Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1897-09-04

II didn't mean to, Carey. I'll walk
, slower now"
In halt an hour they came to jim
: Fifer's saloon down by the ferry. The
little one roomed framed house waz
dark, and Fan shook her fist savagely
toward it as she hurried by with Carey
! clinging close to her side.
an do this neighborhood a good
, service by Kidding it of you. I'd dc
lit this very minute if I didn't have
, Carey with me-" she gasped.
Jim Fifer lived in new house at
the edge of the timber short distance
from his saloon. A bright light shone
in two of the front windows of the
house.
"They're up," said Fan to herself.
"It's good thing they are, or I'd get
'eh up. My fathers earnings have
helped to pay for that house, and I've
a right to stay in it. I'll tell Jim Fifer
so !"
She raped loudly at the door. Jim
Fifer opened it. Fan strobe in boldly
with Carey's hand in hers.
II guess you know US, Jim Fifer," ="
she said, when she had closed the door
and was standing with her back against
lit. She stood and looked fercely at
him, while his wife, sad-eyed, trou-
bled.looking young woman stared at
the two children in wonder.
"I don't have to tell you, Jim Fifer,
that we are Mr.. Tracy's children. He
came home from your saloon mad with
drink awhile ago and chased us out
into the cold and darkness; he's done
it many time when drink has made
him crazy. We'd no place to 60, and
as your whisky made him drive us
out, I thought you'd feel that it was
your place to take US in"
She spoke fearlessly, with her big,
shining black eyes fixed on the mans
face. One arm was thrown protect
ingly around her little brother, who
had his face in her skirts and was
trembling and crying with terror of
the man whom he regarded as the
cause of all their misfortune.
Before the man could make any re.
ply his wife uttered cry, and ran to
him and hid her face on his breast. In
a voice broken by sobs she cried out
pitifully:
"Oh James! James! is it true?
Does she tell the truth?
Fifer hung his head in silence, and
Fan said in lower and gentler tone /:
1T is true, every word of it, Mrs.
Fifer. We've often been turned out
at night into the cold and the wet, and
we 60 ragged and hungry because of
that saloon"
flames James! James ~ cried
Mrs. Fifer, in an agony of shame and
distress.
There had been strange influences
at work in Jim Fifer's heart for two
or three days; a slumbering con,
science had suddenly been quickened
into life. Several things had happen
ed to trouble him. Other cases of dis
tress had come to him, and his young
wife had been pleading with him that
very evening to forsake the business.
He loved her, and he loved his own
two little boys sleeping safely in their
beds in the next room.
He thought of them, and of the dis
grace that he was piling up for their
future, as he looked at the two wet,
ragged, pale and hungry-looking chill.
dren of Toe Tracy.
His wife was thinking of them, too,
for she suddenly cried out in a sharper
note of pleading distress: "James
James! think of our own two little
boys!" :,
III am thinking of them, Martha" I"
he said.
"Then I know what you will do,
James," she said.
He nodded his head two or three
times without speaking, and suddenly
broke away from his wife's embrace
and ran hatless from the house.
His wife turned toward the two
children, and took little Carey up into
her arms, crying over him and kissing
him.
Five minutes later a red glow illum-
ined the woods down by the Ferry.
A sheet of fame shot up among the
trees, making their black and leafess
branches stand out boldly in its light.
The flames rose higher and higher,
and Mrs. Fifer and Fan could see in
the brilliant freight a bareheaded
man standing in the road with folded
arms looking at the destruction Of his
casks of liquor. He bad dragged
them out into the road and set fire to
them.
The place at the Ferry was never
reopened as q saloon. In a little
building Jim Fifer set up the business
of shoemaker, IT, which he had been
trained. There he prospered, and be-
came respected citizen.
My father and several others inter-
ested themselves particularly in Tracy.
There was little house of two or
three rooms on our farm into which
they moved. Mrs. Fifer did much for
the children.
There were still remains of manli-
ness and honor in poor Tracy, and the
time came when Fan and Carey were