The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-05-08
AN UP-COUNTBY B0M11NCE,
Not Much Plot in It, But Good Allow

" nlIls AIlu yet Anll dlWdSo hhSN
 that she would some day marry the bis
 farmer lad who shouldered his way
 round to where she sat at the huskine bees, donation parties, and such enter
 tainments as gave enjoyment to the
 rustic youth of Nunda twenty years ago. Even at the age of twelve, wher
 Ann attended the district school along
 with Tom Mason and the other boys
 and girls of their section of Livingston
 county, the loutish lad took it upon
 himself to champion the little girl
 whom he was to marry, and whose life
 he was to fill with misery in coming years. Tom would walk home with the
 little girl from school, keeping the dis | tance of a diffident boy of that age, but | would guard her with a jealous eye.
 Many were the fights that Tom figured
 in simply because some daring urchin
 cast his eyes over the benches to where
 Ann sat at her studies. This Is all ac-
 cording to the story that Mrs. Mason
 now tells to her attorney,
 Time went on in its usual way, and
 the boy and girl grew to young man
 hood and young womanhood. Still Tom
 Mason kept his watch over Ann, and,
 though there were young men who CO., vertly threw their eyes in the direction
 of Ann, not one dared to make open ad- vances.
 Ann did not know that she cared par ticularly for Tom, but he was the only young man with whom Ann had ever
 kept company" and besides she had a sort of fear of his jealous rage. In
 these days of Trilby the influence exert
 ed by young Mason might have been called hypnotic. At that time it was not called anything, other than that
 Mason was called Ann's 'fstiddy comp ny" Although Ann did not especially care for Mason, she now says that she always knew that she was going to marry him. Never did she have a doubt, even when a rupture came.
 One fall a gay young butcher named Odell blew into the town of Nunda buy ing cattle. For a week or more he cir cled among the farmers there talking of the short crop of hay, the expense of keeping stock through the long winter months, and the cheapness of beef Odell was gay and attended the parties with the other youths. His stay was cut suddenly short by the receipt of letter one day from Mason. Odell had had the presumption to cast sheeps eyes at Ann, and Mason had forthwith addressed an invitation to him to meeting behind the church sheds, which meeting Mason proposed with view to shooting an ordinary sized hole through the person of his guest as a re- ward for his hardihood. Odell waa not at the meeting.
 But Odell was pleased with the stock that he had purchased and returned in the spring to buy calves. It is to be presumed that he was armed with the expectation of an encounter with Ma son, for he secured board at the home of Ann Carlisle. But tho encounter did not come. In place of Mason calling Odell to account he threw his soul into abuse for Ann. He circulated wrong stories about her and finally capped all by not going to see her. But even then his control over her was not lost. Odell proposed to her, but she declined, say ing that she would marry no one but Mason. At this time Mrs. Mason says that she did not love the man who was to become her husband. She feared him. At this time, too, Mason had not yet asked her to marry him. Herein lies the strangeness of her case, which ordinarily would be but a simple suit for alimony.
 Odell went away, but returned again in the fall During his absence not a word passed between Ann and Tom Ma son. She would have been as willing to talk to him as ever, she says, but he | passed her by on the road and never | looked at her. Odell asked her to mar ny him again, and again he was met | with the same answer. There was no | talk about the matter in the neighbor- | hood. The neighbors simply said that | Ann had missed her chance to marry a | thrifty young man and would die an | old maid.
 So time went on in the manner quite | usual with time, until one day in April, | 1875. The chipmunk had come out of | his hole beneath a stump in the front l yard of the residence of Farmer Car- | lisle, and sat upon the stump chirping | a greeting to the catbird recently ar- rived from the south. Ann remembers | this little feature now, for there is very | little that she does not remember about | that day, which she considers the most | eventful in her life. She was thirty | years of age on that day and as she | passed down through the front yard to the gate past the chipmunk and the bird the sun was shining. Not word had passed between Mason and herself | from the time he had first taken of- fence on account of Odell While she was hanging on the gate Mason came along with a load of beans, which he lad held over the winter with the eX- oectation of a rise in price. Ann did not expect him to stop or speak to her, put he did.
 As Mason came opposite the gate he turned his head and nodded. Ann jmiled and nodded her head in return. Then Tom drove up to the gate and stopped.
 "Ann," said Tom, i've must get mar ied4P l