Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1896-04-09

Z !: q: i. i" ! !
bour's We d d j n
tombstone?" said
M4ANM " grandma, in a tone
u of surprise. "For
"A II the lands sake,
" HW thought every body
&SS knew about that"
| confessed the
most abject ignorance and Immediately
drew up to the fire. This was partly to
gain information and partly because,
although the fireplace was wide and
deep-throated and big logs were blazing
in it, there were biting draughts of
stinging air coming in at the loosely-fit.
ting door. For grandmother would not
be persuaded to leave the home that had
been hers for so years, and which now
showed some signs of decay. She sat
knitting vigorously by the freight,
Tor, although she had all the modern
conveniences of heating and lighting,
her big fireplace cast it's ruddy glow
out into the room through all the long
winter evenings. | was an angular
schoolgirl of Is then, with a great love
Of the romantic, and was on four
weeks visit at the old homestead. 1t
seemed never to occur to grandma that,
having been raised in a different part of
the country, the happenings at Ragged
Corner (where she lived) would nat
urally be unknown to me. She always
expressed fresh surprise at my ig-
norance on these subjects. After knit,
ting a few minutes in silence, she be-
gan:
You've seen the old stone house down
on the bank of the river, all shut in with
pines and evergreens? It's nigh hun
, dred years old. When was born it had
been built ten years. When l was a
young married woman the Barbours
came to live there, and they were proud,
high-feeln' people that nobody could
get acquainted with. That's what made
'em take it so dretful hard when-but
here l am, way head of my story. You
see, Mr.. Barbour embezzled or did some
thing of that kind, and went to prison.
Then his wife and little boy shut
themselves up in the stone house and
never went outside the gate hardly.
She's had good deal of schoolin', his
ihoihNi ilaie, anu Silt nun lGT-
self as long as she could, and then he
bought books and studied by himself
He tried going to school when he was a
small boy, but one of the scholars
threw it at him about his father, and
Mortimer nearly killed him, and after
that his mother KEEP him home. And she
was such proud woman, was Mis- Bar
bour, and lofty and severe in her ways
She wouldn't let nobody sympathze
with her, which everybody wanted to,
as there's so little going on in a place
like Ragged Corner. Mis- Barbour was
real selfish with her grief, so she got her.
self disliked, besides folks bein' sus-
picious after the way her husband
turned out. What did they live on?
Oh, the boy farmed it, and later they do
say he wrote books on what they called
natural history, though to my mind it
was the most unnatural stuff | ever
heard tell of-all about beetles and bugs
with 300 muscles in their heads, and as
could carry 200 times their own weight
on their own backs, which everybody
knows he must have got up as he went
along. They were dretfully taken up
with each other, he and his mother,
and she believed everything he said was
so, even about the bugs and beetles.
But she was his own born mother, and
that explains it.
when she died, Mortimer liked to
went crazy. He planted her grave with
vi'lets and pansies, and at the head was
white marble monument he had gone
to the city for-nothing nearer would
suit him. But he didn't display no taste.
Nothing on it, my dear, but the old
lady's name and the date she died-not
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