The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-11-10
TALES OF TEN TRAVELLERS.
The Dentville Awakening.
BY EDGAR [. wAxnnAs.

BY EDGAR |. wAxEMAN.
 Copyright, 1894. All rights rcserved.l
 The early winter winds were whis- tling wildly across the gray New Eng land hills and beating piaintive threno- dles through the ancient elms and ma ples which swayed and lashed above the streets and homes of quaint old Dentville. huddling sleepily and conn fortabiy beneath.
 Al this day and all the day and night before. with the bitter blast had come the stinging sieet. It had sleeted the walls of stone winding along the high ways and lanes and between the tiny farms. until they shone like polished marble. It had pointed the stubble in the fields until 1t stood like myriad barbs of steel. It had armored the out lying shocks of corn until they paled and flashed like ghostly sentinels at their posts, and had mantled the peaked stacks beside the farmsteads along the llillsides until they seemed like gigantic cowls of huddled monks at prayer.
 From end to end of Dentvilie its broad-roofed homes lay silvered. ice bound and clutched as in remorseless iron hand: and as with 1.-the and cruel rods of steel the fierce swirls of broken ice prisms. cones and circlets swept from the tossing limbs above, had scourged the village folk from strag- gling streets to homes.
 If the dominating spirits of such ele- mental hours have consciousness, as the day wore on they could not but nave noticed that the storms power seemed to have greatest force and fury at four separate points within and about the little village.
 One of these was where mass of stately larches threateningly twisted around and over a great stone mansion, at the highest and most exposed .por- tion of the principal village street, and where a ,i,ard-faced old man stood at the broad windows of his ample home. looking with unre1enting and almost triumphant face into the deserted street below. ....-..s
 Another was where great elms. in a protecting hollow square, came between the village church, and entirely around, the pretty village parsonage. The structure was set back little from the street, and was reached from the road way through rows of box and lilac where, in summer, birds must have come and built and sung: and at the dainty latticed window of this parson- age a mans sad and thoughtful fcce was pressed. in mute seeming that its possessor's heart was troubled for the hurts which winter ever brings.
 Still another. was just at the village edge, in the middle of a stony field: a long, low, rarapling structure cheerless as the storm swept, out-jutting rocks around 1t; comfortless as the ghostly hills which made it's pftiless horizon; lightless as the shuddering night which was closing in upon 1t; more hopeless to Its inmates than icy storms, granite rocks or even death; for here was one of those sublimate antitypes of New Eng land Christian charity, the village poor-house; the very starveling trees around it beating it's icy shingles as if in bitter taunt and menace at the half starved wretches beneath. And well 1t was for the peace of Dentville that what faces, if any. pecred from these rattling windows. were safely hidden by distance from village eyes below.
 The last, was where a half dozen gi- gantic silver poplars whipped and mcened above the village tavern, Though 1t stood in a little hollow, over against the village post-office and gen. eral store: though it was surrounded and protected by rising ground on the one side and fine old out buildings on the other: though the elms and the ma- pies opposite should have broken the fierce of, the blast, and this place of all places in Dentville been qu;et and hush full in the f1ercest of storms. 1t seemed that the elements now combined in most furious pranks and antics about 1t.
 It's ancient sign swung wildly and groaned dismally. It's great chimneys gave out hoarse murmurings It's di- nfinutive windows rattled and trembled as though every succeeding blast would beat them in. It's tiny shutters were torn from their fastenings. The pop lars above 1t seemed writhing and bending as If about to crash through its warped and slivered roof.
 And aklif in keeping with the intensi- ty of the elemental struggles around and above this old Red Lion Inn of Dentvtile, the most pitiful and desper- ate face that had ever been seen in the villagea womar's face from whac1, the last gleam of hope had been effaced as though by thhs very storm--was now and then pressed against Its Icy win dow panes.
 If, too. such relentless forces of na- ture could be conscious and all-obser- want, 1t would have been noticed that at least three of the wild storm-centers in Dentville had their corresponding surgings of troublous human emotions housed beneath chem.
 S More, unaccpuntable still, the three faces at the three separate windows, that ofsthe chief mansion Of the village.