Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1890-07-12


Nicholas would be coming home in a
few days he exclaimed, with triumphant
thanksgiving:
IL knowed hit! Bless Glory"
"Hukkom you knowed hit:' sneered
Glory-Ann. SIS you tryin' ter mex out
you is Solomon en- de prophetsT"
"What | done tell you, MissyT' pur-
sued old Gilbert, serenely Indifferent to
this taunt. Put yo' 'pendence in Mawse
Gin'ral Fletcher"
"Ile had nothing to do with itv' cried
Missy Indignantly. "Brer Nicholas wrote
of his own accord; he said never word
of your 'Mawse Ginral Fletcher | won't
be indebted to Capt Fletcher. We've
returned all he did for Brer Nicholas,
and there's an end of him"
"Is dasso?' said old Gilbert regretfully.
"Well! well! Tubbe sbo,'
"Hukkom you is SO sot beginst de
capen all of suddent?' Glory-Ann re-
monstratcd Times l is heerd you say
CLANCY can't mex wafiles fitten fur him
to eat, en- now you talk lax he wuz good
riddance! You is jes' ez onsartin ez
chile, Missy, dat you is.
IL wish | were child" Missy sighed,
with vague, unwilling apprehension of
the truth of her Aunt Elvras declara-
ton that the old joy could never come
again. As the day for her brothers re-
turn drew near she had discovered in
herself, to her sorrow and confusion, an
inexplicable shrinking from that long
delayed meeting, a feyerish eagerneSs TO
have the agony of JOY over and done
with.
In her anxiety to eliminate as much as
possible of the element of pain and en-
barrassment that she could not but feel
waited upon this first meeting, she es-
sayed TO coax her father TO his best be-
havior. You will not look stern, my
father she cntrcated, with ii smile that
struggled u express n confidence she did
not feel. "For the old time is over; for
get-forget the past"
The colonel frowned impatiently; but
a little time ago this same inordinate
| Winifred had declared that 10 forget was
death.
81 have written Nicholas to come
| home; have made no conditions" he
said, little coldly. II never do things
| by halves, and shall not behave in n
manner unbecoming Thorne."
Missy sighed and said no more.
Ii was IA dark and stormy night when
| Nicholas rode away from rhorne Hill,
| young, buoyant, ardent, defiant; he re-
turned on n bright spring day, broken,
sobered and saddened. And he came
| not alone; he brought with him not only
| his wife and child and the redoubtable
| Roxanna--he brought with him also
! the shadows of the long, sad years of alb
| sence and estrangement. They wrapt
! him about as with a mantle; they made
| themselves visible in his hair, prcma-
tureiy gray; IN the deep lines that mark
| ed his handsome face, in the sadness Of
his eyes, in his dropping figure, and in
| the carclessness with which he wore his
shabby, threadbare clothes. Missy would
never have known him, and the shock of
| finding him so changed went nigh to
break her heart.
II was meeting in which sorrow in
evitably outweighed joy, The colonel
would have preferred 10 see his son first
alone, but his pride and his shyness made
! him shrink from exacting this; and when
| the carriage that brought Nicholas drove
To the door he stood on the piazza erect,
| composed, with Miss Elvira trembling on
one side of him and Winifred trembling
on the other, while old Gilbert and Glory
Ann, in jealous rivalry, maintained a re-
spectful distance in the rear. But at the
sight of Nicholas, as he came up the
steps, this father forgot his injured pride,
his anger, his disappointed hopes; he re-
! membered only that this, his son who