San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1888-06-07
HAND TO HAND.
By REBECOA HARDING DAVIS.
[Copyrighted.l

PART I.
narrow rIcKeUy stairs that led TO the top OF
the building. He did not know what especial
sin of old times was coming back to give him
the last blow, nor did he care. That was all
fair enough. 1t seemed to him sometimes,
comparing his life with that of other men,
that he had lived just like beast from hour
to hour, out of whatever impulse was in him.
He was ready to meet any old abomination
of his past life and take the punishment.
"Ive had the dance, and I'll pay the piper"
he said, kicking open the door of his room
and going in.
"But-the boyr
Now the majors cockloft was in reality a
garrett room covering the whole sixth story
of the warehouse. The beams overhead, the
plastered walls, the half dozen squat dormer
windows, the pine floor, We're as clean as
lime and scrubbing could make them. 1t
looked, in fact like a big white plain with a
little camping ground at one end in which
was a CRATE with a good fire, a tent bed
neatly made, a table with pens and paper
laid in exact order, the "Men of our Day."
out of which the major furnished obituaries
at ten minutes notice for The Camera, and
an odd volume of Appleton's Cyclopedia,
out Of which he drew its supplies of science.
Great decency of cleanliness everywhere, but
nothing to eat. If there had been, perhaps
the majors acts in the next hour would have
been less guilty in the eyes of religious
people, But when it comes to looking out in
the world from a starving body, man is apt
to slip the orthodox leaShes and follow his
own notions of right and wrong.
He took off his black coat carefully,
HING II I'M tbraU his braces loose
down his back, and sat down in his shirt
sleeves before the fire, his hands on his fat
knees He wished, duly Madeline was here
topuzzle it out for him; remarking half aloud,
that if that girl undertook to write leader
it would be bosh, but in every thing else she
never failed to hit the nail plump on the
head. There was a round roly-poly brown
crock in the window in which bloomed a
buttony little rose, one of the Burgundy sort,
red, fresh and pungent Madeline had left it.
1t was like her somehow, the maj or thought.
Do what he would, his thoughts would go
back to the girl and to the years she had lived
with him. instead of this question of life and
death which must be settled today.
There was thu door to her little room a jar.
He always had contrived to pay the trife of
rent for the room after she left him, liking to
think of it as hers. He remembered the day
he brought her there first. He had had a
tough siege nursing old Durbrow, her father
ION The Camera like HIMSELF. When he
was dead, the ma or settled up the estate:
there were S400 Of debts, and for assets one
trunk, empty; one suit Of clothes, patched;
one watch, gold; pretty lot Of meerschaums;
and the little girl of 5, just over the measles.
The watch went to pay the debts. and the
little girl, of course, must go to an asylum.
But the ma jOr brought her home for week,
to cheer her up bit He took her to the
theatre and circuses every afternoon; he
bought her gay little plaid silk suit lit was
a flush time with him just them; he stuffed
her with oysters and caramelS: and in the
night, when she cried for her father, took her
on his knee in her white nightgown, made
her say over her prayers again, and then
rocked and croaked over her some old ditty
about shepherds, have you seen my love!"
till she fell asleep. The other men, who missed
him at billiards or over their stews and ale
when the papers were out toward morning,
used to unearth old StandiSh at this sort of
work, and joked him about it roughly enough.
But they were pleased when he kept her week
after week, and used to be coming in per-
petualy with scraps of anxious advice about
Group or nettle rash, and fell into the habit
OF buying all sorts of expensive and useless
things for poor Durbrows baby"
So it went on for years. There was always
q strong smell Of cigars and printers ink In
the air the child breathed, and no doubt
when she came to be young lady she learned
to think i'll a scrappy, itemizing, newspaper
way; but Madelines life was in fact as
Clearly, and sweet, and tender among tne,-
men, as if she had been one of any rosebud
garden of girls, perhaps more so. Whatever
garment of lies the ma or chose to put on as
armor, or to perk and vaunt himself in out
among other men, he never wore it into ''the
cockloft." Nobody could account for the
almost pathetic tenderness of his love to the
girl 1t was more than seemed due for her
fathers sake, or even her own.
Once, however, he had said to her, "You
came to take the place of child that lost"
That was the only time he had limited at the
secret of his former life. He kept it hidden
even from himself.
1t came to him to-day, and would not -
thrust aside. In few hours it would be
Anown to all the world.
John Proctor was his son.
He remembered well now the last day when
he had called the boy by that name 1t was
a dreary, rainy season in Novemb +, three
or four years before he took Madeline He
sat by hotel window with Jack on his
knee. 1t was a week since he had come from
Richmond, leaving the child's mother dead
there. He had spent the week going from
one newspaper office to another, Wanting
and vaporing, and drinking hard, but with
still cold consciousness all the time of stand
ing by her grave, on which the rain pat
tered, with her child's life left in his hands