Waterbury evening Democrat., 1891-05-05
IN THE MIDDLE WEST.
A Story of Life in the Great
 Mississippi Valley.

1OWn III ttu VI SAAOA boAOAS o'iSAAAs tOh! can never come nearer to you han this? Must never hear your oices. never feel your kisses. never. ,eyer. hear you call me son. or tell mo
 am welcome homeP Ohi who did his awful wrongr Who robbed me ioreyer of youP It's too hard! it's too lardir and he wept like Ohild there n the silence. Afterwards he stood a ong time leaning with bowed head against the worm-eaten mantel before which his mother had waited on that atal night SO long ago, and tried to 'ancy something of the life which once lad filled the place with sunshine.
 At last he found the stair and climbed that creakIhg, cobweb-garlanded way of gloom into the chambers above. In some of the rooms the clustering had iallen from half the ceiling. and little fight was Altering through the lattice of lath, showing that here and there the roo :had been eaten through by rain and storm, and in one, near the caves. the great branch of an oak came through like an elbow.
 After time he groped his way back to the better lighted room he first en- tered and looked slowly and reverently through the old spider-haunted case of
  had his mothers name upon the fly leaf, and he took them down and brushed them carefully and put them back. In the drawers were letters and papers, a few of which he took to the window and examined. some under standingly and with feeling of near ness to the period when his parents | lived. Then he went out and walked about on the crown of the hill where Mrs Tressler had told him his parents were inferred, but he could not find their graves, and after looking awhile at what their eyes must often have rested upon, the great white valley of the Ohio rolling its silver into the south. he went sadly back to the town.
 What could this search he had en- tered upon bring him in the endP Could so old mystery be soluble? Had he not better go back to Open- stone and to workp No; he was tired; he had not rested a day in seven years; he wouldQgo on, he cared not how slowly. Was not she to the south of himp
 He had not thought of going to the city where Celeste lived, but his step quickened as her slender, Imping fig ure fitted through his fancy, and looking up he saw the house where Ivyl Snaer once lived. He looked at it curiously, and wondered where or If ever he should see that being who had owned it. But another dwelleI held it now, and he went onward to the town.
 After dinner he purchased a box oi matches and some candles and re- , turned to the old haunted house in the | hillside thicket At midnight he was , still there, and when the next midnight l came he had not quit the place. Not a r little startled were the countryside ] folk who passed that way, and saw { l gray plume of smoke wavering III among the trees from chimney of th' , old house, which stood fairly at th' foot of it's murdered masters grave. John Earling himself heard strange fearful noises as he sat like ghost b! his candle in the dead stiffness of thu musty rooms, but he was free of super stition, and ere long he gave no hee' to the rats rumbling about the garrets or the moaning and creaking of rub ping troe-boughs upon the roof an' under the caves, for he was deep in tn story of his parents love and youth as revealed in the packets of letters h had found in a chamber-closet. Yer strange and sad it., was to him, and hi eyes were often wet Then there weE other letters; some from his father one brother, who died before Joh Earling was born, and 8 few shoI ones from Joel Whitney after he ha
 gone West when young man. Ther were also some from people of whoI he had no knowledge, and some to hi
 mother calling her sister," date \ Charleston, S. c. Clearly he had ha ' an aunt living there, and he wondere \ if she were yet alive, Nothing, how \ ever, could be found that pointed
 the tragic close of what had once bee
 beautiful within these rooms; so. tai
 ing his parents pictures and leavin
 some smoldering embers in the fir
 place, he looked mute farewell aboI
 him, and, closing the window as be
 he could, went wearily through tt
 darkness that just precedes the morl . ing back to the town.
 After breakfasting he conyersed
 while with the effusive squire, and @,
 changing farewells with the Tressler
 and hearing Q faF-off exolamRtor .. Hettic Spavin as he walked away, u 9' young man boarded a train and WI
 whirIed away into the South.
 An inclination leading to CeIest S which, not unlike 8 soft inverted sta
 burned ever at the bottom of his Tiff
 with its dim reflection glancing throug all the avenues and currents of aS feeling, seemed to glow and enlar:
 within him. He was going throus
 Cincinnati; there the lark-throatl
 Celeste had homo with her de;
 mothers best friend. and employ, tS her lovely gift in school of must
 He would stop there; but no; when
 neared the place he knew he could nc rs Something like a stain, marin likeness, stamped into his youl
 spirit by the hot contact of
 half-polluted nature, seemed yet IS. mako him unworthy. He cou
 not come to her now; thouj
 why, or that he ever should, seem r, half in doubt. His life, so direct