Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1884-05-09
:, far. all well and eood. Dut. unfortu.

E EN+f HsN4- as. T2r-rf-ff. q" --. I
= far, all we'll and good. But, unfortu-
'nately, Joe Quilliam was rather a hot-tem-
pered fellow, with q disagreeable plain
way of speaking his mind, and there was
no knowing what he might do or say whom.
he heard that she was going to marry the
appear strange that she should consider
him in this matter at all, but she did; she
even tried to devise some scheme for bene-
fitting him. This unreasonable fellow
would be angry, she knew; he would refuse
even refuse to speak to her. There reaily
seemed no way of managing him NNVhat
was she to dof .
By thisstime they had reached the end of
the moorland. They had walked in silence
through the heather n were now stand.
ing upon one of the great, black headlands
that fianked the entrance to the glen, where
the rivulet widened and ran smoothly
over the glistening sand to meet the wave.
lets. Close beside them, andupon the very
verge of the cliffs, a large bowlder was
touch would hurl it into the water many
hundred feet below. It had been deeply
cut and furrowed by icebergs, but the ferns
and lichens growing thickly upon it gave
it a rounded appearance in the twilight,
though there was a sharply defined shadow
the face of the perpendicular cliff were
white with sea-birds, and O drowsy muir.
muir came up from the caverns at its base.
Away among the bracken in the glen there
might occasionally be seen, a CLEAN from
some cottage window, but not often, for the
lights are carefully guarded by the fisher
folk along the coast, lest they should lure
an unwary vessel to destruction. Not a
moving thing was in sight; not ven a ship
upon that peaceful sea. The lighthouse
toward the south. But at such a time,
when oil is ~lifeless, inanimate objects have
a strange way of becoming life-like; the
winds acquire human speech, and the stars
sight, and the very hills benz forward in
an attitude of anxious watching and listen
strong that she drew a little nearer to Robin
for protection. &
"Well,. Elsie, will you marry me?" he
asked, taking both her hands in his and
looking straight into her eyes. -, F,
IL don't know"
Surely the shadow on the further side of
the bowlder started. And it might lave
been the wind, or it might have been fancy,
but there certainly seemed to be sighed
out in a low voice full of such mournful
pathos:
"oh sweet little Betsy, thou'rt breaking my
Counting Robin the King, they say thou
Both were too engaged to notice this sin.
gular phenomenon; Indeed, Robin Graham
"No AN0ASA SOA66StSN ~ A1AolO . 0A1o IH
"You don't knowp he exclaimed, in an
aggrieved tone. .Come, Else, what do you
mean? You know Pm very fond of you,
and 1 hoped you were fond enough
OF me to marry me; but. if you're not
"Listen-oh listen, Mr.. Graham" she
cried in sudden terror.
"Merely a rabbit"
ooh, but it's no rabbit. It's the boagane
that's about, Pm sure. Let's away! Oh!
L .lol 11<y~ ~~,-1.~ l~-A- - -
bollan cross nor q dreain's feather that /
have"
"You really must get rid of such no.
tions," said Robin, who felt keenly that
ignorance in a wife would be bad enough,
but that superstition would be quite I'M
~bearable. A your age, Elsie, you ought
to know that boganes are gone extinct;'
! civilization has drowned them, every one;
in fact, they never existed anywhere but
in the ~imaginations of silly old wom- 1
aiean of Jnose VINO didn't know any bet
ter. And how on earth could a miserable
from harm? It's sheer nonsense. oh, Pm
not blaming you, but those who put such
folly into your innocent head: they ought
to be ashamed of themselves"
She was more astonished now than when
he had asked her to marry him, and in her
that had startled her. Drawing her hands
away from him, she stepped back q little,
and, with her dark eyes flashing and her.
head thrown back, she looked more like a
beautiful Queen h a simple fisher girl.
The feeling which bid us cherish what our
fathers have cherished is akin to parental
instincts. it was very strong in Elsie.
What did this stranger mean by saying
that there were no suchthings as boaganes,
when their existence was known to per-
Black Bailey, the idiot. The ignorance of
tue man was pitiful! Why, the Phynno-
deree was q well-known character in
Rushen, where he moved hay.felds and
corn-felds, and sometimes tossed powders
about by way Of a change, and the boulders
might be seen as proof positive of his ex-
istence. Was not the specter.hound seen
nightly in Peel Castle? And was it not
matter of notoriety that "Dame Eleanor
Gotham, Gloucester's wife," haunted the
same place? But there was no need to go
beyond the glen itself; it was full of Sob
nightsteed had been seen by many old
| enough to believe their own eyes; and, as
for the horrible groans Of these noisy
spirits, on a Winters night it was not safe
to go out Of doors-at any rate, without
protection of a chaplet of bollan-feailleoin.
And yet this stranger had the inlpudence
to say that it was all nonsense, that boag-
anes were a myth!
ooh, but pve heard them, Mr.. Graham,'
said Elsie. e-t4
4Ou lledAO oA0 WAAOs IASlos I'D.
"And Tve seen them, too"
"You thought so, Elsie, but you were
wrong. You could not see what does not
exist"
tits all very we'll for you as HASN'T seen
them to say they don't exist; but it's other
people that have seen them, and they know
that there are boaganes everywhere"
Here was an awkward stumbling-block.
To marry a woman who believed in COLLINS
did seem outrageous. Every night she
might be putting out bowls Of water for
them to drink, and laying dust on the floor
to observe their footsteps in the morning,
and then brushing it carefully from the
door towards the hearth lest a whole house.
full of good, luck should be swept away.
There would be no doing anything for fear
of offending these ridiculous spirits.
+ Robin Graham had decided upon attempt
ing a very dangerous thing-nothing more
or less than an experiment. in matrimony.
He really had become somewhat tired of
the trammels and ways of the society in
which hts life had been spent, and he had
grown so fond of Elsie that he had deter.
mined to marry and educate her. The sam.
thing had been lone before; why not again?
About three months before this time he had
come TO the glen for the purpose, of fishing,
and he had taken and furnished a pictur-
esque little cottage. He had been thrown
mnch in Elsie'S COMPANY: she had he1ned