Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1881-04-29

"God keep him from harm !" he gasps.
"But, oh, ma'am the horse has come home
without the masteri" And then ho breaks
! down. "But maybe he's only had fall, and
hurt himself The police and all have gone
10 look"
There is no grief on the wifes face as she
listens. In one second all the Joy had been
stamped out, but there is something awful in
the expression of her eyes-a look that,
thank God is not often seen in a woman's
face All the soft womanly beanty has given
place to this fierce strange woe. Then the
words fall from her lips like wall: "They
have killed him Oh, my husband /"
There is woe and weeping and desolation
in Ballyhague lights flashing, servants run
ming about wildly, the women sobbing, the
men with pale, scared faces all instinctively
keeping out Of sight Of the stricken wife, who
with face like death, gives her orders with
such awful calmneBs. She has no hope, will
listen 10 none. She knows as surely as il he
lay dead at her feet, that her husband has
been murdered-that she will never hear his
voice again. Never again, and she does not
cry yet. The fountains of her grief will have
all the rest of her life to weep themselves
dry.
Yet there surely must be some lingering of
faint shadowy hope in her breast for, dur
ing the terrible hours of torturing anxiety
that follow, Dolly moves softly about, getting
all in readiness, making preparations with her
own shaking hands. And oh the pity of il
all, to see the poor wife turning down the
bedclothes, and lighting the candles on the
dressing-table, to have all ready il so be that
Jack is brought home not dead
Only once does she break down; that is
when she passes into Jacks dressing-room
and sees his things hanging before the fire in
readiness for him, his slippers warming on
the hearthrug-the slippers she worked with
her own hands in the happy days when she
was first married. At sight of these mani
mate things she breaks into tempest of tear
less sobs. Jack Jack my darling my
darlng!' She is wild with fear and grief
Poor Dolly in all the days to come she can
never have such happiness as the few short
years of her welded life. And as she waits
and listens and watches, while every heart
beat is bringing the time nearer, she does not
know that what she is suffering now, the al
most uncomfortable suspense, will, in the after
days, seem nothing compared to that greater
other suffering that is to come.
Jack, riding slowly home in the creeping,
lengthening shadows of the evening, little
dreams that this is his last day on earth He
has had good sport, and in the pleasures of
the moment had almost forgotten his troub-
les but now moving slowly toward home
with friend, it all comes back to him again,
and he talks it over with a certain quiet We
hemence.
DR.. Ryan, jogging along beside him, thanks
his stars that be doesn't own a rod of land
that he is in no wise dependent on the va
carries of q misguided peasantry or misguid-
ing agitators.
"Cheer up, Captain Trevor! !" he says
heartily. IAN this will blow over when some
strong measures are taken"
81 hope So" Jack rejoins. ''This is my
road, and must get on now, or the wife will
be anxious; so, good night doctor"
GOOD night" and DIR. Ryan is the last
man who sees Jack Trevor alive.
All unconscious of danger, he is riding
home at trot, for the horse is tired after the
long run, and Jack goes slowly on the grass
near the hedge, smoking cigar and thinking
of many things. He thinks of the run to-day,
of the friends he met, of Dolly, and at thought
of her he mends his pace a little and pushes
on. The twilight has given place to a pale
moonlight, that looks ghostly enough across
the meadows. 1t is lonely road, high banks
on either side, and slowly, slowly comes Jack,
the horses feet making no sound on the
grass, the riders strong figure showing dark
and well defined against the clear sky.
It's all over in second. Two shots, one
after another.
MY God ~ cries poor old Jack, and swings
forward. The horse rears and plunges, and
his rider falls headlong on the grass, stone
dead, without moan or a wall, after that
one cry to his God
In the pale moonlight two men fly across
the fields. Jacks horse gallops away up the
road he lies there ON his face, shot down,
murdered, within half a mile of his own
gates!
So they find him lying in the moons rays,
cold and dead, fiat on his face in the grass.
To-morro it will be in all the papers can
other landlord murdered" !" Then q nine
days talk, and then it will be forgotten by all
but one.
Reverently they carry him in at his own
gates and up the avenue he had ridden down
in health and strength only this morning.
There he lies, cold and lifeless in his red coat,
his poor face up-turned to the heaven that is
more merciful than man, carried home to his |
wife. Yes, carried home to his wife and laid |
at her feet in the lighted hall where she stands
waiting for her husband.
leave me with him! ~
1t is all she says, and so he is laid on his |
own bed, and one by one they go softly out |
of the room and shut the door and leave her |
alone-alone with her dead Whitehall Re |
Uieto.