Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1886-07-29
CHAPTER XVII.


She walked slowly down the hot and dusty
road toward the town. Now, far more
keenly than before her visit to the school
house, did she feel the bitterness of her
trouble
Along the dusty road she went-the high
crops motionless on either hand, the land
around lin sheen of silver barley and yellow
wheat, and the lustrous green of meadow
grass trembling in the steam of the swelter-
ing earth-and felt a homeless woman, un-
loved and sinful, too.
She came at last to the shadow of the way
side trees under which she had met Cuthbert;
and here, with no eye to see her, and passion
ate memories crowding piteous misery into
her aching heart, she stopped and flung her.
self upon the grass, and tried to relieve her
burning eyes with tears.
A long while she fingered here, dreading
to return home.
Time passed rapidly and unheeded, and
the shadows of the trees had grown well into
the road when she rose to her feet, disturbed
by the town clock striking the half hour
after three. The thought of meeting her
father was almost unbearable; vet home she
must go, for where was other shelter for herl
Before this time her fear of the deacon was
in his anger, when he should learn that she
bad deceived him by her secret marriage.
Nothing more had her innocence then to
dread; though enough had been here
to furnish her with dismal contempla-
ton and trembling apprehension, and an
insupportable yearning for the permanent
companionship of her husband, that discov-
cry might never catch her without the prop
Of his love and presence at hand for her
weakness. But now her husband was gone,
aud 1n1 InfN ln,-
full suspicion. He was gone, and she was left
alone to justify her purity, to encounter the
wrath of her father, stirred TO his deepest
heart by infamous doubt
What, then, was she to dos for when she
fell to consider how she should prove her
marriage, she found another blank as mad
deningly perplexing as Cuthbert's disap-
pearance.
She well remembered the marriage morn;
how, with faint voice and pale face, she
told aunt Rachel she was going for walk,
and babe her not be surprised if she delayed
her return, for she loved the pretty scenery
around, and TO linger among the trees.
| She well mbered the beating of her
heart when, at the bottom of the deep and
shady lane, she beheld Cuthbert waiting for
her, and how she had nearly swooned when
he hailed the passing coach to Southwark,
and handed her into it.
! Likewise she well remembered how they
had emerged into crowded street, along
which he had hurried her into another street,
where he called a hackney carriage, and they
were driven down interminable streets at
which she never glanced, for her white face
was hidden on Cuthbert's shoulder, and she
had needed all the cordial of his constant,
passionate, reassuring whispers TO save her
from fainting.
And how at last the carriage stopped be-
fore a church-a gloomy, heavy, city edifice
so that it seemed TO her that they had to
grope their way along the avenue of high
pews to the altar railing, where speedily a
thin voice read the service that made her the
wife of the man at her side
The acted portion Of 1t all was a vague