The River Falls times. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1894-1933, 1897-06-15


school of sea dogs which is more COM
mon in works of fiction than in the
navy list On the contrary, he was the
representative of a much more common
type which is the antithesis of the con-
ventional sailor. He was thin, hard
featured man, with. an ascetic, acqul-
line cast of face, grizzled and hollow
checked, clean-shaven with the eXcep-
ton Of the tiniest curved promontory
of ash-colored whisker. An observer,
accustomed to classify men, might nave
put him down as a canon OF the chufch
with taste for lay costume and
country life, or as the master of large
public school, who Joined his scholars
in their outdoor sports. His lips were
firm, his chin prominent, he had hard,
dry eye and his manner was precise
and formal Forty years of stern dlscl-
pine had made him reserved and
silent. Yet, when at his ease with an
equal he could readily assume less
quarterback style, and he had fund
of little, dry stories of the world and
it's ways which were of interest from
one who had seen so many phases OF
life. Dry and spare, as lean as Jockey
and as tough as Whipcord, he might ne
seen any day swinging his silver-head-
ed Malacca cane and pacing along the
suburban roads with the same meas
ured gait with which he had been wont
to tread the poop of his flagship. lie
wore a good service stripe upon MS
cheek, for on one side it was pitted anca
SCARED where a squirt of gravel knocked
up by a round shot and struck him thlr-
ty years before, when he served IN the
Lancaster gun battery. Yet he was hale
and sound, and though he was fifteen
years senior to his friend the doctor,
he might have passed as the younger
man.
Mrs Hay Denvers life had been a
very broken one, and her record upon
land represented greater amount OF
endurance and self-sacrifice than his
upon the sea. They had been together
for four months after their marriage,
and then had come a hiatus of four
years, during which he was fitting
about between ST. Helena and the Oil
Rivers in a gunboat. Then came
blessed year of peace and domesticlty,
to be followed by nine years, with only
a three months break, five upon the
Pacific station and four on the East In
dian. After that was respite in the
shape of five years in the Channel
squadron with periodical runs home,
and then again he was off to the Med
iterranean for three years and to Hall
fax for four. Now, at last, however,
this old married couple, who were still
almost strangers to one another, had
come together in Norwood, where, II
their short day had been chequered and
broken, the evening at least promised
i H. Tr0r IrC
HAY Denver was tall and stout, with
a bright, round, ruddy-cheeked face,
still pretty, with a gracious, matronly
loneliness. Her whole life was round
of devotion and of love, which was di-
vided between her husband and her
only son, Harold.
This son it was who kept them in
the neighborhood of London for the
admiral was as fond of ships and of
salt water as ever, and was as happy
in the sheets of two-ton yacht as on
the bridge of his sixteen knot monitor.
Had he been united the Devonshire or
Hampshire coast would certainly have
been his choice. There was Harold, how
ever, and Harolds interests were their
chief care Harold was four and-tWenty
now. Three years before he had been
taken in hand by an acquaintance of his
fathers, the head Of a considerable firm
of stock brokers, and fairly launched
upon Change. His three hundred guinea
entrance fee paid, his three sureties of
five hundred pounds each found, his
name approved by the committee, and
all other fOrmalities complied with, he
found himself whirling round an in
significant unit in the vortex of the
money market of the world. There, I'M
der the guidance of his fathers friend,
he was instructed in the mysteries of
bulling and of bearing, in the strange
usages of Change in the intricacies of
carrying over and of transferring. He
learned to know where to place his
clients money, which of the jobbers
would make a price in New Zealands,
and which would touch nothing but
American rails, which might be trusted
and which Stunned. All this, and much
more, he mastered, and to such purpose
that he soon began to prosper, to retain
the clients who had been recommended
the work was never congenial. He had
inherited from his father his love of the
air of heaven, his affection for a manly
and natural existence. To act as middle
man between the pursuer of wealth
and the wealth which he pursued, or to
stand as human barometer, register
ing the rise and fall of the great mann
mon pressure in the markets, was not
the work for which Providence had