The Florence tribune., 1897-06-26
FLORENCE COUNTY ARzoNA sATURDAY JUNE 26 l8g7

the shore, Mary was on hand to fix the glass at the west window of the kitchen. 50 that the old mother might sweep the horizon for a sign of the Samuel P. Jones' sails.
 T don't expect him on time, child" she would tell the girl, ''but by Christ mas day sure," and then they would smile at each other.
 The months of waiting had not been anxious ones; there had been no heavy storms along the coast, and that was somehow an assurance that there had been no heavy storms anywhere else. But Christmas day came and went; and the old year slipped into the new, and the Samuel F.. Jones had not come. Explanations and excuses null tiplied; declarations that all was well grew more insistent; instances of delay were repeated over and over; but it was the first of February before news came.
 Wrecked of the Azores; it was feared all hands were lost.
 Feared" not known. That vas what Mrs Hayes and Mary said to each other. Everybody knew dozen in- stances of sailors picked up in open boats; of desert islands; Of drifting rafts. No; the idea that Don was dead could not be accepted; there are some people one cannot associate with death: it is not appropriate. So Don's mother and sweetheart held on to hope.
 Those awful. breatbless days of do- spair, and refusing to despair, and then despair again, were filed to Mary with intense and immediate anxiety about Donalds mother. Mrs Hayes was very fran at best, and it seemed as if this must kill her; indeed, if Mary bad nc. kept on hoping for her, she must have died. But little by little she came back to life, and to the acceptance of the fact that Don was dead; and then one day, six months later, hope sprang again into sudden Tigor and certainty; a sailor in Plymouth. who had known him, was told by man who had just come in in 2 merchant Indiaman, that he had seen Donald Hayes in the street in Calcutta. He had not spoken to him. for he had lost sight of him again. but he had seen him. Through ore mouth and another this news came to Seaport, and was brought down to the gray house on the rocks. Mary used to say afterwards that when she heard it it seemed to her that she should die of joy. Then came the waiting for the letter from Don which mast, of course. be on it's way. These two, who loved him. guessed with the instinct of wom- en bred by the spa, the whole story. the wreck iie rescue on an outward bound vessel the long voyage; the first
 r day Mary said; the color had crept back into her face, and the light Co her eyes; and yet waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Don's letter, light and color waned again. It was months before she whis- pered 10 Don's mother the ghastly thought that the sailor had been mis- taken, and that Don had not been seen. She said it to be contradieted. And at first it was contradicted sturdily and cheerfully But by and by they both grew too wise for self delusion, and duly took up the burden of living again.
 Fortunately there was no complica- tion of poverty to make Mrs. Hayes more wretched; she had enough money for Seaport's standards of living; Don's earnings had never been relied upon: they were uncertain at best, and had mostly been put into the Samuel P. Jones. Still, things had to be managed for the old woman, and it came to be matter of course for Mary to live with her.
 So time went by placidly, without happiness, but with peace; and on Mary's part, with that deepening love