The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1891-07-31

him great stairway of forest-covered
ridges climbed into the coast range,
with all their tumb1ed ocean of tree
tops turning a golden olive in the sun
set. On his left the earth sank sharply
down to meet the waters of the bay,
while just before him, with a sheer
drop of quite hundred feet, the head
hung over the deep with its granite chin
brushed by the buffeting food. Its
whole face was solid rock; the forehead
trenched and furrowed like a giant
muscle-lznotted breast, the cheeks rent
and eroded by uncounted storms, while
vast slab of stone hung pendant in
the center like a nose, with others fall
en- endwise in the surf below, and lean
ing against the wind-worn lips like
shattered monoliths.
! From the crest the view was wide
and beautiful, the sea spreading out it's
ever changing plain to the horizon;
here, as the sky's moods came and
| went, q silver track, there a field of
violet, and beyond it level emerald. In
the far southwest q group of islands lay
low in the sea, like blue monsters
swimming outward, and beyond them
fleet of lumber schooners was fading
in the offing. The boy drew a long
breath of WEAKNESS as he watched
them. He could not help feeling how
sweet it would seem to be sailing away
from all the heart-brcalsing trouble that
tore his own and other bosoms there on
Beaver head.
He was leaning against tumble
down wall which crossed the crown of
the cliff few rods from where it
dropped off to meet the sea. Near by
there was a gap in the wall, evidently
once gate, and little way back along
the path an old stone house. A tall
man could almost touch the caves, but
t was wide and long, being divided into
two low but rather roomy halves,
while its walls were thick, but cracked
and matted with moss, through which
two small, square windows peered out
like sunlSen eyes, About the yard were
number of redwoods, massive and
straight, with the sea winds purring
among their branches and the sunshine
yellowing on their tops.
The house had been built, so tradi-
ton said, years before by weather
beaten old tar named Beaver, who,
strangely enough, deserted the sea for
an Indian wife and this queer shelter
on the head, only to forsalxe them in
turn to take to the sea again. Then
the seasons had flown on, and presently
village had sprung up about the inlet
bay, with great sawmills at it's inner
end, where little river brought the
logs down from the redwood forests.
Here Trave Armor. the boys father,
drifting westward through the pineries
OF Michigan and Wisconsin, and MAX
ing now and then futile stand against
drink, ill-luck and poverty, had come to
work in the mills, but failing, through
rum, drifted at last, with his ragged
flock, into the old stone hut upon the
head.
Their progress had been pitiful
enough, and Paul, the eldest of the five
children, bearing it's scars upon his
body, and its infamy in ms memory,
had felt, with every season as he pro-
gressed toward manhood, a growing
sense of blight and degradation. He
knew whence his lameness came; that
when he was a child his father once
came home in storm of drunkenness,
and being pleaded with by the boys
mother, splintered his flask of liquor
on the hearth in an ecstacy of rage,
and that he, baby crawling round the
CRATE, had Tapped at the liquid like a
lions cub licking greedily at blood, and
that his father had caught him mp in a
drunken fury and dashed him into the
| fire, from which he had come limping
thus far on the road of life.
Often he had felt something like NOR
tai hatred of his father rise within him,
and that day when he turned from
watching the lumber schooners go down
over the blue flood. and saw his mother,
worn with toll and faded with bitter
| care, bending over her washtub that
her children might have bread, an an
ger rose in his heart that was almost
| fit for taking human life. But when
his mother spoke to him in tender cheer
fulness as she always did, it vanished in
| a moment.
II need some rinsing water, Paul" :"
she said, strengthening up with difficult
ty in the steam of the tub, and stripping
the glinting bubbles from her thin,
tired arms. ''If Jimmy or Carl would
only stay round I'd have them do it, but
it seems like they're most always off
| whom needed"
''oh. III do it. mother; I'll do it!' said
the boy with a half pathetic smile. "I'm
stronger than they are, only my legs
amt so good!" And taking up wood
en- yoke with bucket attachedt to either
end. he placed it across his neck and
shoulders. and went limping down the
hillside, whistling little that his weary
mother might hear. - .-.-s.-...s1.a<1.s-------