The record-union., 1897-08-14


out any warning, the latch was lifted
and Ophelia came in, with a faint smile
on her face, and seated herself beside
the ire. She had walked far, it seem
ed, for her clothes were travel stained
and worn. When her father broke out
In tremulous thanksgiving, she turned
pair of vacant wondering eyes upon
his face, and to his eager questioning
she made no answer. AT first Jacob
was too entirely bent on making his
daughter welcome to notice to the full
her apathy. He made her change her
wet clothes, and bade her notice how
carefully he had preserved her things,
but she only looked at them with the
same faint Indifferent smile. Then he
bethOught him that she must be hun
CRY, and he made haste to set food
before sch, which she ate obediently
but in the same absent way. At
length the truth began to dawn on
Jacob; he ceased from questioning her,
and made ready instead the bed she
was to sleep on
Outside the storm rose, and through
the night Jacob watched by the fire with
the wind bowling a wild accompaniment
TO his thoughts. When morning broke
the rain had ceased, and the wind was
dying away in fitful gusts. Jacob reused
himself and began to put the cottage
in order before Ophelia should waken.
He shook and folded her clothes, which
had hung by the fire through the night
to dry; as he did so something fell from
among them to the ground Jacob
stopped and lifted it; as he looked at it
CHASTITY palIor overspread his face,
and he sank down heavily on the chair
near him. 1t was a baby's knitted shoe.
Jacob was absent from the cottage for
some hours, but when he returned Ophe-
liza was still calmly sleeping. He drew
from his breast the little woolen boot,
and dropping it into the fire watched it
curl up in the flame Then he went on
with the preparations for breakfast.
For many days after this he kept to
his old habit of peering about as he
walked, and pOking his stick into the
wayside tangles and clumps of heather
and gorse, so that folk said he was crazy
like his daughter, and that he forgot she
had come home; but by degrees this
new fear left him, and he settled down
into the quiet monotony of the life he
has lived ever since.
No clue as to Ophelia's life in those
twelve months was ever discovered. She
had returned as mysteriously as she
had gone, and though inquiries We're
made on every side, no one was ever
found who had seen or heard of her.
From the girl herself nothing could be
learned; her mind was hopelessly gone,
Gentle and submissive she had always
been, and so she remained; but she was
alike Indifferent to her fathers affec-
ton and to the neighbors' curiosity. She
very rarely spoke, but went her ways
with the same faint smile she had worn
the night of her homecoming. The
most marked change in her was her
passion for long walks. In the old days
she had scarcely been beyond the limits
Of the village; now she would wander
for hours over moor and fell in all sorts
Of weather. Twenty years ago the
Good People" still dwelt among the
fells, and there were not wanting, in
the village, folk who believed that Ophe-
las time had been spent with these,
and that in her walks she hoped to find
her playmates again. In these ram
hles her father became her faithful
Neelk 0AeAAAs AOAS lhOOS5 ilOL ACE|A Iii
Good People, he always had the dread
that she might lose her footing in her
careless straying over those steep and
rocky hillisdes, and wherever she went
he followed, walking generally a few
yards behind.
So, for twenty years, they have ram
bled over the country, Ophelia with her
gentle vacant smile and unruffied brow,
Jacob growing with each succeeding
year more threadbare and more feeble.
Ophelia has often a basket of mush
rooms or blackberries which she loses
as fast as she gathers, or a bunch of
wild flowers and grasses, in her hand.
Jacob waits, leaning patiently on his
stick, while his daughter makes her
meaningless pauses in their walk. 1t
was thus 1 found them one day this
summer, on fair hillside, with, behind
US, the heather in early bloom against a
cloudless sky, and Langton sending up
thin wreaths of blue smoke in the val
ley below. I tried to draw Jacob into
talk on his old favorite subject; he lis
tened to my utilities in silence, and
when at length / came to a pause he
said:
CSy Slts dS you say q cat POEN-
He was silent for a moment, and his
eye travelled to where his daughter was
wandering aimlessly in the mushroom
field; a great sadness came over his face.
'I blame myself" he said, Il some
times blame myself greatly, sir, for hav-
ing called her Ophelia."
A PAINTER OF PASTORALS.
He passed along the path behind me
every day, at about the same time, a
gray-haired, bent, old man. with the
peculiar, slow, shuff1ing gate OF the
countryman. He always stopped be-
fore crossing the stile, put down the tools
he was carrying, and surveyed my work
with quiet deliberation. There was
something about the attitude of the
man, or so it seemed TO me, quite unlike
the vacant curiosity of the ordinary viii
lage rustic; and grew to look upon him,
without any spoken work. as a friend
and critic rather than a mere idle on
locker.
My subject was the purple fells as
they stretched away. fold upon fold,
towards Fazerley. with the blue smoke
of the little town rising against the
summer sky. On the Langton side a
weather beaten oak spread its branches
across, and it was when 1 came to
draw this tree that my friend at last
broke the silence.
1T seems you can draw trees" he
said approvingly.
1 drew back a little looking at my
picture, for I was doubtful whether I
deserved his praise, but he did not wait
for my reply.
1t wanted that tree badly he went
on. 1T helps what they call the
kiryskury.'