Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1885-06-10
THE BUG MAN,
BY FLORA L. W. sTANFIELD.

BY FLORA L. W. sTANFIELD.
The proverbial straw had broken the
metaphorical camel's back. The patti
ence 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 natur-
al to boys of six or thereabouts, were
Indifferent to the tempest of despair
which ragged within their sisters
breast. They had considerably re-
Trained from adding deceit to their
guilt, but had confessed, fully and un-
reservedly, to riaing the canary's nest,
to tearing jacket, and losing a hat
down the well, to eating the strawber-
ries that were saved for supper, and
70 catching their most faithful hen
with a fish-hook. The fish-hOok rep
resented the straw; Charlotte the cam
81. She could have borne anything
better than downright cruelty develop
ed so early in one of her own blood.
She never was boy.
"And man was here" said Popsey.
"a 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?'
"IIe wanted to see you"
"NIe?" Visions Of tramps. Of spy
ng burglars, only they had nothing to
'burgle," as Popsey had said one day,
came into her mind. "IIow did he
lOok?"
"He was beautiful" "IIe was dread
sul," said the twins in duet
Further questioning elicted these
facts: He was young; he was old; he
was short; he was tall; he wore spect-
acles; he wore q mustache, and was a
bug-man, In the last and crowning
fact the boys agreed,
Practice had made Miss Brantome a
tolcrable clairvoyant, 50 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 prob
lem of how to provide new hat for
WOpsey and how to instil 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 years, sho 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 white wooden cross Her
grandfather, in whose veins flowed
some of the blue blood of France, had
bought home in this western coun-
try when the remnant of an Indian
tribe had still property to sell. The
deed of sale provided for the preserva'
tion of their little burying-ground.
The grain grew thick around, but the
tiny village of the dead was never dis
turbed by spade OF plough.
Old Pierre, however, had never pros
pered Neither did Pierre the young
cr; and one night, waen riding home.
his horse SHE'D in the moonlight and
threw him with his head against a
stone; he left no legacy but the home
stead and debt 10 his wife and chill
dren. There was gap of twenty
wears between Charlotte and the twin
babies, and sho really had third in
Cant on her hands, for her mother was
nothing more useful than that after
her husbands death. Sho was not
feeble minded exactly, but painfully
gentle-strange and unaccountable.
Charlotte shouldered her burdens
with brave heart. Her French &C.
cent--for Grandfather Brantomes
blood had never filtered through Cana
da-brought her employment in 8
school town near by. The long walk'
back and forth kept the roses blooming
in her cheeks, the boys were good
sometimes--an she. being busy, wa!
happy. 1t requires leisure to be sue
cessfully miserable.
The burying ground typifed to he
tho "daily martyrdom of private life.'
And now, looking at it, her heart grew
light. The new hat would cost but
trlne. Surely there were more straw
berries ripe in the garden, the canar.
would lay moro eggs, the jacket coul'
I'm rnonded and old SneCl<le had prOy