Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1898-03-24

SizfS SsaFS,ys3Csss s35 CC5ssssA we wore
IS IS - z9sSsas 9ssas seflss. seflsS' That 5ot
C(C was when 1
was five and she was four. We were,
from that time, always together. Like
brother and sister, you say? More
than this. For brothers and sisters
are not always close friends. We
were chums. She went everywhere I
went and did everything L did, and,
as We grew up TO boyhood and girl
hood,s we were inseparable. Even
when 1 had attained the dignity of
long pants [ preferred her society to
that OF my male friends, for there was
nothing soft about Tessie, except, per-
haps, her eyes, and they were a
beautiful, soft hazel.
She was strong and athletic, but Of
a slender build; could drive, row and
swim as well as 1 could; and had
complexion well Drowned by long
and intimate acquaintance with Gods
sunlight A brave girl, too. L re-
member we'll how once she swan
across quarter of mile of choppy
river 70 get the doctor for that grumpy
old Sarah Tore, the lighthouse keep
els wife. She loved the cross old
CONAN, she said, although no one else
saw anything in her to love.
Then Tess went to boarding school
and came back at the end of three
years with little of that "horrible
tan'-that's what her proper sister
Laura called it-gone out of her
cheeks, and just the faintest trace of
city manners about her; but at heart
the same dear old Tess as ever.
Now, although my girl friend and I
had known each other so long and so
intimately, yet we had never fallen in
love with each other. [ am positive
of this, because when 1 got soft on
Jennie Bingham and lavished all my
money on flowers for her, Tess only
laughed. Then there was the time
1 fell head over heels in love with
dashing Cora Sands. Why, then I had
it bad. [ got to the stage where you
moon around street corners and carve
her name on old stumps and gate
costs. even wrote my name and
GERS together on the marriage page of
the old family Bible, just to see how
it would look, and then rubbed it out
in guilty haste. Even then didn't
Tessie get up the lawn party and ma
neuvre so that Cora and L were part
ners for the whole evening? And then,
there was the Jack Manners episode.
Jack quite lost his head over Tess, and
asked her father if he could marry her.
think he even proposed elopement to
Tessie. But she didn't love Jack, she
said, and so wouldn't hear of his vast
ingaaany time or money on her. And
didn't feel bit jealous. am sure
didn't. So you see it's quite plain
that we had not given the mischlevous
little god Cupid any work to do for
US. But now / was twenty and Tes-
sic nineteen, and somehow, as L took
the shapely little hand she offered me
TO welcome her back, after those
three years at school, somehow it
came to me suddenly that Tess was n
beautiful girl, and that her eyes were
bewitching. And there came into my
heart strange, uncomfortable feel
dissatisfaction, jealousy-what
was it? 1t certainly was not pleasant.
Suppose some one should take it into
his head to fall in love with Tessie
and marry her? Confound himl But
| then, what was that to me? I was
not in love with her. OF course not.
We were simply friends. And vet T
instinctiyely disliked this fellow who
might make love to my girl chum.
The summer L wish particularly to
tell you of, the one following Tessie's
return from school, our folks and her
folks decided to spend the hot season
at little mountain hamlet with an un-
| pronounceable name-l mixture of
French and Indian thirty miles or so
to the north of Lake Superior. We
had already spent one season there
and knew of good boarding house
where they gave you enough to eat,
and were too unsophisticated to charge
a ruinous price. 1t was one-horse
sort of a place, containing about a
dozen families, mostly French Cana.
dian habitants, primitive as Noah.
The population numbered about one
hundred persons. The town was
perched right on the side of thirteen
hundred-foot- high hill. Dover Noun
tain, they called it, Directly back of
this hill-in fact, almost continue
tion of it-rose a tall, pointed noun
tain about three thousand feet high,
which the French habitants called
Ducre's Spine. This eminence, as
we'll as the hill on which the little vii
lage lay, as though ithad been dropped
there, was very thickly wooded. JUS
little space close about the houses
had been cleared OF trees, while fol
miles around extended the dense vir
gin forest, most of whose heavy growth
of pine, cedar, chestnut, oak ant
hickory, besides rank underground
Of sumac and scrub oak, had neve
been desecrated by the woodman's ak
] The folka were To oo mn tn this will