The Northern Pacific farmer. [volume] (Wadena, Minn.) 1878-1885, 1885-10-01
THE WIFE'S SACRIFICE.

THE WIFES SACRIFICE.
Astory of the Transvaal.
After tiffin ON the second day of the
summer assizes for Griqualand West,
the languid interest which had hither.
to been taken in the proceedings sud.
denly developed into something nearly
akin to excitement. Thejury had just
returned a verdict of culpable homi.
ride against q dozen out of some fifty
Shangaans. who stood huddled togeth.
er, helpless and frightened, in the dock,
charged with participating in a fatal
tribal ARRAY at the Lone Star Diamond
Mining Company's compound; the
Judge had duly sentenced the gaping UNI
fortunates, and the jailers were endeav-
oring to sort them out from amongst
their unconvicted but probably no less
guilty comrades, when the Crown Pros
ecutor, a fresh-colored young English
man, with no small idea of his own
Importance, turned in his seat at the
barrister's table, and whispered to the
official who sat behind him to put for
ward Dirk Sylvester. The official rose
and repeated the name aloud; a hum
of expectancy ran through the little
crowd of spectators, and passed on to
the loungers outside, who eagerly
crowded into the corrugated iron tenn
pie OF justice; gentlemen OF the long
robe and members of the press hurried
over from the Yellow Bar just oppo-
site and the stalwart Zulu, attired in
ranvas, marked with broad black
arrow, paused in his monotonous
Jerking OF the punkah cord in order to
ratch a glympse of "Baas" Sylvester,
rs he stepped into the dock.
The prisoner was a tall, handsome
rolonial, with dark cleaning eyes,
black. beard, and a skin thepaleness of
which had been ripened into swarthi-
ness by the fierce African sun. Hewas
erect and fearless; he threw glance of
defiance at his enemies; he nodded with
q smile to his friends, and then, as the
door of a private entrance to the body
Of the court opened, and a figure
draped in purest white, with bright
golden hair ripping in rich profusion
over the shapely shoulders, glided in
softly and quietly like sunbeam from
the free world outside, he leant over
the rail which interposed between him
and liberty, and hoarsely whispered
her name-the dearest name on earth
to him.
It was Sylvester's wife. She re-
yponded quickly with a look more elo-
luent than words; and then the
prisoner drew himself up to his full
height, folded his arms and listened in
tently as the clerk of the court-an old
friend with whom he had spent many
q registering evening in his bachelor
aays-droned through the Indictment,
and in q clear voice replied to the
charge of willful murder, 'Not guilty"
The Crown Prosecutor, in slow and
measured tones, began to sketch the
history of the crime; the judge lounged
back in his easy chair and leisurely
sought for the cleanpages in his record
book; the counsel for Che defense push
ed back his wig from his perspiring
brow, and huntedlout areference in an
almost forgotten work on the Roman
Dutch law, the spectators hushed their
murmuring; the punkah swayed regu-
larly to and fro overhead, and Syl-
westerns wife, sitting there in the well
of the sitting court, with her sweet
blue eyes riveted on the priszner, and
her luxuriant locks rising and falling
with the artificial breeze, looked to me
even more beautiful than two years
ago, when she. nightly ravished the
hearts of susceptible diggers in the
make-shift theatre in the Dufoitspan
road.
In those memorable bygone days she
was Mademoiselle Marie La Cour, and
the star OF travelling theatrical COM
pany, which, like most other "combi-
nations of talent" visiting the Dia-
mond Fields, never, as q whole, got
any further. The. proprietor made SO
much money in a short season that he
left to assume the lesseeship of big
Australian house, and Marie's father
look over the management of the sheep
thus bereft of their shepherd. How
divinely she danced and sang; how she
brought the tears into the eyes of
great rough fellows, or made them
shake the rafters with their sonorous
laughter; how she huttered the hearts
of the bank magnates and the Jew
diamond merchants, and she caused
the Treasury" to overflow with fat
ness-are not all these things written
in the tablets of the memory of everv
dweller on the Fields? In the zenith of
her fame she married Dirk Sylvester,
and if ever a man deserved his bride he
did, for his passion wore him almost to
a shadow; and his dark eyes cleaned
dangerously if a rival presumed as
much as to speak to her; and before
Dirk came upon the scene there were
rivals in plenty, but though Marie sip
ped the champagne they offered, and
even accepted their diamonds, she
laughed openly at all of them. Dirk
was proprietor of one of the richest
claims at the New Rush; and the mo-
ment he and Marie met the host gilmore
Or less hopeful suitors saw their
chances were over. She seemed to
have fallen in love with him quite as
much as he had with her, and would
have married him long before she did,
but that her father besought her to
continue on the stage a little longer
for his benefit. At last the old gentle
man drank himself into the Carnarvon
Hospital, and only came out since to
occupy one of the graves which are
always yawning, ready dug in the Kim
barley Cemetery, for victims to fever
and alcohol; and then Marie La Cour
became to us and all our world.
".Sylvester's wife" x .* ..,.< "a:
They took a little villa at the ex-
tremity Of Putoitspan road, a; neat
veranda-slrrounded residence, screen
ed from the dust and heat by tall
blue-gqms, and half covered with creep
ers and tropical flowers. After that
iWo saw 1itt1t, If tho 90 .xuo11 lno1u,,