Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1884-02-13

warehouse. From being enamored of
our state and our climate, it was easy
enough to fall in love with one of our
loveliest girls; and before their knoWl-
edge of each other had lasted year,
Agnes made herself believe that she
loved him will enough to become his
wife; and all this with the full contents
of grutf Richard Earle.
At the point on a line of stairs on the
lowest shelf ofthe Berkely foothills, about
midway between the south hall of the
university and the grounds of the State
Institute for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind,
is a covered cistern, in which is guarded
the outflow of dozen mountain springs.
This point is the vantage ground OF a
superb outlook, To the south the farth-
est visible horizon is marked by the round
shoulders of Iona Prieta, ten miles
southwest of San Jose. To the north, in
the farthest discernible distance, are the
low hills between Petaluma and Santa
Rora, wasting line Of deepest indigo at
the base of the blue sky. There are
three evenings in October and three IN
April, when looking from Berkely, the
sun sets directly behind the Farallones,
and against its exaggerated and distorted
disk the curious clusters of black rocks
stand out like silhouettes.
It lacked less than an hour of sunset
when Agnes climbed to the little knoll
and stood beside the queer, cOne-shaped
cistern roof The fair scape of land and
sea and sky unrolled like scroll from
her very feet, west and south and north.
A little path meandered at an upward
angle around a southerly curve In the
broad hillside. Along this path came
young man with a dog at his heels and
gun under his arm. 1t was John Vandor
trudging home from contraband sally
after unlawful wing-shOts. Agnes did not
heed his approach, and he leaned against
the fence scarcely rod away, with the
dog at his feet and cigar In his mouth.
1t is idle to try and attain the impOssi-
ble-to put into accurate thinking and
tangible words the loveliness of that even
ing scene. Looking due south, over the
apparently perfect level of Oakland and
Alameda, the southern arm of the bay,
which CLEANS under the morning sun like
a narrow silver ribbon that boy might
jump across, was river of indigo, with
scarcely visible ripple on all its surface.
A wall of smoke arose above the houses
of the city; its base is gloom, its coping
lighted with yellow flame.
II like it, Agnes, do your"
Agnes turned at the sound of his voice,
and there was a trace of dissatisfied sur
prise IN her tones of welcome.
The young man would have been dull
indeed if he had not noticed and spirit
less indeed if he had not been piqued.
"You surely don't wish to keep the pic
ture quite to yourself, do your"
mo, it was the immediate foreground
only that l cared to monopOlize."
Cared is past tense, Agnes"
'Care, then"
Care then isn't grammar"
She looked at him disdainfully for an
instant, and then looked another way.
'You will be sorry for this some time"
the young man said, quietly but very
gravely. ''If have offended you, let me
know how; I'm always ready enough to
apologize, am | not?"
''Too ready"
''Too ready?"
Eyes. am as tired of this intermina-
bic scene-making as you can possibly be
this kiss and make up condition of
affairs. We are engaged; we have ex-
changed VOWS and rings and sophis-
tries"
"Sophistries?"
eyes; have we not declared over and
over again that we love each other above
all else? 1t is Am error. Each of us
loves his own way better than sweetheart
or lover Is it not SOP"
''For you, possibly; not for me"
If she had looked more closely at him as
she spoke she would have noticed that
his face wore an expression she had
never before seen. John Vandor's fore
head carried frown as black as the
shadows of the forest hillsides above San
Pablo, and there was the precise sort of
glitter in his brown eyes that the usual
fictionist describes as 'baleful." But she
II I OF Il NH hn ClO
and painfully, as if every word cost him
moment Of physical pain, ''Do you want
your freedom back again, Agnes?" she an
sWered him, with a defiant ring of as
sured proprietorship in her lark-ike
voice:
"Why, yes, for while, if you please"
cit shall be until you please to tire of
it" was all he said.
He strobe down by the hillside slope
without single goodbye, and she con-
tinued to stand with scornful smile,
while the after-glow faded out of the sky.
But the smile faded with the waning
flush in the western skies, and with the
darkness came a sudden dread, "a dread
she had not known or dreamed of. ''Will
he ever come back?" she thought. 'Will
he?" she said aloud. An obtrusive boot
owl screeched a shrill reply, and the
proud girl found it anything but reassur-
ing.
She had been so sure of John Vandor's
love, had taken it so for granted, that no
daring seemed too great. She had thought
it did not greatly matter how courtship
Jared, since marriage would be the mas
ter on the morrow. She was prepared to
be to her husband all that wife ought
to be; but to abate one jot Of her freedom
in compliance to her betrothed-that
was another matter.
The morrow came, and the to-morrow's
morrow; but John Vandor did not come
with them. One day Agnes went to her
fathers study. In her eyes were I'M
wonted tears. She told him everything.
He waited until she stopped crying; then
he said-and, though the words were
those of Richard the bear, the tones of
the voice had in them all the tenderness
of the father-"It will serve you right if
you two never meet again; but you viii"
The whistle of the midnight Iocomo-
tive startled the echoes asleep in the
Madeira freight house; in the freight
house, because there was nothing else in