Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1891-05-21

IuSn QOTrOT itllu SE6dJ ltdI grew III ti1C
blue eyes, and pale agony crept over the
childish face and made it old, and the
poor little heart seemed to stop beating.
Effie said nothing and made no cry,
but she closed her eyes tightly for a
moment, and looked in the box again.
No, it was no illusion; the little nugget
was not there-the first gold her father
had found, which had been intrusted to
her care, which was to have been taken
to her mother-it was gone. She put
down the box quite quietly and walked
out into the day, but the sun was shin
ing very strangely and mistily now, and
the blue sky had grown black, and the
trees seemed to move weirdly, and the
locusts had ceased humming from fear,
but the strange bird was somewhere
near shrieking brokenly: 'sWhat will
father say? What will father say?'
But as the child stood there, despair
ing, her sight grew clearer, and she saw
black figure among Ghe trees and she
was conscious of pair of dusky eyes
watching her through the leaves. Then
only she remembered, and she knew who
had dome this cruel thing. King Billy!
And she had been kind to him. Effie
suddenly burst into passionate sobbing.
The black figure still hovered among
the trees, often changing its position,
andtthe duslxy eyes still peered through
the leaves, and the laughing jackasses
flew down to the old tree again, and
laughed more madly than before
laughed at Effie's trust-at Billy's graft
tude!
1t was 10 o'clock, and darkness and
quiet reigned in John Archer's hut
Over among the tents behind the waffle
gums few gamblers and heavy drink
ers were still awake, and their voices,
raised in anger or ribald merriment,
might occasionally have been family
heard from the hut. But Archer. who
had sown his wild oats, was true
worker; and he had his little daughter,
for whose sake he had built the hut away
from the noisy camp.
Archer had come home late and weary,
as usual, had eaten his supper and gone
to rest without, to Effieis intense relief,
speaking of the little gold nugget. The
child was afraid to speak of the loss, and
she was not without vague hopes that
benefcent providence would restore<the
nugget during the darkness and savether
from this great trouble.
For this she prayed very earnestly be
fore she lay down to sleep. Or did she
sleep at all that night? She never quite
knew. But she thinks thatsit was then
that she first experienced that terrible,
2urgatorial condition which is neither
rEakefulness nor sleep, when the body
and mind are weary enough to bring
the profound sleep which they require,
but which the brain is too overIaden
and too cruelty active to allow; when
dreams seem realities and realities
dreams 1t must have been a dream
when she saw something small and vel
low float through the tiny window on
the ghostly silver moonbeams And
yet, when, having closed her eyes, she
opened them again, it was still there
lowering about in the darkness-less
bright now, and with pale yellow halo.
But it faded quite away; it was cruel,
mocking dream
Then was it a dream when the old cur
tain which divided her corner Of the hut
from her fathers moved near the ground
-bulged slightly toward her? It would
be curious to see, and she lay still I
From under the curtain seemed to come
a thin arm, and slowly, cautiously, after
the arm, a head with great shock of
hair. And the moonbeams just touched
a face. l think they kissed it, though it
was black, for they found in a black
hand the little yellow object which had
hoated in the FIRST dream.
1t was all so real, so beautiful, that
the child lay still, scarce daring to
breathe lest the vision should melt away,
and when in her dream came the voice
of her father, with the words, ASpeak |
or I'll firer' her lips refused to oper.
But it was no dream when the shot
came, and the Black King rolled over ON
the earth, dead. with the little. gold mug
get he had come to restore pressed in the
death agony against his heart, where.
too, was a little gold.
And the laughing birds m the;old tree,
startled from their sleep by the shot,
laughed once more, wildly and 1nadly, |
at Billy's honesty; but there was bitter /
ness In their merriment, for their mas /
ter, the devil, had been cheated, of the |
soul of Black King.-C. HaddornC Cham /
bers in Oak Bough and Waffle Blossom