Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1885-07-17
THE WIFE'S SACRIFICE.
A Story Of the Transvaal.

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. The jury had just
returned a verdict of culpable homi-
eide against a dozen out of some fifty
cShangaans 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 compounds the
Judge had duly sentenced thegaping un-
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, q 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 ofspectators, 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
canvas, marked with q broad black
arrow, paused in his monotonous
jerking Of the punkah cord in order to
catch glympse OF "Baas' Sylvester,
as he stepped into the dock.
The prisoner was tall, handsome
colonial, with dark cleaning eyes,
black beard, and skin thepaleness of
which had been ripened into swarthi-
ness by the fierce African sun. Hewas
erect and fearless; he threw a glance of
defiance at hisenemies; he nodded with
q smile to his friends, and then, as the
door Of q 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 a 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. Va. g ... "7r''"'''T ~--
It was Sylvester's r wife. She re-
sponded quickly with a. look more elo-
quent than words; and then the
prisoner drew himself up to his full
height, foldedhis arms and listened in
tently' as the clerk OF the court old
friend with whom he Had spent many
d registering evening in. his bachelor
days-droned through the Indictment,
and in q clear voice replied to the
charge of willful murder, sNot 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 clean pages in his record
book; the counsel for the defense push
ed back his wig from his perspiring
brow, and hunted!out preference in an
almost forgotten work on the Roman
Dutch law, the spectators hushed their
murmuring; the purikah swayed regu-
larly to and fro overhead, and Syl-
westerns wife, sitting there in the we'll
OF the sitting court, with her sweet
blue eyes riveted on the prisoner, and
her 1uxuriant 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. H. 49, ss...r,r -
In those memorable bygone days she
was Mademoiselle Marie La Cour, and
the star OF a travelling theatrical COM
pany, which, likemost 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 a big
Australian house, and Marie's father
look over the management Of the sheep
thus bereft OF their shepherd .IT,s.
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 futtered 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 every
dweller on the Fields? Inthezenith OF
her fame she married Dirk Sylvester,
and If ever q man deserved his bridehe
did, for his passion wore him al,nostto
shadow; and his dark eyes CLEANED
dangerously if d rival presumed as
much as to speak to her; and before