The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-03-24
SELECTED STORY.
The Home.C Coming Of Colonel Hucks.

with white canvas turned to the right
on the California road, and took O
northerly course toward the prairie
stream that nestled just under a long,
low bluff. When the white pilgrim,
jolting over the rough unbroken ground,
through the tall "blue stem" grass,
reached a broad bend in the stream, ii
stopped. A man and a woman emerged
from under The canvas, and stood for a
moment facing the wild, green meadow
and the distant hills. The man was
young, 1.-THE, aud graceful, but despite
his boyish figure, the woman felt his
unconscious strength, as he put his
arm about her waist. She was aglow
with health; her fine, strong, intelli-
gent eyes burned with hope, and her
firm jaw was good to behold. They
stood gazing at the virgin field a mo-
ment in silence. There we're tears in
the woman's eyes, as she looked up
after the kiss and said:
"And this is the end of our wedding
Journey; and-and-the honeymoon
the only one we can ever have in all
the worlds over"
The horses moving uneasily in their
sweaty harness, cut short the mans
reply.
When he returned, his wife was get
ting the cooking utensils from under
the wagon, and life-stern, troublous-
had begun for them.
1t was thus that young Colonel Will
liam Hucks brought his wife to Kansas.
They were young, strong, hearty peo-
Pile and they conquered the wilderness.
A home sprang up in the elbow of the
stream. In the fall, long rows of corr
shucks trailed what had been the
meadow. In the summer the field
stood horse-high with corn. From the
bluff, as the years flew by, the spectator
might see the checkerboard of the
farm, clean cut, well kept, smiling in
the sun. Little children frolicked in
the king row, and hurried to school
down the green lines of the lane, where
the hedges grow. Once, a slow pro-
c%ession, headed by a spring wagon with
a little black box in it, might have been
seen filing between the rows of the
half-grown poplar trees and out across
the brown stubble-covered prairie, to
the desolate hill and the graveyard.
There were years when the light in
the kitchen burned far into the night,
when two heads bent over a table, fig
uring to make ends meet. In these
years the girlish figure became bent,
and the light faded in the woman's
eyes, while the 1.-the figure of the man
was gnarled by the rigors of the strug-
gle.
There were days-not years, thank
God-when lips forgot their tenderness;
and as fate tugged fercely at the curb
ed bit there were times when souls re-
belled and cried out in bitterness and
despair at the roughness of the path.
In this wise went Colonel Hacks and
his wife through youth into maturity,
and in this wise they faced towards the
sunset.
He was tall with a stoop, grizzled,
brawny, parhaps uncouth in mien.
She was stout, unshapely, rugged, yet
her face was kind and motherly. There
was a boyish twinkle left in her hus-
bands eyes, and a quaint, quizzing,
one-sided smile often stumbled across
his care-furrowed c~ountenance. As
the years passed, Mrs. Hucks noticed
that her husbands foot fell heavily
when he walked by her side, and the
psng she felt when she first observed
his ~plodding step was too deep for
tears. 1t was in these days that the
minds of the Huckses unconsciously
reverted to old times.
1t became their wont, in these latter
days, to sit in the silent house, whence
the children had gone out to try issue
with the world, and of evenings to talk
of the old faces and of the old places in
the home of their youth. Theirs had
been a pinched and busy life. They
hol nauar rat,rnoJ IN uso;t %ha.r old
Ohio home. The colonel's father and
mother were gone. His wife's rela-
tives were not there. Yet each felt the
longing to 60 back. For years they
had talked of the charms of the home
of their childhood. Their children had
been brought up to believe that the
place was little less than heaven. The
Kansas grass seemed short and barren
of beauty to them, beside the picture of
the luxury of Ohio's fields. For them
the Kansas streams did not ripple and
dimple 80 merrily in the sun as the
Ohio brooks that romped through the
dewy pastures, in their memories. The
bleak Kansas plain, in winter and in
fall, seemed to the colonel and his wife
to be ugly and gaunt, when they re-
membererd the brow of the hill under
which their first kiss was shaded from
the moon, while the world grew dim
under a sleigh that bounded over the
turnpike. The old people did not give
voice to their musings. But in the
woman's heart there gnawed a yearn'
ing for the beauty of the old Genes
1t was almost a physical hunger.
After their last child, a girl, had mar
ried and gone down the lane towards
the lights of the village, Mrs. Huckt
began to watch with a greedy eye the
dollars mount toward a substantial banl
account. She hoped that she and hel
husband might afford a holiday.
Last year Providence had blessed tht
Huckses with plenty. 1t was the WON
an who revived the friendship of you'll