Wood River times. [volume] (Hailey, Idaho) 1882-1915, 1893-09-18

wind outside and the raindrops had
stopped to listen to hint have come
tonight to explain, to help you to ex-
plain, some things which you find mex
plicable. You have been wondering
and Tuning and fretting, cursing the
unknown origin of your sorrow, and
even blaming with bitter rashness the
stable equity Of chance. Your grief in
this is my grief, and both might end,
he murmured, with gentle, courtierly
inflexion suiting him strangely, IF you
will but lend yourself to me. Now, he
said, gliding gently up until I felt the
thrill of the cold, smooth presence that
hung about him, nov! think, remem-
Der: back! son of hundred fathers;
back into the dim; back up the long
Der, conjure you'll" and he laid light,
touch of it every fiber in me began
fiercely pulsing, my breath came
thick and short, my head grew
light and giddy, all the real about me
became dissolved into vague imma-
terial shadow; I-me, the hard material
passion-aching me-and the solid life
around was wiped out, and down 1
went, out OF my own control, down the
plane of the immaterial into fantastic
world, remembering at that tragic
touch al. everything l had done, step
by step backward into the past, my
wondering wide-eyed consciousness re-
coded, watching that immortal ego
which was myself, shrink from man
hood down to badness, and then ma
terialize again into another life in an
other age, and heave and push and
struggle, and shout and laugh and cry,
and, ever acting as though that life it
lived upon the minute were the only
one, the while it floundered slowly
through ambiguous sloughs toward the
pale deathless glimmer of that distant
godly hope which was it's life and be-
ing-back reeled my consciousness
back by death beds and affairs and
cradles, and cradles and death beds
and affairs; at one minute of
that compressed understanding l
saw myself loathsome for base
design and deed, and then the
rhythm OF that ceaseless struggle for
the better which my ego waged mend
ed as the baseness mended; at one min
ute my staggering, startling conscious
ness saw itself gray and lean and
wrinkled-stretched in courtly obse-
quies upon a bed of silk and minever-
and then as soldier hot and young,
waving broken hilt In the thick red
tangles OF charging squadrons; at one
minute OF those lives that flashed in
eddless sequence before their liver,
that liver sunk in shameful hopeless
ness, scarcely lived, and then anon-at
a hairs breadth interval-he rose
to heroic heights. l could not
stand the stress Of that wild vision,
and presently ceased recalling all on a
sudden, the material materialized
again, and with gasp I was myself
the Opaque curtain of corporal being
clouded my mind, leaving only vague
consciousness behind that had forgot
ten something had lately remembered.
Back again, sweet kinsman," cried
the shadow, standing right in front of
me. Back again, sweet comrade; back
into the black sea of the forgotten for
that great pearl of fact you have not
found, and he touched me once more
upon the wrist.
l struggled; would not go; gasped,
and in minute had gone down again
and was spinning down long dim vistas
of the bye and done with, until I came
at last, by episode of love and fear and
hate and redeeming sadness, back to
where two half-brothers jointly owned
Jul iuuu. I11S was Vic hcFucl VI Ill.
The elder of those two close comrades
was learned and gentle, serene in his
confidence of the brother whose loyal
friendship made half the sweetness of
the wide dominion that they shared.
Another breathing space, and 1 saw
mad envy growing in the younger till it
ripened into malice and savagery pic
tured against the dark background of
nv fancy in his avcrv nose and peSfura
and lastly, in one minute of shame and
sorrow incredible, saw him decoy the
other to pleasant tryst and stab him
most fOully in the back-stab him twice
and thrice till he lay bloody and dead
in the screen of the woods, and all for
the sake OF few more acres; then
sneaking home, traitor, no less than
coward. l saw him, by lies and forgery,
brand with infamy the true wife and
children Of that brother; and as he rose,
wicked and flushed and triumphant on
their ruin, undivided master of Wan
leigh ana Worsborough, Of TOrsonce