The Superior times. [volume] (Superior, Wis.) 1870-1912, 1879-08-02
LOVE AND FROST.

There was beauty enough to be found
in Mataska valley, what with the river
and the lake and the forest-crowned
hills, at least in summer time; and even
the dry, cold rigor of Minnesota
winter could not take it all away.
Nevertheless, there was nothing else
there half so beautiful as Norma Eric
son.
Her withered, old Norwegian father
had settled himself on a good-enough
piece of land, away UP above the head
of the lake, miles away from Mataska
village, and no one could say he had SO
much as one friend more, at the end of a
tiye-years' residence, than the day the
first timber was cut for his house.
A thoroughgoing miser was old Jan,
and his crusty sel6shness included not
only his earthly goods, and the gift or
use thereof, and his own not very desir-
able company, but also his one Jewel of
daughter.
Rarely was Norma seen in the village
almost never at all at any merry-making
of the neighboring country folk; and old
Jan seemed to take an ogreish sort of
pleasure in preventing her from enter
tanning visitors-yOung men especially
at his own house.
And so, the more Norna's beauty
grew and became known among them,
the more unpopular was old Jan Ericsson
among the free-hearted settlers of the
Mataska valley.
And yet there were those who had
succeeded in breaking through or climb
ing over the odd old miser's wall of re-
serve.
John Primer had done it, by his
fathers advice; for Judge Primer was
Jan EricsOn's lawyer, and he had more
than once limited to his son and heir
that Norma had other and more solid at
fractions than her beauty.
If, therefore, any fair occasion offered
to send q message to the Ericsson farm,
John Primer had been generally quite
ready to ohlige his father by carrying it,
and more than once he had ventured on
q brief call without any special errand.
As for Paul Wood, on the other hand,
either he had not sufficient cunning to
invent errands, or his pride forbade any
subterfuge, for he had positively and
openly braved, more than once, even the
harsh discourtesy of old Jan, in his un-
invited, unabashed intrusions.
If Paul did not pretend to vie with
John Primer in dress, wealth or apparent
prospects, he was certainly fine, manly
specimen of young western farmer, and
his dark curls and almost swarthy
features wore pleasant contrast to
even the ripe blonde Morse loneliness of
Norma herself.
One bit of strategyit seemed that Paul
had stopped to, for more than once Norma
had been surprised that he had been "out
a-hunting in that neighbOrhood" on the
very days which old Jan had chosen for
bit of teaming on the furthest edge of
his possessions, or a trip to the store at
the village.
Nobody ever knows how such things
come to be common property; but, some
how or other, Judge Primer and his son
were made aware that they had reasons
for distrusting Paul Wood, aud he had
been made to feel the fact very sensibly,
more than once.
There had been an added bitterness
the past autumn, in the fact that John
PInner's nomination to the state legis-
lature had only resulted in showing the
folly of the Mataska valley people, for
the stupid fellows had known no more
than to choose Paul Wood instead; and
even Norma Ericsson said she was glad of
it.
There came day, however, in the
early winter, when Paul would have
given his political honors and his best
horse, perhaps even his farm to boot, to
have known why it was that Norma sud-
denly became as distant and repelling as
old Jan himself.
Not word would she vouchsafe him,
though he met her full half mile from
the house, and walked to the very door
by her side.
He did not give the matter up, even
then, half so much for the volley of bit
ter abuse with which the old miser greet
ed him, as for the icy look of indifer-
ence with which Norma marched straight
on into the house, and closed the door
There was really very little give up
in PauPs composition; but he met John
Primer, before he had left the farm q
mile behind him, and there was look
on Johns face that suggested a good
many ugly thoughts to the sore heart of
the discounted youth.
The next day and the next, and, in
fact, good many days after that, were
decidedly unfavorable to counting of any
sort.
1t was weather to have "bred cool
ness" in a blast furnace. FIRST, there
came a driving noItherly storm bringing
untold freights of drifting snow from
the Arctic regions, till all the country
was buried under genuine " Minnesots
blanket" No roads, no paths-no use
in trying to make any, almost.
AMI then there followed cold snap
that utterly exhausted the expressive
powers of the thermometers. The only