The news and herald. (Winnsboro, S.C.) 1877-1900, 1881-06-30
Coming

IL N
a weary woman leaned back in her chair
and pressed her fingers against the eyes
that refused longer to see the stitches III
shop work over which she had toilcd from
daybrcak till now, o'clock in the after
noon.
From the street far below her, q voice
had only that moment scared upward, call
Ing s'S.rawbtrrces strawberries Ripe,
red strawberries !"
And, rs if by magic, her thoughts turn
ing backward and carried her to Deepdene,
the home of her youth, and to certain
lovely June day in her sixteenth year
when she had stood in the strawberry pas
ture on the Blessing farm, with the red
berries perfumlng all the air, and said the
words which severed her fate from that of
Maurice Blessing, and made her life what
il was Oh this day, almost hopeless, and
ceaseless struggle for bread, won at the
needles point.
How 1t all rose up before her The
green pastures sloping upward to the
darker gr zen woods, whose tops seemed to
t'uch the deep blue sky, sloping down.
ward to the gray. stone wall, with the cold
spring lcaping out through the wooden
trough among its lower stones.
And below the wall, 'the thirty-acre
moving" spread like an immense emerald
velvet carpet, with the two story cream
colored house lifting its piazzacc front at
the extreme end, just where the shaded
lane began, and led from the Blessing farm
out into the village road.
She, the poor orphan girl, had been Of
fered this comfortable home and she had
refused it-for what2 For dream of
fame, which hal left her toiling in this hot
garrct. whilo in the black trunk yonder the
book which was to have made her fDrtlne,
refused by one publisher after another, was
lying, till she could find courage to thrust
1t INTO the fire.
Scarcely two years ago she sighed,
rocking herself to and fro. "And Maurice
has sold the old farm and gone to Colora-
do; and am here, lonely, disappointed,
odbcfore my time. Oh, if l could only
live that day over again, and be as wise as
am nowl For now know that love
hm-now, when it is forever too late /"
Sickcning, with Il sort of calcnLurc among
those hot city streets, for one glimpse of
her carly home, Hester May rose, and went
to the desk where her worldly wealth was
stored.
BY the closest economy she had man
aged to lay aside tew dollars. for the
gloomy purpose of paying the expenses OF
her own sickness and death, when the time
should come for her to die among stran-
gers.
Fro.A this sacred hoard she counted out
a sufficient sum to take her to Dccpdcne.
81 will stay only one day" she thought,
"And will work all the harder after i
return, to make up the sum again. But.
see Decpdcnc, now that it is fairly in my
mind, must And l will take one more
look at the dear old farm before it il in the
hands of strangers, and so altered that l
shall not know it,"
The next day saw her on her way.
The five years of absence had been years
of change to the little village.
A railway whiskcd her across the hill
road from rerrington. Once she had made
the journey in a yellow ''stage," drawn by
four horses, with John Colney, osscst
aud most disagrceablc of earthly stage
drivers, on the box.
The village, too, was smartencd and
freshcned up--hew houses, new faces, a
new iron fence around the small oval park
that graced the centre of the town; new
names above the gllded fronts of the shops;
new set of giggllng misses on their way
to the new brown.stone academy, which
stood where she had once thought 1t an
honor to attend the district school, in a
plain, onc-story structure Of faded brick.
No doubt all these operations were for
the better; but they made her heart ache
with sense of loss unspeakablc.
And she turned into the shaded lane that
led only to the Blessing farm, dreading to
sec the old farm desecratcd by The strangers q
hand.
No; there 1t stood, as sho had always
known 1.-THE very picture Of home COM
fort, the centre Of all those modest luxurie q