The new North-west., 1897-02-12
A GOOD TIME COMING.

1t was an October day, and the air was
charged with the aromatic sharpness
that follows the change in nature caused
by the first frost. The sounds of the
woods had changed from the summer
murmur to the autumn rustic, and ma
ture, like an aging coquette, was dress
ing herself in gaudy colors for her last
season. The naples were clustered in
crimson magnificence on the knolls and
ridges, while the elms and ashes in the
hollows clothed themselves in softest
yellows shot with green. And in the
fields departing summer was shod with
the russell of the stuhble lands.
Through this scene of melancholy
beauty was wandering fitfully, now half
running, now sitting down, disquieted
and unnerved, man who seemed
strangely out of keeping with it all. He
was tall and gaunt, sharp eyed, and in
moments of repose man who bore all
the marks of authority. His lips invol
unfairly shaped themselves to ''sneer
of cold command" and his high, pale
brow, with its bright, transparent skin,
spoke of ceaseless thought.
But he was acting like one possessed.
He would walk along rapidly for a few
moments, scanning the trees like an In
dian pot hunter and holding his gun in
readiness for a quick shot Then he
would stop suddenly, arrested by a
thought. Sometimes the thought would
be one that would wiring an oath from
his lips, and sometimes it would bring
to his face a look of perplexity that
would end in the nervous laugh that
heart-the kind that often brings a
moisture to the eyes and choking feel
ing to the throat. Hiram Pratt was
stirred to the depths of his nature-stir-
red as he thought he never could be. At
one moment he would regret the i'm
pulse that had taken him back to his
old home on the farm, and at the next
he would thrill with boyish delight at
the thought of bagging gray squirrels
and quail, just as he used i'll his youth.
His friends in New York would have
been "deeply concerned" could they
have seen him.
He had just spent the night with his
mother in the old log house where he
was born and had learned anew some
thing that he had foFgotten. In his
business career he had schooled himself
to consider money everything and SEN
timent nothing, but i'll that old house
sentiment was supreme and counted for
more than the riches of palace When
he asked his mother why she did not
live in the fine brick house which he
had had built for her and which his
~ brother now lived in. she replied:
why, Hiram, your father brought
me here when we were married and
when there wasn't five acres cleared OH
the farm. You We're all born here, and
all who are dead died here, and as
potter about you are all with me us
you were when you were young. 1t
wouldn t be the same in the new house. "
Then she put up her old wrinkled
face to be kissed as in the other days,
and the worldly man stooped and kiss
ed her. As he did the hardness of his
heart chilled him like curse and
snatching up candle he hastened to
the room her loving hands had prepared
for him. All night he tossed Oh his pill
low, striving to strike balance between
the love and tenderness he had lost and
the millions he had gained, and it was
because the problem was still painfully
unsolyed that he wandered about SO dis
tractedly through the October woods.
At last he came to the thicket where
there used to be covey of partridges
every fall, but now there was no whir-
ring of wings at his approach. But the
fallen oak round which they used to
hide and beside which he used to set
the figure Of four trap inathe old days
before the game laws were enforced
was still there in almost the same con-
dltion as when he saw it last He seat
ed himself on the mossy trunk, and as
his mind gradually quieted, soothed by
the peace Of nature, he went back to his
boyhood and lived it all over again.
At last he remembered, and the
memory came to him with the shcck of
a discovery who his companion and
guide used to be in almost all his hunt
ing expeditions. Old Sam Ehret! Could
it be possible that he was still alive!
OF course it could? Sam was only IL
years older than he was, though every
body called him "old" 80 years ago.
But that was only on account of his al.
most senile simplicity and natural shift
lessness. Sam couldn't be more than G3
yet, and of course he must be alive
What times they used to have, trapping
mink and shooting squirrels. This train
of thought cleared the moral atmos-
phere for the millionaire at once He
would not be satisfied with coming to
the old farm; he would go back to his
youth and go out hunting with Sam
He had no real-iatention of doing any
hunting when he left the house and
had merely picked up the old gun as an
excuse to get away to the woods, where