Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1882-04-10

forded by his semi-weekly appear
ance. With a touch of real pity, too
perhaps, for their old comrade, they
cajoled with him in his forlorn hope,
encouraged in him at all times the
freest expression of his sentiments,
fiattered him, and regaled him. And
often, alas the feet which had come
shuffling down the mountain awk-
wardly enough and loosely enough,
retraced their steps in a still more
desultory and uncertain manner, and
chance passers-by have told how Sam
pausing at length by some wayside
fence, frequently nudged the post
with his elbow, as though having
just committed to it some gravely
confidential or facetious remark.
There was one person whom Sam S
wsSknesses and derelctions failed to
inspire with appreciative mirth. In
the neighborheod of Sans house on
the mountain there were two other
homes. One was possessed by Isaac
Travers with his belligerent wife and
numerous small children in the 9TH
er, Mary Ellsworth dwelt alone with
her mother.
Years ago, Sam and Mary had
gone down, hand in hand, to the
school kept in the little hamlet at the
foot of the mountain. Mary still
keeps the green covered "speller'' in
which she and Sam studied their les
sons together. And they were at the
head of the class always, the noun
boy and girl-always the head of the
class, and always first and most i'm
perious in play; Mary, small, brown
eyed, sharp witted, and Sam, hand
some and tall, with his cherubic curls
and saucy, red lips.
Then Sans parents died, and he
went over to help John Ellsworth in
his mill, and the work prospered un-
der his strong blithe hand. And as
the days passed by, Sam and Mary
shrank eoyly away from the affec-
tionate intimacy of their childhood,
and ended by falling as deeply in
love with each other as though they
had now for the first time exchanged
glances across the rapturous bounds
of manhood and maidenhood. Their
love, having such tender root in the
past, sent out bright branches of
hope for the future, and was as
strong as life with them both. Mary
would have borne anything for Sam:
and Sam, who was of quick and i'm
petuous nature, found his equilibrium
in the sweet firmness of Mary's char
acter, and adored her for the loving
farehm pef yte Wh6h she a fsPpkfa1 hs
ing faults as Sans were then.
Sam and Mary were engaged when
the war broke out /; and the two men
of John Ellaworth household went
away, and the two women waited in
their solitary home on the mountain,
cheered by letters at first; afterward
their only hope lay in some chance
returning figure along the road that
came winding up from the villages
below. John Ellsworth never came
back along that dear familiar road !;
and when Sam returned one day,
weak, ague-shaken, demented, but
still fondly, foolishly faithful, Mary,
called of God to endure this greater
sorrow than any death could bring,
spent the solitude of one black night
I in terrible rebellion, and, when the
morning dawned, laid her broken
heart at the foot of the cross and
rose with a calm Il will-for ever
more
Sam went back wonderly to occupy
the long deserted home of his child
hood; but it was Mary's hand that
brought him bread and meat. that
made his bed, and swept his floor.
and furnished his poor home with
every comfort.
Sam knew that it was all changed
somehow. The tongue, once so win
ming sarcastic, was now ever too
thoughtfully kind, the once laughing
eyes too deeply compassionate. H'
sorrowed over it with the vague sor
row of a child. But he trusted Mary
She knew; she would set it right il
time. The light, the hope, the prom
ise of his youth, SO helplessly, s.
mysteriously lost-they were all KEEP
waiting for him somewhere in Mary
great dark eyes.
But when Sam came tottering u
! the hill on his return home, he ha
brought with him a parcel the cor
/ tents of which he had not revealed t
), any eye. It contained his weddin
{ clothes, new and sleek, of the fines
, black broardcloth. In the patheti
l loneliness of his home he acquired
habit of fondling these, Of gloatin
: over them, even of trying them o
before the glass? and then, as b
a stood in his best mood, with his boz
, ny hair curled, one never saw s
S sweet and weak a face. Sam longe
n yet ever hesitated, to appear befol
: Mary in these splendid habiliment
e That strange trouble on his min
e deferred him. He was never so sh,
; SO simple, so conscious of his lost e
n tate, as when in ''Miss Mary's
t presence-never withal so strange
e happy and content. One evening
as he sat before her, the weddir
II, Iol Loft Of homo fill.