The San Antonio light. (San Antonio, Tex.) 1883-1886, 1885-08-29
WIN NY.

Stranger 10 Ounuua, thinh YOU saiu
First visit to Ontario? Well. you're
heartily welcome to Indian Creek. Take
a chair on the piazza till dinners ready
we dine early in these new-world
parts.
Fine farm? Well, yes; Indian Creek is
a nice place, II do own 1t. All, las far as
you can see-grass-land. corn fields,
woods and oreeks-all belong to it.
Stock too-they call 1t the best stocked
farm in Ontario, l believe, and | dare
say they're right. All mine; and yet l
came to Canada IL years ago, without
even the traditional half-crown in my
trousers pocket. You look surprised.
Would you like TO hear the story?
There's good half hour TO dinner-time
yet, and it's story l never tire oftclling
somehow.
penter in the South of England. You
know that class pretty well, dare say,
and what gulf was fixed between me
and the vicar Of the parish. And yet
and yet-from the time she was seven
years old and eleven, and she fell down
In the dusty road outside the carpenters
shop, and cried, and / picked her up,
and smoothed the little crumpled pima
fore, and kissed the dust out of her gold
en- curls, loved but one girl in the world,
and that was the Wears daughter,
Winny Branscome.
Madness, you'll say. Well, perhaps
so, and yet man is but a man, and a
woman woman; and love comes. what
ever one may do. There's no class dis
tinction recognized by childhood, and
we were playmates and friends till she
went to boarding-sohool. III Miss Winny
had had mother, no doubt things
would have been very different; but we
were alike in never having known a
woman's care, and the old vicar was
blind to everything but his theological
treatises.
But when she came. back from her
London boarding school q beautiful
young lady ALI smiles and laces and little
lovely ways-then knew. l had tried
my best to study and work and make
myself more like the men she would
meet; but what can lad in an English
village do? just had enough education
to make every other lad In the place hate
me, and beside the men of her world |
suppose l cut rather an astonishing
figure. Yet the love Of her was SO be-
yond all else in me, that mad, hopeless
us felt 1t, had no power over myself,
anu tue nIbl lliut 4 caught ntT ulOHt III
the woods-she avoided me, ! saw, and
had to watch for chance-I told her
the whole story and waited for her
answer. She grew scarlet--a rush OF
color that dyed her fair sweet face
then deathly white.
"Dick,n she said, and she was tremb-
ling from head TO foot, "you know 1t can
never, never be; you know you are
wrong even to think OF such thing
Some girls would think II an insult
know you better; but If my father heard
of this. he would say you had abused his
kindness to you; he you'd never forgive
you. Forget your madness" And she
ran from me.
let her go. had seen the blush anC
the tremor, and | guessed that If hat
been MIR. LOTUS, the young squire, in
stead of Dick Hawtry, the oarpenter'i
son, her answer might have been differ
ent. A great resolve spraDg up In my
soul, and took a solemn vow In thos,
June woods. That very night sold tn,
the old shop (my father was dead, and
had taken to the business), and with tn,
money bought an outfit and started TO
Canada. Ii was pretty tough work a
first, but l worked like galley slave
starved, and pinched and saved, an,
never spent q penny on myself excep
for the books ] sat up half the night I,
read and study. Well, In this countr,
the man who works and doesn't drinl
ID sure to get on; and had might,