The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-09-22
PIERRE BRANTOME'S GRAND
DAUGHTER.


The proverbial straw had broken the
metaphorical camefs back. The pa
thence of Charlotte Brantome, usually
equal to the eXigencies of the occasion,
was exhausted. The twins, as a mat
ter of course, were the culprits.
They, however, with the complacency
natural to boys of six or Whereabouts,
were indifferent to the tempest of de-
spair which ragged in their sisters
breast. They had considerably re-
Trained from adding deceit to their
guilt, but had confessed, fully and I'M
reservedly, to riiing the canary's nest,
to tearing jacket, and losing hat
down the well, to eating the strawber-
ries that were saved for supper, and to
catching their most faithful hen with a
tish-hook. That fish-hook represented
the straw; Charlotte the camel. She
could have borne anything better than
downright cruelty developed so early in
one of her own blood. She never was
a boy
''And a man was here, went on Pop
sey; ga big man," volunteered Wopsey
the other twin. ''And he asked us
about everything, and we said our
mother wasn't very well, and our sister
was an old-maid school-ma am"
Charlotte WINGED. Where had he
picked up that expression And had
it come to that
You must not talk to strange men
about mother or me. What did he
want ?'
''He wanted to see you"
"Me ?" Visions of tramps, of spy.
ing burglars, only they had nothing tc
''burgle," as Popsey had said one day,
came into her mind.
''How did he look ?'
''He was beautiful" ''He was dread
full, said the twins in duet.
Further questioning elected these
facts: He was young; he was old; he
was short; he was tall; he wore specta-
Giles; he had mustache, and was bug
man. In the last and browning fact the
boys agreed.
Practice had made Miss Brantome q
tolerable clairvoyant, so far as reading
those two small minds was concerned.
She jumped at the conclusion that some
wandering naturalist chasing an elusive
bug had CHANGED that way, and gave
the subject no more attention. She had
other things to think of than ''bug-men'
or any men, and the problems of how
to provide a new hat for Wopsey and
how to instill remorse into the hearts
of her charges drove other thoughts
away.
Sitting down on the low doorstep of
the house that had been home to her for
six and twenty happy years she tried to
reason it out The sun was yet high,
the days were at their longest Behind
her flowed the tireless river; in front of
her, across the prairie, the hills were
green In the field of rye over the way
CLEANED a large white wooden cross.
Her grandfather, in whose veins flowed
some of the blue blood of France. had
bought home in this western country
when the remnant of an Indian tribe
had still property to sell. The deed of
sale provided for the preservation of
their little burying-ground. Here among
the sinking graves Pierre Brantome had
built the cross. 1t had been renewed
several times since then, but had ALWAYS
seemed the same, and was ever the pa
tent protector, solemnly holding its
white arms out as if to defend the mold
erlng sleepers. The grain grew thick
around, but the tiny village of the dead
was never disturbed by spade or pillow.
Old Pierre, however, had never pros
pered. Neither did Pierre the Younger:
and one night when, riding home, his
horse SHE'D at the sight of the white
cross in the moonlight and threw him
with his head against stone, he left no
legacy but the homestead and debt to
his wife and children There was a gap
OF twenty years between Charlotte and
the twin babies, and she really had a
third infant on her hands, for the mother
was nothing more useful than that after
her husbands death. She was not
feeble-minded exactly, but painfully
gentle-strange and unaccountable.
Charlotte shouldered her burdens
with brave heart. Her French ac-
cent-for Grandfather Brantome's blood
had never filtered through Canada
brought her employment in a school in
the town near by. The long walks
back and forth kept the roses blooming
in her cheeks, the boys were good
sometimes-and she, being busy, was
happy. 1t requires leisure to be sue
cessfully miserable.
The cross typified to her the "daily
martyrdom of private life." And now,
looking at it, her heart grew light. The
new hat would cost but trifle. Surely
there were more Strawberries pc in the
garden, the canary would lay more
eggs, the jacket could be mended, and
old Speckle had proved superior to the
fish-hook.
But what could the boys be scream
ing about?
THE bug-manl the bug-man" they
were shouting, trotting toward her with
oil their might on their sandy little feet.