Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1885-02-25
It came with the lightning stroke of an

Though, in looking once, she might
have heard it in his voice and felt if in
his presence, she had been blind and
deaf, and had not understood.
[ will not chronicle the answer she
gave him. There are some things SO
simple in their honesty, and yet so sa-
cred, that they cannot be written. She
opened her heart to him and laid il bare
in his presence: and as he heard the
tale of q sweet and lonely life, he felt as
though the white Mary of an altar
shrine had made confession to him. and
the tears stood in his eyes, and he was
a better and nobler man in that hour
than he had ever been in all his life he
fore.
She made one condition. 1t was SIM
pie. but from it no entreaty could move
her.
"You must leave me for three months.
In that time do not see me. Do not
write to me. If you find that you have
misread your beart shall know it and
hold you in no blame, and you will not
come back to me. If [ see you here
when the day of Punishment is ended,
you will have my answer"
When the clerk, the schoolmaster and
| the superintendent of tanners came to
breakfast on the following morning, one
| chair was vacant and all the answer
Miss Denny could give, had no conso-
lation in it-for they had come to like
the fellow, and to defend him stoutly
against the insinuations of baffled curl
osity. He babe me goodbye last
night" she said, "and left on the UP
coach at dawn. He did not tell me
where he was going, and he may never
come back" And then a wave of spec
| days, and was still.
There never was a scalpel sharp
enough for the dissection of true
wo1nan's soul. This blunt pen dare not,
then, attempt it. It is sufficient to know
that there was not a day, and not an
hour, in which some vision or some
question that touched upon him was
not in her mind. At times she looked
at the circumstances that by chance had
thrown them together, and said to herself
1T was the passing fancy of moment,
He will not return!" But again she saw
the light that shone in his eyes when he
turned that night toward the western
sky, and heard the tremor in his voice,
and her soul asserted itself as it never
had in the old days of loveless peace,
and she whispered so that even the air
could not hear it: "He loves me, and he
will return" But not for a nom +
did she question the Judgment that pu
him to the test
The shock-headed boy was at the
postoffice when the night coach dashed
up, and when the man from Nod
alghted, it was the boy who took his
smallest satchel with the unconscious
commandery of old acquaintance; and
it was the boys sturdy legs that, of their
own volition, started the brief process
sion toward Miss Denny's house. But
as the man and the larger satchel meek
~ followed, it is to be presumed that on
this occasion the juvenile instinct was
not in fault. At the gate the guide was
feed and handsomely dismissed.
The man from Nod was certainly not
asleep this time. Dropping his satchel
on the grass, he passed through the
empty and unlighted parlor, went into
the dining-room only TO find it deserted,
and passed from thence on into the
kitchen, where he heard a well. beloved
voice singing softly to itself.
If, as he afterwards told her, his
heart chad grown hungry for her." it
must have been Toasted and fed on the
mamma of heaven then. Her white arms
were bare to the elbows, and huge
apron hung as shield between the
dishpan and the spotless lawn about
her, there was a blue riooon at her
throat, flush on her cheek-and in her
eyes there flashed sudden light, that
the dullest 'laggard in love" of all the
land could have translated.
The China teacup in her hand was in
danger, when he closed in upon her.
If he had not kissed her then, or had
felt that his duty was done in kissing
her once, all the dark insinuations of
the woman over the way ought to have
been true against him. for the credit of
mankind.
II have done your bidding" he said
an hour later, as they stood together
under the honeysuckle vines. "I have
not written to you. The road has been
hard one, but it has been good for my
soul, and it has brought me back to
you. It has shown that there is no
doubt and no shadow of turning in nv
love for you"
"You missed me, then?"
I'm every moment of the time"
"You love me then?"
"On my soul, ] love you. knew it
when you sent me away. I know it
better now. And you?"
All the answer that she gave and all
the sanswer that he sought was this
She laid her hand in his and with her
head upon his breast she whispered: st
have given my life into your keeping.
My faith goes with it. Lead me where
you will"
"But of me-my home, my life, my
past"
II ask you nothing. Let the future
tell. Where love can go, faith must
have strength to follow"
The minister who had baptized her
when a babe, stood before them in the
mornings dawn, and pronounced the
sacred words that welded two lives to-