The weekly Union times. [volume] (Union C.H., South Carolina) 1871-1894, 1894-04-20

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Jim Fifer lived in new house q.
the edge Of the timber short distance
from his saloon. A bright light shons
in two Of the front windows of the
house.
''They'r re MP, said Fan to herself.
"It's good thing. they are, or I'd get
'em up. My fathers earnings have
helped to pay for that house, and I've
right to stay init. I'll tell Jim Fifer
sol"
She raped loudly at the door. Jim
Fifer opened IT, Fan strode in boldly
with Carey's hand in hers.
'I guess you know ms, Jim Fifer, f"
she said, when she had closed the door
and was standing with her back against
it. She stood and looked fercely at
him, while his vile, a sad-eyed, trou.
bled-looking young woman stared at
the two children in wonder.
II don't have to tell you. Jim Fifer.
that we are Mr.. Tracy's children. He
came home from your saloon mad with
drink awhile ago and chased us out
into the cold and darkness; he's done
il many time when drink has made
him crazy. We'd no place to go, and
rs your whisky made him drive us out,
1 thought you'd feel that it was your
place to take us in"
She spoke feariessly, with her big,
shining black eyes fixed on the mans
face. One arm was thrown protect
ingly around her little brother, who
had his face in her skirts and was trem-
bling and crying with terror of the
man whom he regarded as the cause of
all their misfortune.
Before the man could make any re-
him and hid her face ON his breast. In
voice broken by sobs she cried out
pitifully:
80 james! James! is it true? Does
she tell me the truth?'
Fifer hung his head in silence, and
Fan said in q lower and gentler tone:
''It is true, every word OF it, Mrs.
Fifer. We've often been turned out
at night into the cold and the wet, and
we so ragged and hungry because Of
that saloon"
"James james! James !" cried Mrs.
Fifer, in an agony Of shame and dis
tress.
There had been strange influences at
work in jim Fifer's heart for two OF
three days; slum beriug conscience
had suddenly been quickened into life.
Several things had happened to trouble
him. Other cases of distress had come
to him, and his young wife had been
pleading with him that very evening
to forsake the business. He loved her.
and hc loved his own two little boys
sleeping safely in their beds in the
next room.
He thought Of them, and of the dis.
grace that he was piling up for their
future, as he looked at the two wet,
ragged, pale and hungry looking chill
dren of Joe Tracy.
His wife was thinking of them, too,
for she suddenly cried out in a sharper
note of pleading distress: "James,
James, think of our own two little
boys!'
81 am thinking of them, Martha,"
he said.
"Then / know what you will do,
James," she said.
He nodded his head two or three
times without speaking, and suddenly
broke away from his wife's embrace
and ran hatless from the house.
His wife turned toward the two
children, and took little Carey up into
her arms, crying over him aud kissing
him.
Five minutes later red glow illu-
mined the woods down by the Ferry.
A sheet of flame shot up among the
trees, making their black and leaness
branches stand out boldly in its light.
The flames rose higher and higher,
and Mrs. Fifer and Fan could see in
the brilliant freight bareheaded
man standing in the road with folded
arms looking at the destruction of his
casks of liquor He had dragged
them out into the road and set fire to
them.
The place at the Ferry was never
reopened as a saloon. IN the little
building Jim Fifer set up the business
of shoemaker, TO which he had been
trained. There he prospered, and be-
came q respected citizen.
My father and leveral others inter
esied themselves particularly in Tracy.
There was n little house of two or
three rooms on our farm into which
they moved. Mrs Fifer did much for
the children.
There were still remains of manli-
ness and honor in poor Tracy, and
nc o,TIIc S.snIo |ncn 4 al anSt CaIey
were proud to call him father, and
when lie was all that father ought to