The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1883-03-21
in this life, be is very ssre to accom-.

in this life, be is very sare to accom-
plish.
We were com Portable easy. Ah,
what word that is after years of
struggle. At last we were rich. But
at that time l was fve-and-forty-a
large, dark, middle-aged man, with
face that looked to myself in the
glass, as though it were perpetually
intent on figures. The girls were all
married. Dick had. taken to the sea,
and we saw him once orso in year;
and Ashton was at home with.moth-
er and myself, the only really hand
some member of our family, and
! Just two-and-twenty. And it was on
his birthday, remember that the
letter came to me from poor Hunter
that letter which began:
"When these lines reach you, /
shall have my six feet Of earth-all
ever owned, or would. IT. had liv-
ed to be hundred"
We had been young together,
though he was really older than /,
and we had been close friends once
but a rowing fit had seized him, and
we had not met for yeatt. / knew
he had married q young Kentish
girl, and knew no more but now he
told me that she was dead, and that
his death would leave a daughter an
orphan.
"She is not quite penniless," he
wrote, ''for her mother lad a little
income, which, poor as I was, l was
never brute enough to meddle with,
and it has descended to her. But /
have been a rolling stons, gathering
no moss, all my life, and we never
stayed long enough in one place to
make friends. Will you be her
guardian? 1t is dying mans last
request"
And the result of that letter, and
another from the lawyer who had
Annie Hunters little fortune in
charge, was that one soft spring day
found me on board great steamer,
which lay at rest after her voyage in
the protecting arms of Liverpool,
with two little hands in mine, and a
pair of great, brown eyes lifted to
nv face, and q sweet voice choked
with sobs saying something of poor
papa, and of how much he had spo-
ken of me, the lonely voyage, and
the green graves left behind, and I
who had gone to meet child and
found woman, looking st her and
feeling toward her as he'd never
looked upon nor felt toward any
other.
Not to Elsie Hall. 1t vas not the
boyish love dream come again.
Analysing my emotion,l 1 felt only
a great longing to protect and COM
fort her-to guard her from every
pain and i'll, and said tomyself:
"This is as father shoald feel to
a daughter. / can be parent to Geo.
Hunters child is very truth"
And / took her home p the old
house and to my old ibother. II
thought only of them. Somehow /
never thought of Ashton. a-s @4es
Shall ever forget how she bright
ened the sombre rooms? How, as
her sadness wore away, she sang to
lis in the twilight? How strangely
a something which made the return
home, and the long hours of the
evening, seem so much brighter than
they had ever been before, stole into
my life? 1 never went to sleep in
church now. / kept awake to look
at Olive Hunter-to listen to her
pure contralto as she Joined in the
singing.
Sometimes ] caught her eye-her
great, unfathonable, brown eye-for
she had habit of looking at me.
Was she wondering how face could
be SO stern and grim ? l used to ask
myself.
Ashton used to look at her also.
He had been away when she came
to us, and when hereturned she was
a grand surprise to him.
'Oh. how lovely she j" I" he had
said to me.
"She is very handsome, Ashton"
! replied.
Ashton laughed.
"May / never be an old bachelor
if it brings me to calling such girl
very pretty" he said.
And ! felt conscious that my cheek
flushed and felt angry that he should
have spoken of me thus, though /
had never cared before.
They liked each other very much,
those two young things. They were
together great deal. A pretty pict-
ure they made in the Venetian win
dow in the sun set. He fair haired.
blue eyed, Saxon looking youth ; she
so exquisitely dark and glowing.
Every one liked her. Even my
old clerk, Stephen Hadley, used to
say her presence lit the Office more
than dozen lamps, the nearest ap-
proach to poetical speech Of which
old Stephen was ever known to be
guilty.
And / never knew how much she
was to me until one evening, when,
coming home earlier than usual, /
saw in that Venetian window whore
Ashton and Olive had made SO many
pleasant pictures for me, one that l
shall never forget as long as / live.
She stood with her back to me.
Ashton was kneeling at her feet. The
sound of the opening door dissolved
the picture, but l had seen it, and /
had stolen away to hide the stab
that it had given me.
sat down in my own room and
hid my face in my hands. and would
have been glad to hide it beneath
my coffin lid. / knew now that /
loved Olive Hunter; that l loved
her not as an old man might love a
child, but as young man might
love the woman who ought to be his |
wiferbetter than l had loved Elsie |
Hall ;; for it was not boyish passion. |!
but earnest, heartfelt love.
in love! / arose and looked in |
the mirror, and my broad shoulder
ed reflection flashed before my |