The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1896-02-14

from babyhood. How they had loved
each other they couldn't tell themselves.
The tenderness had grown upon them
until it had become q grand passion,
much as the tiger gradually gains its
ferocity from the harmless playfulness
of cub.
1t was said that Clay's mother and
the old time, but had been separated by
some little act of pique on the girls part
that had been taken too much to heart
by the young man, who tore himself
away from home and did not return
until it was too late.
Perhaps ghost of the old love still
haunted them, and perhaps it was be-
cause of this that the love between
Clay and Susie had been cultivated by
the parents.
At any rate their course of true love
had run on smoothly enough until the
foolish little quarrel had made breach
that widened as the weeks went by.
At party" one evening, in early
winter, at the house of DIR. Bronson,
rector of the little Episcopal chapel in
the village, Susie had flirted desperate
" with Sam Jackson, in Clay Kings
very face.
Anyone but the blindest kind of a
lover could see that Sue was doing that
for sheer mischief. She was as nervous
about it as a timid yet proud man is
in going into battle. She laughed in a
trembling sort of way, and laughed
too much. She pretended to ignore
poor Clay, almost altogether, and yet
she was watching him, askant, with
all the eagerness of a jealous detective,
who, in disguise, is spotting his Gull
prit in q crowd.
During the evening, and it was late,
Clay lying in wait, obtained an oppor-
tunity to speak with Sue alone, yet
there were persons about them and
within earshot. He upbraided her about
her heartless treatment of him, as he
put it, and suggested something con-
corning Sam Jackson's unworthiness.
She knew, as well as Clay did, that
Jackson was cautiously dissipated, for
that was an open secret in the village,
and she knew that he was of low eXtrac-
ton and of brutal instincts, though
handsome and well-dressed, and en-
deavoring to win his way, socially, to
a better place than any of his people
had ever reached, so far as two or three
generations of Sterlingites had known.
Just as any other spirited girl would
OH m
Miss Sue resented the interference"
as she was pleased to term Clay Kings
eXPostulations, and in the warmth of
;Iil made a cutting defense of ''black
sheep" Jackson's character and gen.
eral eligibility. So. with the self
sought wound that foolish Clay King
lad obtained, he recoiled with pain
when partner at that moment claimed
Susie for waltz. and she whirled
away.
1t has been said that of all fools an
old fool is the worst, but this is so far
wrong that there is no good ground
for comparison between any sort of an
old fool, that knows enough to go in out
of the rain, and piqued young man in
love.
Otherwise Clay King would have
seen through the pranks of his adored
and adorable Sue. and paid no attention
to them whatever.
Even an old fool would have done
that, but young man in love-never!
The next foolish thing that this deep
ly-troubled and love-blinded young
man did was to steal away to the hall,
secure his hat and overcoat in an al
most sure ptitious manner, and then
gnde out the door unseen, to wade
through new-fallen snow knee-deep to
his own home.
On the following morning, having
made some ingenious excuse for it,
Clay King boarded forenoon train for
the city nearly eco miles away, where
a paternal uncle was the head of great