The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-08-10
"Ah but death means rest,s she aid.

smoke that still hung over the lawn, aw Archie and his assstants returning from their labors The fireworks display was over.
 "Woud you like to take . strollI" I asked of my companion, cit Is not moonlight, but the stars are bright, and fancy I can find my way about" "H you can't, l will guide you" she said, as we stepped down from the piazza,
 "No, not that" pleaded, 'I am the one to guide. Let me be your guide for lifel"
 For answer she awoke the echoes with . laugh, A merry, ringing amused laugh, and yet there was in it something that seemed weird and uncanny.
 "You asked me that once before" she said after a while, "and yet you deserted me"
 But" added, "I will neverdesert you again. dear, neverl While life shall last"
 "No, no, mo-" she interrupted impatiently, mot that life is brief, at best. Say you will love me forever-thAt eternity of bliss shall Do ours, that the grave shall not part Say 1t, dearest, say itp'
 The words came as 6 hot burst of lava from a belching volcano, and as she spoke she threw her white arms about my neck and lifted her eyes, pleading, and wet with tears, to my own.
 "Say it" l repeated, "I swear it, my darling, l swear it," and bending down kissed her rA- venously hundred times.
 No, she was not stopping with the Gramercys. II~~~ThKt WAS why had not noticed her before. She was with her mother and father ct the next cottage up the beach and along the white sands, with the waves playing love song that toned in well with the joyous beating of my heart, we stroled together.
 "Hurry l" she said at must be after midnight, and you know we keep excellent hours down here"
 Her words brought me back to myself; brought me back to c realization that my new found hap piness must at least undergo an interruption.
 "I shall have to run up to town in the morning" said, as we stood together on the piazza step of the Queen Anne cottage to which she had led me, but shall stop over to see you before go just to say goodbye, dearest You will let me come, won't you2"
 Again her laugh rang out so shrilly upon the night air that 1 started back shivering one suddenly stricken with palsy.
 Have we not eternity for our love mAking2" she asked.
 "Yes, yes, know" said, trying to still my vibrating nerves "but for all that, do not let us waste & moment. Whether you give me your consent or not, shall call in the morning"
 The sun, rising in all his regal splendor from out brazen sea on the following day, sent shaft through my window that aroused me from a sleep in which dreams of Mildred Winthrop had formed the chief ingredient.
 Before the blazing orb was an hour on his way l was tramping along the oceans brim over the same sands that had traversed the night before. The risen tide had washed our foot prints but the way was familiar, nevertheless, and after few hundred yards turned of to the left and struck in through a row of cedars that formed an outery border to the Winthrop grounds. had scarcely set foot on the gravel walk which I noted was thickly overgrown with weeds than I stood stock still in mute amazement. The villa that had the night before reared its graceful and beautiful Outline before me in the starlight, and upon the piazza on which I had bade Mildred Winthrop good night, had disappeared as com pletely though 1t had been the conured palace of Aladdin. Mysteries had hitherto not been com- ponent parts of my experience; had never had any faith whatever in the so-called supernatural, and was therefore thoroughly dazed and dumbtounded when, l pushed on through the weeds and underbrush that grew rsnkly over the paths, I suddenly stood on the edge of a ruin. | At my feet was 6 cellar, in which, amid the weather stained embers of the joists and beams of what had once had been fine cottage, young pines, cedars and scrub oaks were lifting their heads to tho early morning sunshinA