Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1897-03-12
THE HOMECOMING OF COLONEL
HUOKS.

generation ago, a wagon covered with
white canvas turned to the right on the
California road, and took a northerly
course toward the prairie stream that mes
tied 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 it stopped. A man and a woman
emerged from under the canvas, and stood
for moment facing the wild, green mead
ow and the distant hills. The man was
young 1.-the, and graceful, but despite his
boyish figure, the woman felt his uncon-
scious strength as he put his arm about
her waist She was aglow with health:
her fine, strong, intelligent eyes burned
with hope, and her firm jaw was good to
behold. They stood gazing at the virgin
field moment in silence. There were
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 world
is over"
The horses moving uneasily in their
sweaty harness, cut short the mans reply
When he returned, his wife was getting
the cooking utensils from under the wagon,
and life-stern, troublous-had begun for
them.
1t was thus that young Colonel William
Hucks brought his wife to Kansas
They were young, strong, hearty people
and they conquered the wilderness. \
home sprang up in the elbow of the
stream. In the fall, long rows of corn
shucks traied 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 check
erboard of the farm, clean cut, well kept.
smiling in the sun. Little children frol-
licked in the king row, and hurried to
school down the green lines of the lane.
where the hedges grow. Once, a slow
procession, headed by spring wagon with
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 desc
late 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, figuring to
make ends meet. In these years the girl
ish 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 struggle.
There were days-not years, thank God
With Ups IHelT UeDuern eSS; ana
as fate tugged fiercely at the Gu rbed bit
there were times when souls rebelled and
cried out in bitterness and despair at the
roughness of the path
In this wise went Colonel Hucks and his
wife through youth into maturity, and in
this wise they faced towards the sunset.
He was tall with a stoop, grizzled,
brawney, perhaps uncouth in men. She
was stout, unshapely, rugged, yet her face
was kind and motherly. There was boy
ish twinkle left in her husbands eyes, and
quaint quizzing, one-sided smile often
stumbled across his care-furrowed counte-
nance. AS the years passed, Mrs. Hucks
noticed that her husbands foot fell heavily
when he walked by her side, and the pang
she felt when she first observed his plod-
ding step was too deep for tears. 1t was
in these days that the minds of the Huckses
unconsciously reverted to old times
II became their wont, in these latter days.
70 sit in the silent house, whence the chill |
dren 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 pinched |
and busy life They had never returned
TO visit their old Ohio home. The colonels
father and mother were gone. HIS wife's
relatives were not there Yet earh felt
the longing to go 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 so merrily in the sun as
the Ohio brooks that romped through the
dnwU in hair
bleak Kansas plain, in winter and in fall,
seemed to the colonel and his wife to be
ugly ard gaunt, when they remembered
the brow of the hill under which their first
kisg'was shaded from the moon, while the
world grew dim under a sleigh that bound
ed over the turnpike. The old people did
not give voice to their musings But in
the womans heart there gnawed yearn-
ing for the beauty of the old scenes 1t
was almost physical hunger.
After their last child, girl, had married
and gone down the lane towards the lights
of the village, Mrs. Hucks began to watch
with greedy eye the dollars mount toward
a substantial bank account. She hoped
that she and her husband might afford a
holiday. {
Last year Providence had blessed the
Huckses with plenty. 1t was the woman I
who revived the friendship of youth in her
husbands cousin, who lives in the old
township in Ohio. 1t was Mrs Hucks who /
secured from that cousin an invitation to I
spend few weeks in the Ohio homestead.
1t was Mrs. Hucks, again, who made her
husband happy by putting him into tail
ors suit-the first he had bought since his
the great occasion. Colonel {
Hucks needed no persuasion to take the {
trip. Indeed, it was his wife's economy ]
which had kept him from being a spend {
thrift and from borrowing money with
which to go on dozen different occasions. t
The day which Colonel and Mrs. William
Hucks set apart for starting upon their i
journey was one of those perfect Kansas {
days in early October. The rain had S
washed the summers dust from the air,
clearing it, and stencilling the lights and !
shades very sharply. The woods along
the little stream which flowed through the
farm, had not been greener at any TYNE
through the season. The second croEof |
grass on the hillside almost sheened ip/ iv- !
dness. The yellow of the stubble iRithe
grain fields was all but glittering golden.
The sky was deep, glorious blue and
the big, downy clouds which numbered