The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1897-02-19

over the stones in the gulch."
"And you the daughter of a Low
lander. I'm shocked! Why, the very
lirst- thing vich Ian Vohr would do
vould be to harry your fathers farm
ut if you know the mountain so we
that's to prevent your showing me HOY
20 become interested in it? Why CAM
YOU take a tramp with me this after
noon?"
I-I don't think I ought to take the
time; mother'll be wanting me to help
about the house."
She bent lower over the sewing, and
Philip saw a faint tinge> of color creep
up to hide itself under the waves OF
bright hair on her forehead.
"Then won't go alone" he protest
ed, obstinately, and as Mrs. Duncan
came in he appealed to her. "Mrs. Dun
can, can't you spare Elsie to go up on
the mountain with me this aftcrnoon"'
"What for MOP" was the ready an
swer. "Ye'll bath be the better for a
bit walk in the open. I'm thinking the
bulk is keeping We over close to the
chimney neuk, Mr.. Thorndyke."
The appeal settled the question for
Elsie, but her evident embarrassment
puzzled Thorndyke. For a swift in
st;.nt a possible explanation thrust it.
self upon him, but he put the thought
away with twinge of shame that he
had given it room. Doubtless Elsie
had her own reasons for her apparent
confusion, but they concerned him only
so far as to make it advisable that he
should do nothing to place himself in
false light before her. The afternoon
ramble would give him chance to tell
her more about himself, and if the
vagrant suggestion which he had made
such haste to disown had any remote
kinship to fact, the bare mention OF
Helen's name would set the matter
right, and there would be no room for
future misunderstanding. 1t was
clearly the just and honorable thing to
do, and now that he thought of it, he
reproached himself for not having
done it sooner. With different up
bringing, Philip might have seen the
unmalleable self-conceit in all this, and
having recognized it he would have
been honestly and frankly ashamed OF
it. Since he was not aware of it's eX-
istence, his resolve to make a conf
dante of Elsie took the comforting
form of an act of delicate and chivalric
thoughtfulness, and he looked forward
with magnanimous Impotence to the
time when he could give it speech.
After dinner, however, when they
were climbing the steep path leading to
the summit of Johns mountain, the
good resolution began to part with its
urgency. Elsie's embarrassment had
disappeared, and in such irrelevant
talk as the scramble up the rocky trail
permitted, there was no opening for
anything like condolences. With the de-
lay Philip began to doubt the necessity.
If he were not under sentence of death
it would be different, but in the light OF
go about to observe the unwritten laws
of conventionality? It could surely be
no disloyalty to Helen if he allowed him
self to take what of sympathy and pity
this other young girl chose to give him
out of the abundance of life and health.
On the contrary, would not Helen be
glad, when all was said, to know that
he had not died without the JUNCTION OF
compassion? And Elsie ?-that was a
base of the question which might well
c treated as q wise man treats a sleep
ag dog; it was the very hardihood of
vanity to suppose that her heart was
touched by any emotion deeper than
that of pity. Knowing that his days
were counted, there could be no offer
ing save at the shrine of womanly
tenderness and sympathy. In any
event, there was no occasion for haste;
ne would wait awhile and see what came
of it.
When one begins to argue with his
conscience it is a foreordained conclu-
sion that conscience will get the worst
of it. Lest Philip should be set down as
poor figure of man, prone to do weak
things as are the sparks to fly upward
let it be said that he did only what
seemed at the time to be good and
right. Love, or what passes for love, is
not always accountable to logic or to
common sense; it may, perhaps, be the
adopted child of the intellect, but it is
begotten and nurtured by the senses
Propinquity, contact, daily association,
the fairness of one object and the near
ness of another, all these influences
were, in Thorndyke's case, opposed to
what was unconsciously becoming day
by day more Of an abstraction-his
fealty to Helen. And, besides, when
one firmly believes he has made his
salaam to<the king of terrors, the con-
viction may so distort the mental and
moral vision as to make one practically
color blind.
Half an hour after Elsie and Philip
had disappeared in the forest, Protheroe
rode up to the gate with a packet of
letters for Thorndyke. When he
learned that the invalid and Elsie were
ON the mountain together, he seemed
quite as anxious to get away from the
farmhouse as he had just been to reach
it. On the way back to town he had
another impatient argument with him.
self, coming out of it as on former &C.
casion, with certain measure of philo-
sophical resignation, for which he paid
rather dearly in the coin of disappointed
hopes.
VIII
THE HERMIT OF THE POCKET.
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