The Mena weekly star., 1896-08-26

| season fo carouse under the family 1 roof-tree and abuse the family gods, were enough to make the old Black adders turn in their graves in the aisle | of the abbey church. Had Barbara
 been present she would have rescued
 from this last indignitv the house in which she had been born and had lived
 for over 60 years. even as she rescued the great rusty Andrea Ferara that Vivian
 Blackadder wielded at Flodden when
 the little cockney sportsman took it
 down from it's place and tried to bend it double on the stone flags of the hall.
 'The fushionless body" she murmured,
 smiling grimly to herself, remember
 ing the ease wherewith she had
 wrenched the weapon from the grasp of
 the astonished Nimrod.
 She went indoors, and lighting her l candle made her tour through the de-
 serted house ere retiring for the night.
 She climbed the spiral staircases and
 threaded the lowyaulted passages from
 story to story and from room to room. I he stone pavement underfoot was worn and broken. The plaster hung
 i'll fragments from the ceilings. The
 oak panelings and the old-fashioned
 furniture had suffered sadly from time
 and i'll usage. There were chambers l in the oldest portion of the building
 thatahad been boarded up and had be-
 come black holes, utterly abandoned to the starlings, the owls and the bats Still D dozen rooms remained in occa- l Al T
 care. In the dining and drawing-rooms
 spacious, bare, low-ceilinged apart
 nents - the candle made only a small island of light, leaving the many corners and recesses in impene- trable shadow. The bangings were moth-eaten, and the family portraits on the walls were tarnished and faded. The bedrooms were in still worse case. | Nothing had been done to repair or refurnish them since the late Lord
 Lindean brought his bride hither 40 years ago. One chamber alone-what Ill other days had been known as the state bedroom-gave signs of being
 prepared for an honored guest. Fuel
 had been laid already in the grate. Un- der the heavy catafalque of the bed the coverlet had been turned down and
 the white and welI-aired sheets exposed. X pair of slippers had been placed be- side the fireplace for the half-expect- cd guest. Had Barbara's larder been searched, there would have been found 1 the materials for what Caleb Balder- | stone would have called 'cold colla- ton Her eye travelled lovingly over tbese preparations. Once more her ears listened in vain for the noise of ap- preaching wheels or hoofs in the drive without. With grief and longing on her wrinkled face. and a load of care weighing OH her gaunt and stepping shoulders, she descended slowly to her quarters in the kitchen.
 The fire of peats in the cavernous chimney had burned low. Barbara re- plenished it with wood, and, drawing her stool close to the bars, sat down with her elbows on her knees and l.er chin in her hands. Her eyes were fixed on the bands that fiared up and then sank in red embers, lighting in flashes the strong, worn features. and making her shadow dance fantastic dance on the floor and walls. Her thoughts were back in the past, follow ing the downward path Of two genera tions of the Blackadders. Forty years ago. How far away seemed those days when hope and love dwelt for brief season in Lindean tower! How fond was the old lord, then a man in his prime, of the beautiful lady whom he had brought to be the mistress of Lin dean; how proud of the bright-eyed boy, who by and by came to carry on his ancient line! But there came strife, and after it sorrow, and at length shame. The unfaithful wife was dead long ago. For 30 years and more her name had never been uttered within these walls. The spirit of the late lord had passed into the storm that wasted the wood of Lindean. Nobody mourned him unless it was Barbara herself. He grew harder and darker of mood with age and breeding on his wrongs. He never came near Lindean, except in his hlackfits. Then he would drink deep, and the place would become like hell. In those old days Barbara, too, had had her romance. That, like ali else, had turned to gail. For mement the memory of it surscd nn out of the buried past in all its bitterness. Yet worse by far than dead grief is living sorrow. On the master of Lindean, the last scion of his race, she had bestowed the treas ures of her faithful old heart. Others might blame him; to her he was ul- ways the gallant, waywnrd lad when she had scolded and petted long ago.