Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1893-12-23

u6uiys dU SOLu0 SUTOk0 VI uI-4uCkt buic
blasphemer broke into a torrent of
curses that made his fellows shrink
away from him with pale faces. In
the midst Of it the cabin door was
burst violently open, and what they
described afterward as bowling blast,
with sounds OF men and horses, drove
through the place. The table and
light were overturned. The gamblers
were down on their faces When all
was silent agaiu, and some one sum-
moned up courage to light match,
the man who had sworn was dead,
suddenly dead, as if killed by light
ming, but wit no cause to show.
] told this story to my companion as
we went. alOng-also another tradi-
tion of the place; that 1t was once a
pleasant little home among the apple
trees, long ago. before the famine of
As had given Irish vitality stroke
from which it still suffers. A widow
and her two rosy-cheeked growing
girls lived there. Then there came
the time when there was little or no
food. Enough POTATOES, perhaps, to
tide one person over the hard winter,
eked out by the few hens and other
humble live stock. So the girls, Nora
and Katy, made up their minds to go
to America and make home for the
mother there She would follow
them in the spring. The neighbors
would be good to her, ana she would
keep her heart alive in the hope of re-
union. They went with prayers and
kisses and tears. Perhaps she couldn't
have borne to let them CO. only the
skin was already loose on the faces
that had been so plump, and the
girls lips were growing blue with the
famine. She could not keep them to
become gaunt skeletons like some
that she had shuddered at. She let
them 60, druggihg herself with
dreams Of speedy reunion. Alas,
their ship went down in midocean
and every soul persisted. News came
to land by means Of a few floating
planks, and was spelt out in the vii
lage forge by the reader. who was
giving less lucky folk the benefit of his
learning by transIating for them the
contents Of the papers. Some busy
body carried the news to the widow.
The sudden telling snapped her
sanity. When kind people stole to
be with her in her trouble she was
gone; the house door open, but Of her
neither tale nor tidings. For more
than forty years no tidings of her had
come, and any who ever thought of
her-but those of her own generation
were very old-concluded she was
was long ago with her little girls in
that distant country that is Heaven.
The stories but excited the inter-
est of my adventurous friend. She
would peep in at the broken windows
of the haunted house. At first she
begged for my company, but / had
never been near the place, and should
never dare to brave its memories. 1
waited for her on the road while she
lightly ran over the grass-grown
path. The mist was forming white
walls all about. In the distance
where the wan sky turned pale as
silver the reflect on below was like
silver mirror. A tree in the hedge
row tinkled its leaves like the tink-
ling Of barley. The water was sulk-
ing somewhere out of sight. Sud-
denly my friend was at my side with
the rapidity of a startled deer. ooh,
come away" she said, there's some
one, something, in that awful house."
[ didn't need her dragging me by
the hand to run noiSelessly-a if we
feared some unknown terror hearing
our feet in the mist-between the
hedgerows pale with the
gold Of withered leaves, till we were
in the world again, the world of in
habited lodges and road-menders
their shingles, and a soli-
tary plowman whose assistance we
knew we could trust to driving his
patient team up and down the lonely
upland. Then we leant in view of
him over wall that had once walled
in quarry and found our voices.
Peering in at the window she had |
yaZed second or two at the place
full of shadows, till she had made
)ut one that looked like a human
shape covering by what was once the
She did not look twice,
but fed back to me with her heart in
her mouth.
We were in a mood to believe it
anything-ghOst or banshee, ur even
that most horrible of Irish spooks,
the Watcher by the Ford. However,
4 day or two later / heard that old
Moll Donovan had come back Where
she had been in the interval God
knows-in the I'auper lunatic asylum
IF some county, most probably, for
her gown of blue check looked like
uniform. She was quite harmless,
poor thing, as the old neigh ors
found out presently. Her mind had
stopped short at the hour before she
heard the girls were drowned. Find
ing her so harmless the country peo-
Pile were well disposed to take her as
in trust from God They tidied ur
the place for her as well as long de-
cay would permit them, and put in
few sticks of flIrnifurn Che ocoaptod