Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1896-09-08
THE HOUSE OF LINDEAN.
BY JOHN aEDD1E.

Barbara Rankin stood in the door
way of the old house of Lindean, looking
out into the gathering gloom of the
short November day. The cloud that
had camped since morning on Lindean
law had crept down to the low ground
with the sunsetting. The mist that had
lurlled in ambush in the marsh beneath
had stolen up the slope to meetit. These
two troops of darkness had joined
forces on tho skirts of Lindean wood:
the lonely house was enveloped in thick
coming shadows. 1t stands, as every
antiquary knows, in fold of the
smooth green hills that look across the
plain of the Merse to the far-away blue
barrier of Cheviot. Save for q shepherds
house or two, there is no dwelling of
man between it and the crest of the
Lammermuirs. Lindean itself has all
most ceased to rank among inhabited
Ifortalice, able to keep the border
thieves at bay. Ithad stood siege, had
given a title to the ancient, but decayed
family that still held it. Now, it had
fallen to the estate of a shooting-boX,
occupied for few months in the sport
ing season by tenants who knew noth-
ing and cared nothing for its story.
Everywhere about it were the signs Of
a neglected snd unhonored age. The
very ivy had begun to lose it's hold on
the walls, and hung in hideous trailing
masses about the door and the windows.
a few scrubby gooseherry bushes and
weedy rose-trees alone survived to
show where the orchard and the flower
plots had been. The outhouses were
unroofed, and the avenue of venerable
beeches and ashes was, like the mansion,
more than half ruin. The great gale
of six years back had smitten it sore.
The grandest trunks-trees as old as
the tower of Lindean itself-hud been
laid prone, and the roots still cum
bered the wood.
Barbara gazed down the dark vista
pale CLEAN of the dying day. The air
was still. Nothing came to her ears
except the pattcr of the falling leaf, and
the strangled roar Of the stream in the
cleuch below. To her it sounded like the
voice of silence and loneliness--the
dirge of the fortunes of Lindean. She
stepped across the threshold and
looked up at the escutcheon carved
above the door. 1t was too dark to
make out the familiar device of a hand
grasping the trunk of a tree, and the
motto: Time alone oye1comes me-"
But through the dusk could plainly be
deserted the fresh scars the last ten
ants of Lindean had made on the
proud crest of the Blackadders. Out of
humor at their ill-luck on the moor.
they had fired Il parting salute at the
family arms. The eyes of the faithful
old scrvitor CLEANED angrily. No Black
adder would have done such deed.
| Evil livers they might have been-dare-
devil, spendthrift, grasping. But at
least, they had always borne them
selves like gentlemen. The crude amuse-
ments and vulgar talk of these new
rich young men who had come for q
roof-tree and abuse the family gods
were enough to make the old Black
aGders turn in their graves in the aisle
of the abbey church. Had Barbara
been present she would have rescued
from this last irdigni.v the house in
which she had been born and had lived
for over GO years, even as she rescued the
great rusty Andrea Ferara that Vivian
Blackadder welded at Floddcn when
the little coclsney sportsman took il
down from its place and tried to benz
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 oil
the asionished Nimrod.
She went indoors. and lighting her
candle made her tour through the de-
serted house ere retiring for the night
one climbed the spiral staircases ant
threaded the low-vaulted passages from
story to story and from room to room
The stone pavement underfoot wa
worn and broken. The plaster hun!
in fragments from the ceilings. TIL
oak panelings and the old-fashione'
furniture had suffered sadly from tim
and i'll usage. There were chamber
in the Oldest portion of the building
! that had been boarded up and had be
come black holes, utterly abandoned t
the starlings, the owls and the bat:
Still Il dozen rooms remained in occa
sional use; and these We're under he
care. In the dining and drawing-roo