The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-04-27
CHAPTER XIII.

The thought of banishment was & constant weight upon me, and the feeling that WAS regarded an outlaw stupg me, but my surround ings, wild and grand, were not uncongenal. On the hilsides, where the "pipe-s stem" cane punched out in rich and evergreen foliage, the browsing cows rang their mellow toned bells, and away down in the creek bottoms, where the water, shv- ering with the chill of winters nearness, gurged around projecting rock, there that soft and rippling music which plays gentle accompan- ment to deep musng and which makes poetry not an idle speculation but sublime fact. The winter bird, shy, little creature, to which the farmers have given no name, sang promise of coming spring of spring when the larger bird would come out, and when the shy little creature, having completed his work of soft encouragement, would go away and be more until cold and cutting wind warned him that his gentle services were needed again.
 1 wondered. sometimes, if Miss Hatton q must thus refer to her) had not supposed that she had seen me on former occasion, but remembering that l had stood in the background at the time when Fred had brought her home as his wife my tears would find immediate rest. MT. Grider, soon discovered, was peculiar old fellow. He had been brought up among the negroes of Alabama, and naturally shared all their superstitions He believed that witches rode horses at night and one morning when he found his bay mares mane tang led, he commanded President (who was going to the milD to take another horse the mare must be tired after her night of galloping the country
 wrote to Colonel Osbury telling him that my
 
 reply, but no letter came. 1 saw but little of Miss Hatton and the boys. They went to the school house early every morning except Sunday, and did not return until the chickens going to roost.
 As the days grew into weeks; when the spendor of a mountain sunset had grown to be matter of course; when the waving tree tops murmured only in voices of retrospecion, seemed to grow heavy. The old joke and the ireside laugh at night lost their uniqueness and sank into state of despond- ent breeding. In the morning was chilly and in the evening when the sun went down, 1 would hasten to the house, for the air that brought the music of the COW bells also brought 8 shiver seemed to nothing distinctly, nothing but a face that was ever visible, in the sunlight in the dusk face more lovable because could see its defects the face of Luzelle Sometimes at night I would awake, not from dream, but from rational con- viction that I had, one wild night, felt her hand upon my arm.
 Look here," said old man Grider one evening at supper, "you oughter eat more Better pay the butcher than the doctor, ez the sayn' goes. know you aint doin' work an' you sin't doin' much in the way uv stirrin' round, but you oughter eat more. Wy, eff I didn't have nothin' more ter do than sich men ez you would be happier than lark. It's come day, go day. God send Sunday, with you, I reckon"
 "Do try some of these here pear preserves" said Mrs. Grider. "They air sweet as plum, fur made them myself. Miss Hatton lows they air mighty fine an reckon you ken eat 'em."