The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1882-06-21

among strangers; he allowed his beard
to grow; he welcomed the ruddy tint
which travel and exposure gave to his
face; he visited various countries; he
tried many Ways toward wealth and he
succeeded in them all,
so the strong man who took steamer
for America ten years after the night
when John French died and John
Arlington first appeared among men
was a rich, coatented, nlmoBta happy
man. He had acquired his possessions
by honest toil--by mental thought and
endeavor; no ono could say that any act
OF his had been an act OF fraud; so far
as business went he was the soul OF
honor. Arlington never touched liquors;
he had no bad habits; his life would
have been to bin the straightforward.
honest, open. manly Dne which it
seemed to other men, bat for the blot
he had placed pon 1T when he found a
woman with a 10 wing heart needing ten.
derness and mepy, and deliberately re-
solved to give her neither.
The passage was a stormy one. Most
of the passengers kept to their rooms
for days at time. But Arlington was
too mueh used to travel to mind rough
sea. He staid on deck many hours each
day.
John French had failed to love q most
beautiful and worthy girl when he was
young man; and John Arlington, now
in the bright days of strong man
hood, sometimes sought to excuse it to
himself by the plea that he had no ca
pacity for loving; in all his wanderings
A, I,a1 v-l,x, I,.,1
claimed his serious second thought or
look even. So it is not to be wondered
at thathe smiled little econtemptuously
to himself when he found, as he did one
day, that he was getting in the habit of
listening anxiously for the voice of a
woman, in room not far from his own,
who read for long hours at time in
full iich voice, evidently unconscious
of any listener. She never went on
deck, and Arlington found his room be-
coming more attractive than the storm
outside He wondered what it meant
! He felt he would be fool to fall in
love with voice when he had passed
fair faces untouched by love. He found
ont that the woman only read by day,
and he took to spending tho evening
hours outside, while in the daytime he
waited and listened. He found out
early in the long voyage, made longer
! by adverse winds, thaJ, read what she
might and as long as she might, she
always read one poem after while, and
then read no longer.
And John Arlington used to go up to
the deck in the gathering darkness and
! look away over the storm-tossed waves
while thinking of his past, and begin
ming to dream q little OF his future-of
future for even hirn-with the words
of Jean Ingelow rim ging in his ears
''we shall part no more in the wind and the
rain,
Where thy last farewell was said;
| But perhaps shall meet thee and know thee
again,
When the sea gives up her dead"
He never doubted that the poem was
a favorite with the woman because of
some bereavement in her past life; the
sadness in the tones told him that. He
believed that the verse stood in her
mind as a finality, the end of some
heart history; the woman read as though
waiting for something that could only
come into her life when death indeed
gave up its own. He wondered if he
would find her face as fascinating as
her voice. He found himself trying how
he might plan some way to see her.
She seemed to battle him.
But waiting for anything always
brings it. Not always as we wish it,
not always to be a possession of the
life, but across the path which we walk
the thing we long to see and know will
pass. John Arlington listened to the
voice and waited for the woman. The
time was coming
It had been terrible night, but was
more terrible day. The voices of the
day were speaking of the infinite power
of nature, and as officers and sailors
listened to them as they shouted and
ragged around the vessel they were
learning the lesson of human weakness
and human despair.
at noon the captain called the pas
sengers together. The boats were frail
in the eyes of the women and children
who looked at them. But he had done
his best, and in half an hour the boats
must stand between them and eternity.
he could not save the ship.
Stern discipline held control there;
the boats were loaded rapidly and with
care; the men went last, and the captain
last of all. No drawer man among the
passengers helped the captain in his
control of brute force which could
have crushed all physical opposition,
but could not dare a contest with the
moral might of will-power, than did
John Arlington. He was no coward
now whatever his past had been.
A woman came slowly across the deck
Just as the last boat-load was almost
ready to go. There was no fear in her
eyes as she looked on the waves and
the storm. But one would have guessed
that she cared but little for life by the
look on her face as she came to the
boat. She evidently had no faith in
the boat saving themi she looked upon
death as inevitable; and the words she
muttered were almost the words of u
prayer this time: