The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1884-05-09
he needed her as much as now.
CHAPTER XIV.
Ye have dropped a'down your head,
And IL seems as II We tread
On your hearts I'm the path

CHAPTER XIV.
Ye have dropped a'down your head,
And IL seems as II We tread
On your hearts In the path
Ye are called to I'm His wrath.
Justice in the case of Janet Stork was
not leaden-footed, but swift, so that
hardly week elapsed between the re-
her removal to the first stage of her
journey ON her way to convict settle
ment.
1t was on the eve of Janet's depart
ure, that Hester, torn in two between
her fancied duty to accompany her SER
want, her longing to remain, set out to
play her part in the interview with Mr..
Eyre arranged by Frank in a secluded
spot on his own estate. Yesternight
she might have met him. and yielded to
his bidding; but that very day, as she
had stumbled forth from the prison cell,
Madcap's children had crossed her path,
and DOdy had run to and kissed her,
and then duty had grown chill, and self
denial hard, and a desperate longing to
snatch at the love offered to her lips,
strove in her with that VOW which she
had mentally registered to Madcap.
She had hardly thought of Mr.. Eyre
in the confusion and horror of the last
week; he might have been dead for any
prompting of love or memory that i'm
PEELED her toward him; but now as she
hurried along the way to meet him, a
sudden sense of his near presence
checked her steps, and she went lag
gingly, with ghosts of long dead memo
ries thronging in her heart.
Frank, approaching from an opposite
direction, was thinking sadly Of many
things, stopping short once with the
sudden conviction that he had been a
fool.
But in the same moment he thought
of her and wavered-truly, as Pascal has
said, the heart has reasons Of which
Judgment, so called, knows nothing.
And perhaps in obeying the dictates Of
the heart, at the expense Of self-inter-
est, he had uncOnsciOusly contributed
his little quota to the greatness Of the
world-perchance, however humbly a
hero, his life had become"a piece of the
everlasting heart of Nature ITSELF" and
no worsened in soul, if in bodily estate,
was Frank Lowell that night as he pur-
sued his way to the spot where he was
to meet Hester, and conduct her to Mr..
Eyre.
He hardly noted outward things
how nightingale's song was scattered
llho a HCChldCc VI pCdllo Wy Iilo ulucOuS
coo hunldnd of the screech-owl; how
strange creatures crossed his path. and
strange scents were given out on the
breeze flor the night hath its splendors,
Of which the day knows nothing)-each
moment he expected one of these trees
that stood so still, yet seemed to move
like one of giant army at his ap-
prOach, to resolve itself into the shape
of woman; and so, at the nearest point
of approach to the village. did an oak
tree so resolve itself, and Hester's pale
| face sought his own.
Frank felt her hand tighten on his, as
he led her to the cleared space in which
Mr.. Eyre was standing, his face and
figure fitfully revealed by the uncertain
moonlight, and knew how in that mo-
ment she had forgotten her dead child,
and it's living likeness; how Madcap's
kiss was to her faint and far away, as
she saw before her the man who had
been to her the all in all of her life, and
that thrill of tenderness which moves a
true woman to what has cost her much
spoke in her gesture as, relinquishing
Franks support, she ran forward, ut
tering his name.
ITO be Continued