Wichita eagle., 1890-02-02
10

bad curious sound, sergeant. No won
der it slzert woman. 1t was like .
dying beast in, cage"
81 heerd it." The sergeant hurried
away from the subject, and so did Joe.
1t was the happiest evening since they
came into their new home. The work and
hustle of moving were over, as well sthe
hard struggle of years, and the WARM,
oniet sense of home was real for the first
time.
Only once it was Jared. Leonard, Joe's
Oldest boy, having been admitted as a
special grace to sit up for supper, prowied
about the room, to the discomfort of ev-
erybody but his mother and Winny, who
We'd with each other in spelling him.
Finally he crept up into an old leather
chair that stood vacant, shining in the
freight, in the warmest corner, curfed
up his fat legs and prepared to go to sleep.
There was a sudden silence in the room,
as though a ghost had stood among them.
1t was the first time since Leonard Heath
had disappeared that his place had been
filed, though the chair had waited va
cant through all those years. They
were superstitious, and this was a sure
omen to them of his death. "Let the
child stay" cried his mother, with
pale face; "he is the only one of his
name that will ever sit in that place.
But Winny shook her head and took
the boy hastily up, holding him tight to
her breast and rocking him to sleep,
while her ewes rested on the place left
vacant, as though she had the second
sight, and Leonard Heath sat there alive
before her.
L had not been difficult for Leonard
TO evade all pursuit. There was some
thing in his secret flight, in the under
taking itself, that suited precisely his
morbid, silly imagination and long cher
ished dreams of romance. He hid him
self in tho old Fontaine house, leaving
to Ludlow the purchase of the stove and
old pieces of furniture which would
make it habitable for him. He took a
keen delight in donning the rusty wig
and half worn old Quaker dress which
Ludlow bought him, and had all the tri
umpb of successful actor when Joe, on
his visit of inquiry to the house week
later, was baffied by the deaf cid man
who peered at him through spectacleS,
brushing alongside of him whilehe gath
cred his fagot of wood. Perhaps the first
month of his solitary soiourn there was
ff.o, f-ft- IF 7 o,-1 M
life. Is had all the strong lines and Rem
brandt shadows of melodrama. There
was the utter solitude the ghosts Of the
long dead inmates of the old homestead,
the tedious work of search, and behind
every moment the splendid possibility of
the treasure and sudden opening of the
enchanted gates of which it was the key.
1t did not dull whit his zest of enjoy
ment to remember the dismay and an
guish he had caused at home. He gloat-
ed over it rather, picturing his return
among them loaded with his fairy-hke
gifts. In his long, solitary evenings,
sitting over the stove, he used to plan
his homecoming in hundred different
ways, for he was but boy, under all,
and an affectionate boy.
He had read accounts of the finding of
long-murdered men, and he liked to COM
pare his own story with them. But
they were but commonplace mysteries.
His was Ike some wondrous tale.
He found the cellars under the house
full of out-of- the-way crannies and damp
-ecesses. Two Or three times day he
felt his hand upon the treasure. Once
a heap of old papers fell out of one cob
web covered shelf. He found again a
coal bin half filed with worm eaten
ledgers. Disappointments, but disap-
pointments that served to heat still more
his ss.nguine fancy.
Weeks crept into months, and then
Leonard began to grow hungry for some
thing outside of the treasure or its prom
Use. He had not calculated Cd his own
weakness. At times his solitude was in
tolerable. There were days when he
would have given up all for the sound
of word from Winny or one sight of
JoeS scoty face.
He used to steal back to look in the
lighted windows in the evenings, hang
round the road all day, in the hope that
some of the family might pass that way,
with mingled relief and bitter anger if !
they did, and they did not recognize
him.
But this fever of homesickness 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 or Joe: passion |
and love cooled into morbid, sorrowful !
Real life to him was |
narrowed down to success-the hidden |
treasure. The little canker 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 q |
brave, gallant, candid lad. The love of /
money creeps on many such as he, like /
4 parasite on sturdy tree, leaving all |
beneath 1t poisonous and rotten. You
can lind such young men in every I
shop or street. Leonard, shut hr his |
love of dramatic effect into this solitude.
fell a quicker victim. For the first wear /
or two he used to prowl in his disguise
out in the evenings-even made some
eating house acquaintances; but the zest
of adventure soon palled; when among
men of his own age, his gray beard and
assumed treble became loathsome and
TO him. Yet he could not lay