The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-06-13
CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER II.
 The abode of the late Rev. Marvin Hiler remained in the disorganized con- dition he had left it when rem owed from his sphere of earthly uselessness and continuous accident. The struggling feuce that only halt enclosed the house and barn had stopped at that point where the two deacons who had each volun- teEred to do days work on it had com. pieted their allotted time. The building of the barn had been arrested when the half4oad of timber contributed by Sugar Mill brethren was exhausted, and three windows, given by Christian Seekers ? at Martinez, painfully accented the boarded spaces for the other three that "Unknown Friends" in Tassjara had promised, but not yet supplied. On the clearing some trees that had been felled but not taken away added to the general incompleteness.
 Something of this unfinished character clung to the widow Hiier and asserted it. self in her three children, one of whom was consistently posthumous. Piema- turely old and prematurely disappointed, she had all the inexperience of girlhood with the cares of maternity, and kept in her family circle the freshness of an old maids misogynistic antiquities with certain guilty and remorseful conscious ness of widowhood. She supported the meagre household to which her husband had contributed only the extra mouths to feed, with reproachfdl astonishment and weary incapacity. She had long since grown tired of trying to make both ends meet, of which she declared "the Lord had taken one" During her two years of widowhood she had waited on Provi- dence, who by a pleasing local fiction, had been made responsible for the dis used and cast-off furniture and clothing which, accompanied with scriptural texts, found their way mysteriously into her few habitable rooms. The providential mama was not always fresh the ravens who fed her and her little ones with flour from the Sugar Mills did not always se- lect the best quality. Small wonder that, sitting by her lonely hearthstone-a bor. rowed stove that supplemented the un- finished 6replace-suIrounded by her mismatched furniture, and clad in mis- fitting garments, she had contracted habit of shifting during her dreary watches. In her weaker moments she attributed it to grief in her stronger in- tervals she knew that it sprang from damp and draught.
 In her apathy the sound of horses hoofs at her unprotected door even at that hour neither surprised nor alarmed her. She lifted her head as the door opened and the pale face of Gideon Dean looked into the room. She moved aside the cradle she was rocking, and taking saucepan and tea-cup from a | chair beside her, absentiy dusted it with her apron, and pointing to the vacant seat said, Take a chair," as quietly as If he had stepped from the next room in- | stead of the outer darkness.
 "ln put up my horse 6rst," said Cid
 "So do," responded the widow briefly. |
 Gideon led his horse across the enclo- | sure, stumbling over the heaps of rub | bish, cried chips and weather-beaten | shavings with which it vas strewn, until | be reached the unfinished barn, where | he temporarily bestowed his beast. Then | taking rusty axe, by the faint light of the stars he attacked one of the fallen | trees with such energy that at the end of | ten minutes he reappeared at the door with an armful of cut beughs and chips, which he quietly deposited behind the stove. Observing that he was still sand ing as if looking for something, the widow lifted her eyes and said, sEf it's the bucket, reckon yen find 1t at the spring, where one of them foolish Flgee boys lett 1t. I've been that tuckefed out sens aint had the ambition to 20 and tote it back" Without word Cid son repaired to the spring, filled the missing bucket, replaced the hoop On the loosened slaves of another he found ly. Ing useless beside 1t, and again returned b the house The widow once more pointed to the chair. and c;deon sa&