The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1898-06-03
RISING SUM- CECIL COUNTY, MD. FRIDAY, JUNE g. 1898.

| to me anyone who could do what you did
with wooden one, ought to have one
of the BEST" the squire said, in his
loud, hearty voice. Little Johnny's
father sent this up for me to give to
the boy who rode over mad dog"
Before Carroty fully realized what
was happening, the wagon had driven
off, and he was alone with handsome
new safety bicycle of a well-known
make and the latest model, leaning
against the garden fence.
"Will have to keep it?" Carroty
asked, when his father reached home.
81 saw the squire on my way up,
and think he will be hurt if you don't -
his father replied.
The next morning Carroty took the
new bicycle apart. The wonderful
mechanism fascinated him, the perfect
adjustment, the beauty, the lightness,
the strength! He studied it and fin
gered it with rapture. Then he got
out the Through by Daylight, and stood
them side by side, the clumsy, wooden,
homemade affair and the graceful,
trim machine of glittering steel and
shining black enamel, polished wood,
and smooth, gray rubber. His freckled
face flushed as he remembered how
proud he had felt of that wooden thing,
how nearly perfect he had considered
it, how he gloried in the thought that
he had made it.
"Come on! Aren't you ever going to
try it?" cried Jakey, who had been
writhing with impatience during the
examination and the rebuilding.
"You can ride the new one. Pm not
going back on Through by Daylight,
just yet" Carroty replied.
The squire saw the two riders go
down the hill. Jakey's plump legs
bestrode the new bicycle; Carroty,
erect, bareheaded, his red hair stream
lug out like the tail of comet, rode
the old wooden wheel.
"Well, if he isn't a queer onel"
calculated the squire.
His opinion of Carroty's queerness
would have received further confrma-
ton could he have witnessed what fol-
lowed.
a mile above Zoansville lies a dark
pond, surrounded by hemlock trees
ard bright with white pond lilies. The
center of the pool is dark and still and
deep, so deep that the people say it is
bottomless, and the name is Deep pond.
Carroty pushed his wheel along the
path to the pond, and Jakey, as was his
habit, followed without asking ques-
tions.
When they reached the bank and
Carroty placed the Through by Day
light in the f1at-bottomed boat, then
stepped in himself, Jakey could keep
still no longer.
"For the lands sake, Carroty, what
are you going to do?" he exclaimed.
"You stay there and watch me-"
said Carroty, sternly.
He rowed out to the middle and
stopped. Twice he stopped and lifted
the wheel, only to drop it again. At
last, with the air and gesture of one
who nerves himself to mighty effort,
he raised it until he was able to push it
over the edge Of the boat into the wa
ter.
The Through by Daylight went down
like lead, and the dark pond closed over
it without a ripple. Carroty rowed
swiftly to the shore, and, leaping out,
walked away without backward look.
Jakey fastened the boat and followed
his brother in sympathetic silence until
they reached the road at the edge of
the woods. Then he pushed forward
the glittering bicycle.
"Here, Carroty-here you are!" he
said.
Carroty shook his head.
"You go on and take ride" he
said. 81 don't feel like riding to-day.
My-my stomach hurts me. I'll try it
tomorrow"
Jakey whirled off gayly, and Carroty
climbed the hill, going through the
fields so the squire would not see him.
He went to his workshop and looked
in at the door.
"some day, maybe, I'll make some
thing else," he said to himself.-N. Y.
Independent.