Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1896-09-06

10 be led to the water-s.de to Willingly
wash and be clean. But l begin TO
fear that I have deceived myself.
Aloud he said:
Were l on my property, might al
low i. % be ruined If | chose, though 10
do Sd would be not beneyolence, but
weakness. Here, however, l have no
! cholce. am but the servant OF others.
l must enforce what know to be right.
"They will kill you.
THAT must be as 1t will. Threatened
men usually live lonG
mot always; and not here"
Then she resumed her work. and the
paHid ruStIrg ribanda Of tle canes fell
beneath her rusty biair.
And whoever Stays you" she aided
as she worked, will never be found.
Everybody will make common cause
with him. Everyone will be for him,
risk all for him, hide n their beds,
swear falsely for him by the Madonna's
self. He will be beloved Of all, and
pass safely by signs from house %
house, village to village, from province
to province. The law will never get
hold of his little finger. The hatred of
I>the stranger is more binding than
oaths."
Then why do you not share it?"
Why?"
She did not know why She had not
| asked herself. Certlinly sLe ought to
be ON the side of her own people, and
not his. Why was she not so?
You are in the right" she said SIM
ply; ''and you are alone against hun
dreds. | have never been at one with
my fathers people. My mother was a
woman of Viterbo. l lived with ne: in
Viterbo till She died. She had left my
father because he was wicked and cruel.
She was good; so good! She taught
me to see that the ways they follow
here are evil. They are bad men, as
my father was. And they have no love
for the woods. You have. And now
good-day. They had best not see you
here. They will think we plot some
mischief against them"
She bound all the cut canes together
in one bundle, heaved them upward On
TO her head, and when loaded Ven,
| away along the banks OF the stream,
walking erect and swiftly. the great
! sheaf swaying as she moved.
He looked at her as he might nave
! looked at some statue cXhuned from
| The soil. She was as seXless as sta
| tue to him: he wore the ice 2rnor Of
an absorbing and desD,i"ng passion,
which left him neither sigh, nor sense
/ for any. more fugitive feelings.
But she had shown o comprehension
OF his position, Of his motives, of his
| difficulties, which was welcome in the
| Isolation whsnein he lived, and made him
! grateful to her, as he would have been
| for the sympathy Of some other man.
He discerned the intelligence which
shone through the fog of her Ignorance,
and he appraised at its duo value the
courage which kept her in perpetual OPP
position to those with whom she livec.
Her warnings did not influence his
conduct, but he knew that they were
founded on a just estimate OF those
with whom she lived.
Her warnings did not influence his
conduct. but he knew that they were
founded on a just estimate OF those
around him. They weighed, however,
but little upon him, because his phil
osophy was fatalistic and he had that
apatheMc Indifference to danger which
comes from extreme unhappiness IN
life. When you have lost all except
actual existence, 1t seems to matter lit
! lie II sheer existence be taken as we'll
He had been eighteen months in these
woods. seeing no faces but those Of
peasants hostile to him, and eXchang-
| ing no single word with anyone Of cui-
tured intelligence. Murella was .gnor-
ant as anyone of the sheep, who only
knew their winter and summer tracks;
hit she understood with her heart, il
not with her mind. and he found relief
in telling her a little Of those odd for
gotten far-off things" which seemed to
him so many seasons Of time away,
though they belonged in truth only 10
his own life Of a year or two earlier
II did him good to call up that past,
those scenes, all those who had been
with him in his daily life; it relieved
him of that daZed sense OF unreahty
which came upon him as upon man IN
the solitude of a condemned cell.
Once he spoke Of tbs woman he loved
not by name, but as Surrey might
have spoken OF Geraldine with bad
breath and unuttered prayer; and hay
ing thus spoken once he did so oga n
and yet again, tracing her portrait in
words. pressing the dagger Of regret
into his heart as lovers Fave TO do in
every age. And Mirella listened,
growing pale, hanging on his words,
till IN her rude fancy an image shaped
itself from his words clothed IN star
light. crowned with the pale hellebore
fugitive. spiritual. unreachable. I'M
agination was dormant N her; 1t caught
light at the fame Of his higher in,eili-
gence. She could not see clearly by it,.
but she saw a ray before her feet-a
soft faint green light ike that OF the
glowworm IN the woodland paths, the
raw of awaking comprehension, WIN
its companion pain. .
She did not know why she thought or
tha unknown lady thus. Perhaps It was
because when ne first spoke OF her. the
hellebore was in blossom all over the
awakening woods.
II aid not occur to him that he did a
cruel thing in interesting thus in his
feta = moor untutored maiden; he scarce
" thought OF her at all; he spoke to her
because he read loyalty and sympathy
in her gaze as in the eyes OF dog; and
because he was weary Of the long, dumb,
fr;pndless frost in which his mind and
memories were imprisoned.
"You will go back" she said to him
one dav when the grief which was in
him broke down his courage and his
resignation and she saw grea, tears rise
slowly TO his eyes.
He gave a gesture Of despair. "Ah,
never"