The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-11-17

| to Germany to bring him home.
So the womans life went on in England,
and the glacier in the Alps continued to
move on slowly; and the woman waited for
! it to be gone
In the summer of 1892 the little Carin
THAN village of Heiligenblut was haunted
! by two persons One was a young German
scientist, with long hair and spectaces; the
other was a tall English lady, slightly bent
| with face wherein the finger OF time had
! deeply written tender things. Her hair was
white as silver, and she wore a long, black
veil Their habits were strangely similar
Every morning, when the eastern light
shone into the ice-cavern at the base of the
great Pasterzen glacier, these two would
walk thither; then both would sit for an
| hour or two and peer into its depths.
| Neither knew why the other was there The
woman would go back for an hour in the
I late afternoon; the man never. He knew
that the morning light was necessary for his
| search.
The man was the famous young thinner
man, son of his father, the old Doctor, long
since dead. But the Herr Doctor had writ
ten nous tract, when late in life, re-
| futing all Spluthners, past present and to
come; and had charged his son, in his dying
| moments, as a most sacred trust that he
should repair to the base of the Pasterzen
! glacier in the year 1882 where he would find
leaden bullet, craven with his fathers
name, and the date A. U. c. 1880. All this
would be vindication Of his fathers science
| Spluthner, too, was a very old man, and
| Zimmerman the younger (for even he was
no longer young was fearful lest Spluthner
should not live to witness his own refuta-
| ton. The woman and the man never spoke
| to each other.
! Alas no one could have known Mrs
Knollys for the fair English girl who bad
been there in the young days of the century;
not even the innkeeper, had he been there
But he, too, was long since dead. Mrs
| Knollys was now bent and white-hared; she
had forgotten, herself, how she had looked
! in those old days. Her life had been lived.
She was now like a woman of another world;
| 1t seemed another world in which her fair
! hair had tWlned about her husbands fingers
and she and Charles had stood upon the
! evening mountain and looked in one anoth-
er's eyes That was the world of her we'd
dlng days but 1t seemed more like a world
! she had left when born on earth And now
| he was coming back to her in this. Mean
| time the great PasterZen glacier had moved
on marking only the centuries; the men
! upon its borders had seen no change; the
same great waves lifted their snowy heads
| upon its surface the same crevasse was still
! where he had fallen. At night the moon
! beams falling still shivered off Its CLASSY
! lace; its pale presence filed the night, and
immortality lay broodng in its hollows.
Friends were with Mrs. Knollys, but she
| lOAG lLlSlIl III lLG lHil. Ole OlQ Vulu6 T6Ilell
| bered her, and asked to bear her company.
! He went with her in the morning and sat
| few yards from her, waiting. In the after
| noon she went alone. He would not have
| credited you had you told him that the
| glacier moved. He thought it but an En-
| g!isnwomans fancy but he waited with her
! Himself had never forgotten that old day.
And Mrs. Knollys sat there silently, search
! ing the clear depths OF the ice, that she
might find her husband.
One day she saw a ghost. The latest beam
! of the sun, falling on mountain opposite,
! had shone back into the ice-cavern; and seem
| ingly deep within in the grave azure light,
| she fancied she saw face turned toward her
| She even thought she saw Charless yellow
hair, and the self-same smile his lips had
! worn when he bent down to her before ne
| fell. 1t could be but a fancy She went
home and was silent with her friends about
whes had happened. In the moonlight she
went back, and again the next morning, be-
fore dawn. She told no one OF her going
| but the old guide met her at the door, and
walked silently behind her. She had slept,
the glacier ever present in her dreams,
! The sun had not yet risen when she came,
and she sat long time in the cavern, listen
ing to the murmur of the river flowing UNI
der the glacier at her feet Slowly the dawn
began, and again she seemed to see the SHIN
mer of face-such q face as one sees in the
Goals of dying fire. Then the full sun
came over the eastern mountain, and the
guide heard a woman's cry. There before
her was Charles Knoliys. The face seemed
hardly pale, and there was the same faint
smile--a smile like her memory of five-and-
forty years gone by. Safe in the clear ice still,
unharmed, there lay-O God! not her Charles.
not the Charles of her own thought, who had
lived through life with her and shared her
sixty years, not the OLD man she had borne
thither in her mind-but a boy, boy of one
and twenty lying asleep, a ghost from
| mot hn plH
the distant past immortal in the immor-
tality of the glacier. There was his quaint
coat, of the fashion OF half century before;
his blue eyes open; his young; clear brow;
all the form Of the past she had forgotten,
and she, his bride stood there to welcome
him. with her wrinkles, her bent figure and
thin white hairs. She was living, he was
dead and she was two and forty years older
than he.
Then at last the long-kept tears came to
her. and she bent her white head in the
snow. The old man came up with his pick
silently and began working in the ice. The
woman lay weeping and the boy, with his
still, faint smile lay looking at them through
the clear ice-veil from his open eyes
l believe that the Professor found his bull
let; know not. believe that the scientific
world rang with his name and the thesis that
he published on the glaciers motion, and the
changeless temperature his fathers lost Their
mometer had shown. All this you may read.
know no more.
But know that in the English church
yard there are now two graves and a gingle
stone, to Charles Knollys and Mary, his wife,
the boy of one and twenty sleeps there with
lis bride of sixty-three; his young frame
with her old one his yellow HAIR beside her
white. And l do not know that there is not
some place, not here, where they still to-
gether, and he is twenty-one and she is still
eighteen. l do not know this; but know
that all the pamphlets OF the German Doctor
cannot tell me false.
Meantime, the great Pasterzen glacier
moves on, and the rocks with it; and the
mountain filings his shadow of the planets in
its face
Savage Criticism of "UncIe Tom"