Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-11-19

S1Vc tue WanQercr SuCn an enrapCurlng sur prise when his boat was driven into sight by those long, sturdy strokes, if he had chanced to come home.
 Through the house, across the dusty road and out on the old wharf swiftly sped the white-garbed figure, her tawny hair stream ing out behind No Dan in sighta Oh, well, one couldn't row across that big lake in 8 minute, and while sic was waiting it would not be half bad fun to look down into the water and laugh derisively at the crinkly- faced phantom of moon which was sailing along in the depths in state of obvious in- toxication. And there, plainly within her reach, great fragrant water-lily was holding it's head spontaneously.
 "Idess I'll pick lat for Dan," sad Zannie critically.
 One of the resorters who was lounging under the naples with his gaze fixed on the tip of his cigar, fancied he heard the echo of faint, gasping cry. He did not hear it again, nor was Zannie's cheery babble heard more forever. At her finger tips was the coveted blossom when she tumbled headlong down into the water. Scarce two feet below the surface a treacherous lily root caught and held her fast; a few bubbles floating up were the only intimations of the mute, agonized struggle with death, and when the water grew clear again the yellow hair was wound about the seE,entine root, and the childish face, bearing an awful, still look, and with wide open, staring eyes, was upturned to the serene moon.
 And Dan did not come.
 x <
 Every ripple on the Lake O the Pines was gleam of gold, transparent, sparkling, ever shifting into new and more dazzling forms of translucent beauty under the broad shafts of molten splendor which the rising sun was throwing forward between the long needle-ponts of the fringe of pines along the Eastern shore. When Sanborn alighted from the early morning tram, the whole lake was sobbing softly to itself out of joy at the tender, carressing touch that the sun had laid upon it, and something very like the sound of one of it's sobs came up in his throat and deepened the tender light in his eyes as he sent his boat through the water with quick, impatient strokes. Over there where the waters always mur- mured more softly and sweetly than any where else, Fannie was waiting for him. Probably the little witch was standing on the old dock then, dancing up and down in her eagerness for recognition, and with her fluffy hair all blown softly about her face; but he-he would not turn his face until the very wharf was reached, and then he would spring out and catch her up like whirl-
 
 laughter.
 But when the boat touched the blanks and Sanborn turned, with wide opened arms, the child was not there. His wife was hur- rying across the road, with head un- covered and hands clasping and unclasping tremulously.
 "Dy ye s'pose any the boarders have took Fannie out in boat so earlys" she asked, in an agony of eagerness. "They wouldn't take Ter ill Ter night clothes, would theya Hev ye seen Ter, Dana She's gone''
 "Gones' Sanborn repeated duly. A slow, ashy pallor showed through the sunburn on his face.
 Mechanically he threw the looped chain of the boat over the nearest post. As he did so his eyes fell full upon the little white set face tossed to and fro beneath the water at his very feet by the careless surges
 "Go back ter tn house, mother" he said, gently enough, but laboriously. "They hev'-taken Fannie, as yer say l think I seen Ter. She he'd somethin around 'er Go in. I'll wait-till she comes back.''
 Drowned! Fannie drowned! No, no; what he saw and could not take his eyes from was an illusion. Some freak played upon his vision because the child was in his mind so much. But if it were a trick, d sorry jest of the imagination, why had the gentle lap of the water among the lily leaves turned to something that sounded in his ear like a dirge9 Not until the wom- an was indoors did Sanborn stretch him. self out on the wharf, and extending his arm down into the water, half gropingly, as though hls fingers fully realized the prank his eyes were playing hlm, gently disentangled the yellow hair, while the grayish pallor on his face deepened Yes, it was a dirge after alL With such a tenderness as even he had never shown be- fore, he pressed the inanimate form rev erently against his breast, drew the out stretched hand against his neck, and with the fair, dank hair lying upon his shoulder he carried Fannie down the sagging blanks for the last time. His step across the road was slow, apathetic, lifeless. The mihstone of inertia had fallen about Sanborn's neck once more.
 It never lifted again.
 Long afterwards he sat one night in the familiar, hstless attitude on the bench where he and the child had listened hour after hour ta the splash of the fish out in the lake and the drone of the frogs along the sedges, and as the full moon came up Zannies pathway glistened across the water. Farther and farther across the breast of the lake it crept until it's silvery light touched the old wharf, and then the passive watcher saw the figure of a little child standing on the blanks below him--a child with sunny hair and light of inex- pressible welcome on it's face revealed by the glory of the radiance in which it stood.
 Sanborn leaned forward, his arms out stretched.
 "Zannie, Zannie," he called softly, un- steadily. It's time to come in, dear"
 The old tender smile lowered about his mouth. as he sank abruptly back on the bench, and when the moon stole around the trees an hour later and cast it's beams upon the insenate form lying there, the face had grown strangely cold and quiet but the smile was there stlll
 Tho TuEning-Point of Love.
 There is a turninp pOnt in fba Io,,o of O