Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-08-20

we could not have told her any other way
Again John Clark groaned.
After a few moments the %neighbor said;
"Will We go in now?" Mechanically lie
arose and entered the pleasant sitting
room where he and Lettie had spent SC
many happy hours together.
All! zone but his Creator knew what he
suffered as he bent over that still form,
aud the burden of his thought was, Il
killed her; had I granted her request she
would not have been wearing that red
shawl, for she wanted a new brown one.
Bitterly did he regret his selfishness
when too late, and would gladly have given
every dollar he possessed to see his wife
standing in the doorway to welcome him,
as of yore.
The days passed by and the funeral was
over and he returned to his desolate home,
but remorse gnawed at his heart strings,
and he avoided the house as much as pos
sible, and decided to sell the farm and
leave the locality.
One day, after a hard days work, he was
returning to the house, but stopped
amazed. Outside the kitchen door, which
he had closed, but which was now wide
in the room beyond, and a voice was say
ing:
81 do declare! John has got things in a
dreadful muss!'
That voice! His heart seemed to bound,
then to stand still, and when, a moment
later. a little woman came into view, utter
ing a glad cry when she saw him, he
thought it is a vision!
why, john" she cried, where haze
you been? Here I've been looking every
where for you"
BY that time she had got her arm about
his neck, and he realized that she was flesh
and blood-his Lettie!
The shock was too much for him. and he
fell forward in the first swoon of his life.
His wife was alarmed, but managed to
catch him and support him to the ground.
and then set to work to revive him.
After a time she was successful, when
mutual explanations followed. John
Clark listened as one in a dream, while
his wife told him that on the very day of
his departure her brother had arrived in
great haste, and wished her to
him to the bedside of their mother who was
dangerously ill. The distance was thirty
miles, and she prepared to go, first writing
a note for her husband telling of her
whereabouts, which she deposited in the
clock, as she had done many times before.
She had tried to darn a rent in her shawl,
and had then left it on a chair near the
open door, but when she went to put it on
it was not to be found. Through the
window she saw "crazy Betsy" a poor de-
mented oma who wandered about the
neighborhood, marching triumphantly
down the lane with the shawl which had at
tracted her fancy, flung over her shoulders.
She must have distracted it when Mrs.
Clark was in the next room. There was
no time to pursue her, for she was fleet of
foot as had been proved before. and Mrs.
Clark was obliged to go without her
shawl. Ashley went in an opposite direction
from that taken by Betsy, they knew moth
ing of her terrible fate, for of course it was
she who was killed and mistaken for Mrs.
Clark, and buried as such. Her mother
had recovered and she had returned home,
never doubling that her husband had found
the note.
John Clark asked his wife's forgiveness
for his u~nkindness, which was freely
granted. His repentance was sincere, and
he never relapsed into his former selfish
ness, and there is no happier home to-day
than eirs.-Chicago Ledger.