The Arizona sentinel., 1886-10-16
A BIT OF DRIFT.
The Return of Mir. Danks to His
 Poor Home.

Poor Home.
 ', "Brutus Cassius Danks! Are you going after that water, or do you expect the spring to come to you?"
 The man thus pointedly addressed slid slowly down from the fence where he was sitting whittling, closed his huge Jackknife by pressing its point against the rail, and shambled toward the house. The woman in the doorway watched his leisurely approach with an expression curiously mingled of indifference and irritation.
 A small, stopping figure. with weak slope to the chin and shoulders; the fiaccid face with a. fringe of hay-colored beard. and surmounted by sunburned hat; the loose, unshapeIy clothes which seemed to have adapted themselves to the wearer's habit of mind-was this the pink-cheeked, trim young fellow who courted her fifteen years ago?
 '1 was a-thinkin', Malvinv," he said, taking the pail from her outstretched hand, ''that ketch of fish would taste kinder good. We've had mush pretty stiddy lately"
 It ain't my fault" said the woman, shortly.
 "No! s'pose it ain't, |" he rejoined, slowly, as though the fact occurred to him for the first time.
 Just then little tow-headed girl ran round the corner of the house.
 Where are you goin', daddy?" she called.
 Down to the spring. Want to go, Capitolap" he answered.
 She looked lovingly at him with her china-blue eyes, slipped her grimy little hand into his, and trudged off beside him.
 The woman stood on the doorstone looking after them. ''They are we'll mated,'' she thought, bitterly. ''One has as much idea of getting living as the other"
 She had not lacked warnings years ago; for Malvina Frost, with her slim, straight figure and snapping black eyes, was the likeliest girl in town; and mothers of marriageable sons did not hesitate to enlarge in her hearing upon the ''Danks shiftlessness," reinforcing their own opinions by sundry old prov erbs, such as ..What's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh" and 'sLike father, like son. But .Maivina only tossed her black curls, and went her own way
 So one June they were married, and went to housekeeping in little house on the banks of the Ohio; and Malvina, in the strength of her youth and love, felt able to move mountains, but she found the gravitation of inherited shift lessness too much for her. He had done well for time. The little cottage was neatly fixed up, and when, a year after, the first baby came, the young father, with his own. hands, fashioned for it cradle that was the-wonder and envy of the Reighborhood. But heredity was too strong for him, and, though the cradle had six successive occupants, its | first coat of paint was never renewed. | Mrs. Danks had never heard of Sisy- | phus. If she had she would have found | her task very much like his, with the | exception that hers was infinitely harder | and more hopeless.
 What was it? Mental, or moral, or physical weakness, or all three? Or an evil fate, that whatever he turned his hand to immediately failed? Even his name seemed an unkind fling of for tune. His mother having attended, | shortly before his birth, the perform ance of some strolling actors, was so much impressed that the name of | Brutus Cassius was waiting for him when he arrived upon the stage where he was to play so insignificant part. It was seldom, however, that he had the | benefit of his full name, for the com munity in which he grew up delighted in abbreviations. But even their rough | familiarity hesitated to call a man "Brute" to his face; so he was dubbed | 'Cash, a perpetual satire upon him who rarely had any cash in pocket. Against all these odds Mrs. Danks had | fought good fight; but in the struggle her straight back had been bent, and | the snap had gone from her eyes to her voice:
 Somehow the load pressed heavier than ever this morning. It might have been because it was early spring, and the air was full of that indefinable sense of expectancy, that vague hint of re- juvenation that would touch every thing except the Danks' fortunes. And, perhaps, it was because the flour-barrel was empty, but, whatever the cause, Mrs. Danks turned from the doorway thoroughly wretched.
 Half an hour later MT. Danks saun- tered in with the water, the child fol- lowing with string of two or three fish.
 Setting the pail down, he said in a deprecating way: 'I hey about c'nclud-