The Sunday morning news. [volume] (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1886-1891, 1890-01-26

| lighted windows in the evenings, hang
round the road ali day. in the hope that
some Of the family might pass shat way,
with mingled relief and bitter anger if
they did, and they did not recognize
him.
But this fever of hornesickness in time
lost its force. In his own long failure,
Joe's steady, moderate success began to
goad and madden him. He gradually
ceased to plan for Winny OF Joe: passion
and love cooled into morbid, sorrowful
remembrance. Real life to him was
narrowed down to success-the hidden
treasure. The little eanker of avarice,
which in the boys original nature was
as inconsiderable as the leprous spot on
the stately walls of the Jews dwelling,
began TO slowly eat its deadening and
certain way
1t is a history which we have no mind
to follow infinitely. The lad was a
brave. gallant, candid lad. The love of
money creeps on many such as he, like
q parasite on a sturdy tree, leaving all
beneath it poisonous and rotten. You
can find such young mon in every
shop or street. Leonard, shut by his
love of dramatic effect into this solitude,
fell quicker victim. For the first year
or two he used to prowl IN his disguise
out in the evenings-even made some
eating house acquaintance; but the 2est
of adventure soon palled; when among
men of his own age, his gray beard and
assumed treble became loatlfsome and
disgusting to him. Yet he could not lay
them off, and SO surrender the wealth
which the next day might yield.
For the.idea of the treasure grew ard
grew like noxious living thing within
him, devouring all healthier natural
strength. He searched in old books for
accounts ofrecovered estates, and studied
the English law on every point that
could help him hereafter. He was re-
solved not to be altogether tool in the
hands of Ludlow. That worthy, how
ever, after the second year of Insuccess-
full effort, appeared TO have surrendered
all hope Of success; he forwarded regu-
Iarly the small SUM due to Heath for his
care of the house-a sum sufficient to
keep aive-but ceased to even inquire
as to the progress of his search.
After time he used to send the money
in blank paper. This circumstance
stung Leonard with certain terrible
pain. Ludlow was the only man who
knew his real name. These quarterly
letters with their few words inside to
Leonard Heath were the sole tie that
held his old self bound to his fellow men.
Now that was cut loose he was like one
dead.
After that think he could never have
been called q sane mar, SO entirely did
the one idea master and trample out of
sight all others. There was, however,
method in his madness. The present
house he knew had been built by the
Fontaines on or near the original Heath
homestead. The covered entrance, there
fore, to the secret vault could not be
many rods removed from it. Beginning
in the cellars, he subjected every foot
of ground within an acre of the
house to probing and digging. The
ground was rocky. 1t was innpos-
sible to guess how deep the en-
trance had been covered by the fall
ing walls Of the house. Obliged to work
secretly, and much of the time at night,
it is no wonder that years passed with
his task yet unfinished.
A man does not sink into the nature
of a greedy, soulless polypus at one I'm
broken fall. There were times when
Leonard Heath came up out of the pits
of yellow clay in which he dug, and
stood staring with dulled eyes down the
sunny slopes of grass dotted with gold
en- dandelions, or into the dusky lines
of forest trees that shut him in. He
had never, in his best moments, been
man akin to nature, or cognizant of her
secrets, yet there weighed upon him
now a sense of bitter loss-of having
fallen below the level of manhood by
some unknown misstep which he could
never regain. He would walk feebly
about while, as though trying to grope
at some lost idea, and then go back to
his grubbing again.
Sometimes, on quiet Sunday after
moons, q group of young mechanics
with their sweethearts would saunter
down the lane and into the woods
their gay dresses all a-hutter in the sun
and wind, and their chatter and laugh
ter echoing through the trees. Now, the
old man, as they called him, was in the
habit OF following the boys about who
came nutting there, and try very tim
idly to join in their talk or jokes, but
when these lovers came he hid himself
in the house, out Of all sight and hear
ing of them.
One winter the old man was missed;
there was little shop where he was
nsed TO go TO buy O bit of meat OF cam
dies: he showed himself but once or
twice at the counter, and then it was
with so ghastly and haggard a face
that Mrs. Ryan, the shopkeeper, whose
heart was clean and sweet under her
dirty wooden sacque, offered all sorts
of womanly help TO the lone creature.
Heath refused it surlily, and crept back
to his den, as he thought. to die. Some
low, intermittent fever had sapped all
the strength out OF him. But not the
obstinacy. He kept his secret, would
not summon physician. In the long,
feyerish nights he had called for Winny
and Joe; the long starved heart woke
to torture him. But in the morning his
purpose remained firm.
There was but one treasure in life
hot l<,ef 1,ot Il ia lootI1