Hot Springs weekly star. (Hot Springs, S.D.) 1892-1917, 1896-11-20

emphasis of people
who take the downward view, a very bad
citizne.
When his wife died he seemed to awake
with q sudden shock to the issues of life
and the fact of death. lie had loved her
with ail that marvellous depth of tender
ness, that inconsistent fervor which some
times underlies the weakest natures.
In the newness of his grief he foreswore
his old ways and habits. He knew him
self to be weak. He fnncied the way to
strength of resistance lay along the road
of seif-eXile to TRANCE scenes and un-
familiar faces-that road we'll worn by the
restless feet of those who fly from the
battle within to a an unequal struggle
with the allies without.
He left his little son, made doubly dear
to him by the sense of loss, with his wife's
cousin, gave to her what money he could
spare for the child's support, promised to
send more ut regular intervals, and de-
parted westward.
=
More thar a year later he reused him
self as if the finger of Gate had touched
him. He remembered. with an anguished
regret, that he had failed again; that for
months he had drifted from place to
place, he himself SCARCELY knew where or
how. He remembered that his promised
remittances for the boy had ceased. He
saw himself broken in strength, in health,
in spirit. He felt suddenly overpowered
with the consciousness OF his own weak
ness. and, us a drowning mans arms
:each wildly out toward any illusion of
help, his thought went out toward his
child.
1t seemed to him that the love of his
boy could save him. The miracle of sal
walton became to him possible. wherein a
little child, strong in low and innocence
and faith, should lift the fainting, failing
manhood of the man.
A passionate yearning seized him to
fold again to his heat the little form. to
feel ABOUT his neck the c%linging arms. to
hear again the lisping words which came
to his weakened memory like distant
echoes in a dream. And then he remem-
bered the day when first the child was
laid in his arms; he remembered the
thrill, the wonder. the first pride of fifth
erhood. Then, in broken glimpses, as a
fair landscape is seen between blurs of
mist, there came to him memories in swift
succession, of the growth. the incidents
of the child's few years.
II must go to him." whispered the man
with a gasp, as he lifted his head from
his hands. His face was flushed, tears
stood in his eyes. His resolution was
carried out with feverisb haste, and he
turned his face to the East.
His wife's relative had little excuse for
him. She had long considered him n
hopeless vagabond. So when he appeared
suddenly, as from the possible, and. in
her opinion, better, dead. she was not nre-
pared To receive him with especial cordinl-
ity. The story was soon told. The how
had died months before. He slept by his
mother. No one had known where to nd
dress the father, who was supposed to
have forgotten he had Il son. She was
really not much surprised at the apathy
with which the father listened. It was
consistent with her estimate of his char.
acter. She had no means of knowing
that his faculties were stunned. But she
was astonished beyond measure when. in
a mechanical way, he insisted upon giving
her money for the expense Of caring for
and burying the boy.
then. abruptly but quickly, he said:
"Good-by, I'm going bnck."
He knew that his hope was dead: he
felt the certainty of fall now that nothing
remained to him to lean upon. But he
| thought of other things.
A sleety mist filled the air, sparkling in
the street lights like a may shower of
brilliants. The particles stung his face
like elm arrows. His features were
tense and rigid. His eyes were hot and
dry and his head ached with a dull, in
sistent, m%addening pain. He passed the
colored globes of a drug store and stopped.
Red, violet, and green the shafts of light
pierced the dark. The people about him
seemed shadows, the sound of their voices
leagues away. Dlmly he remembered a
prescription for an opiate he had used for
headaches like that. Plumbing in his
pockets he found t., paper and entered
the sto,e.
] "Aake twice the number OF powders"