his thoughts he had invested her with something of that at mosphere of peace and cool passivity which hedges in the women of her faith It had been like thin, clear glass, revealing her love- liness but cutting off the magnetic currents A young man is not long satisfied with the mystery his thoughts have woven around the woman who is their object. Evesham had grown impatient; he had broken the spell of her sweet remoteness. He had touched her. and found her human, ,-deliciously, distract tractingly human, but with streak of obdu- racy which history has attributed to the Quak- CTS under persecution In vain he haunted the mill-dam, and bribed the boys with traps and pop-guDs and fingered at the we'll l-curb to ask Dorothy for water, which did not reach his thirst. She was there in the flesh, with her arms aloft balancing the well-sweep, while he stopped with his lips at the bucket; but in spirit she was unappcoachable. He felt, with disgust at his own persistence, that she even grudged him the water! He grew savage and restless, and fretted over the subtle changes
 which he counted in Dorothy, as the summer waned. She was thinner and paler,-perhaps with the heats of harvest, which had not, in deed, been burdensome from it's abundance Her eyes were darkerand shyer, and her voice l more languid. Was she wearing down. with all this work and care? A fierce disgust pos sessed him, that this sweet life should be cast into the breach between faith and works He did not see that Rachel Barton had changed, too,-wth change that meant more, at her age, than Dorethy's fllshings and palings. He did not miss the mothers bent form from the garden, or the bench by the kitchen door, where she had been used to wash the milk things .--
 Dorothy washed the milk things now, and the mother spent her days in the sunny east room, between her bed and the easy-chair where she sat and unused for hours over the five letters she had received from her husband in as many months. The boys had, in ameas ure, justified their fathers faith in them, since Rachel's illness, and Dorothy was released from much of her outdoor work but the si- ] lence of the kitchen, when she was there alone with her ironing and dish washing, was a heavier burden than she had yet known Nature somtimes strikes in upon the hope less monotony of life in remote farnl-houses. l with one of her phenomenal moods. They come like besoms of destruction but they scatter the web of stif1ing routine: they ling into the stIffening pool the stone which jars the atoms into crystal. --s@vFrJ
 The storms which had ambushed in the lurid | August skies, and circled ominously round the horizon during the first weeks of September, broke at last in an equinoctial which was long remembered in the milT-house. It took it's place in the family calendar of momentous dates with the hard winter of 1900; with the late frost, which coated the incipient apples with ice, and froze the new potatoes in the ground and with the year the typhus got into the valley. .lE#' !, The rain had been falling night and day
 It had been welcomed with thanksgiving; but it had worn out it's welcome some hours since, and now the early darkness was coming on without lull in the storm. Dorothy and the two biggest boys had made the rounds of the 1 farm-buildings, seeing all safefor the second night. The barns and mill stood on high ground, while the house occupied the sheltered hollow between. Little streams from the hills were washing in turbid currents across the lower levels; the waste-weir roared as in early spring the garden was inundated, and the meadow shallow pond. The sheep had been driven into the upper barn hoer the chickens were in the corn-bin and old John and the l COWS had been transferred from the stable, which stood low, to the weighing floor of the mill. A gloomy echoing and gurgling sound lad from, Iar ,boo1 al,