The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-12-12

taken by her adopted parents to En-
gland, where she grew up avery charm
ing and pretty girl, and ultimately mar
ried clergyman in Norfolk. But
never saw her again, though we often
wrote to each other.
Before I returned to the country of
my birth, she, too, had been gathered to
the land of shadows, leaving three chill
dren behind her. All mel all this took
place 30 long ago, when I was young who
now am old.
Perhaps it may interest the reader to
know the fate of Mr.. Carson's property,
which should of course have gone to his
grandson Harry. wrote to England
to claim the estate on his behalf,
but the lawyer to whom the mat
ter was submitted said that my mar
riage to Stella, not having been cele-
brated by an ordained priest, was not
legal according to English law, and
therefore Harry could not inherit.
Foolishly enough / acquiesced in this,
and the property passed to cousin of
my father-in-law; but since have come
to live in England have been informed
that this opinion is open to great sus-
picion, and that there is every probable
ity that the courts would have declared
the marriage perfectly binding, as hav-
ing been solemnly entered into in ac-
cordance with the custom of the place
where it was contracted. But l am now
so rich that it is not worth while to
move in the matter. The cousin is dead,
his son is in possession, so let him keep
it.
Once, and once only, did revisit Bah
yam kraals. Some fifteen years after
my darling's death, when was man
in middle age, l undertook an expedi-
ton to the Zambesi. and one night out
spanned at the mouth of the well-known
valley beneath the shadow CT the great
peak. / mounted my horse, and, quito
alone, rode up the valley, noticing with
a strange prescience of evil that tho
road was overgrown, and, save for the
music of the waterfalls, the place silent
as death. The kraals that used to be to
the left of the road by the river had van
ished. / rode toward their site; the
mealie folds were choked with weeds,
paths were dumb with grass. Presently
1 reached the place. There, overgrown
with grass, were the burnt ashes of the
kraals, and there, among tho ashes,
cleaning in the moonlight, lay the
white bones of men. Now it was clear
to me. The settlement had been fallen
on by some powerful foe, and its inhab-
itants put to the assegai. The forebod-
ings of the natives had come true; Bah
yam kraals were peopled by memories
alone. 1 passed on up the terraces.
There shone the roofs of tie marble
huts. They would not burn, and were
too strong to be easily pulled down.
/ entered one of them-it had been
our sleeping hut-and lit a can
die which I had with me. The
huts had been sacked; leaves of books
and broken fragments of the familiar
furniture lay about. Then 1 remem-
bered that there was a secret place hol-
lowed in the floor and concealed by q
stone, where Stella used to hide her
little treasures. l went to the stone
and dragged it up. There was some
thing within wrapped in moldering,
native cloth. 1 undid it. 1t was the
dress my wife had been married in. In
the center of the dress were the
withered wreath and flowers she had
worn, and with them little paper
packet. l opened it; it contained
lock of my own hair. / remembered
that had searched for this dress when
1 came away and couldn't find it, for /
had forgotten the secret recess in the
floor
Taking the dress with me 1 left the
hut for the last time. Leaving my
horse tied to a tree, walked to the
graveyard, through the ruined garden.
There it was mass of weeds, but over
my darling's grave grew self-sown
orange tree, of which the scented petals
fell in showers on to the mound be-
meath. As 1 drew near there was a
crash and a rush. A great baboon
leapt from the center of the graveyard
and vanished into the trees. l could al
most believe that it was the wrath OF
Hendrika doomed to keep an eternal
watch over the bones of the woman her
jealous rage had done to death.
/ tarried there awhile, filled with
such thoughts as may not be written.
Then, leaving my dead wife to her long
sleep where the waters fell in melan-
choly music beneath the shadow of the
everlasting mountain, I turned and
sought that spot where first we had told