Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1897-03-18

til mortgage was raised on the
wretched little house that was all in
the world her mother and crippled Sis
ter owned. She bought her ticket
with the money, and ten days after the
receipt of Channing's letter she was at
the neutrality-suspicious..
She spent day and two nights in
the mean little depot hotel, very nearly
out of her mind with loneliness, fright,
and at last an acknowledged distrust.
Then Chapning's mother arrived, and
an officer met them with al ambulance.
Charming was dying Of u fever, the
mother told her. The doctor had tele-
graphed for her, without her sons
knowledge, The day after the girl had
left the village. Then Anna re-
preached hersei! for her suspicious
with unreasoning bitterness.
The drive To the post took two days.
It was a horrible experience for the Of
ficer. The road stretched on, on on,
across desert and bad lands, where
even the greasewood and mesquite was
burned by the terrible sun. The old
woman sank from the dust and the
heat into an almost senseless state.
The girl. being young and strong and
alive, fought with the strangling dust,
gasped, twisted her small hands, and
bit her lips in perfectly silent strug-
gle. Sometimes, as the lieutenant sat
opposite them, he wished that they
could cry or make q sound.
The beautiful daughter of COL Ross
was standing by Channing's bed alone.
when the doctor led the mother and her
youngcompanion in. The lieutenantha
been dead 20 minutes The darll-eyed
woman did not turn, she had forgotten
everything in all the world, save only
Channing's face. When the southern
girl dropped down at the bedside and
screamed for her husband, she started.
as the poor thing crazy?" she asked,
duly, of Mrs. Claiming.
NO But she was not married to
him. Only she was to have been mar
RED at Santa Maria, two or three days
ago; forget when. lie sent for her"
THAT can't be true, because I am his
wife"
Mrs. Charming caught at the bedpost
with her shriveled old hand. mon
sensei" she said
Indeed, 1t is true. Aren't you bis
mother?" She put her arm tenderly
about the bent shoulders. 81 thought
you were. You look like him. He and
I were married last night at midnight
when they told us he was going to die"
"Anna! Come away, Anna! You've
TO right there. Get up. This girls his
wife. He didn't love you. He married
her. He married her-last night"
1t was cruel, but Mrs. Claiming had
gone mad.
But until Claiming was buried in the
graveyard on the hill, where the coyotes
dug up the mounds at night and the
prairie dogs banked shrilly, and the
snakes glided along the dry, baked
earth into their holes-until he was
buried there the two women stayed by
her. Their trust in the dead man never
faltcrcd The girl believed he had been
ensnared on his death-bed; the wife,
that he had never loved the childish,
pretty Virginian Yet neitler-out Of
her convictions.
Watching over his mother they sat in
the room where he had died, and lis
tened to the thud of the soldiers feet
as they marched by outside, following
the young officers fag-covered coffin.
Then there was q long, long silence.
They were wide apart-the wife wit,
her beautiful head in her hands; the
Vrl, looking straight at the wall; the
old woman muttering and scratching at
her gown with her crooked fingers.
At last came the sound of n far-o;f
volley of musketry. The girl Jumped
UP. whats that?"
"The firing over his grave"
In moment it came again. The girl !
stood swaying. The wife sat with her
head still bowed. It was no new sound |
to her.
A paLAe-then the last volIey. The
girl fell, and the woman, lifting her
head, stared stupidity at the pretty, dead |
face, at the fixed, childish eyes, that
still looked hurt: while the mother
muttered in the corner and taps shrilled
from The bugle over the grave Of the
man they had loved.-San Francisco
Argonaut.