The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1899-12-01
VOL xxi. RISING sun, CECIL COUNTY, Md FRIDAY DE(
when he should wish of himself to re-

when he should wish of himself to re-
turn.
Many time he found cause for graft
tude to that cold list of dates and places,
binding him, as it did, to something or
other, restraining him from ignomin-
ious retreat and surrender to-nothing.
Had he desired, he could easily have
learned Ms much as he wished of Esther
Thorndike. Indeed, it was difficult to
hold gratuitous information away; but
with a keen native sense of honor,
greatly overstrained and intensified as
it was by the strange circumstances,
he felt that it would be the height of
disloyalty for him to permit himself to
know anything beyond what Esther
Thorndike had herself communicated.
The day of her departure found him
as ignorant as ever, and only so maay
days deeper in the new sentiments and
their attendant morbid desperation.
Shortly after the hour for the sailing
o8 the days steamers messenger boy
brought him a card bearing the words:
MAY the best of life be yours, always.
Earnestly your friend, Esther Thorn
dixie"
One who has watched on stormy
night and seen the full moon burst
suddenly from an unlooked-for rift,
transtiguring everything, filing all ma
ture with life, grandeur and wonder
full beauty, may understand, perhaps,
the effect of that immaterial message
pnn,ipor inf ha frn,rl,loI % Dol
ert Stanton. But he who has watched
longer, till black clouds filled the
break, and with sigh, groan, nature
sank back again into the stormy night
more desolate even for the glorious
glimpse. may feel, in analogy. the over
wf>lming force of the realization which
followed, that the moon which shone
with such refreshment for a moment
was even then hidden by the black
waves of the Atlantic, and that every
fieeting sound was bearing her farther
and farther away, to set beyond the
clouds, beyond the possibility of even
one more passing glimpse.
The memory of one week before
came back to haunt him as night gath
cred. InyoluntaHly he was living it all
over again. Step by step he seemed
forced to follow it, and every step was
bereft of all but bitterness-bitternes
and utter loneliness.
Even the discovery that 1t had been
such strength and comfort to him to
know that she was as near as Brooklyn
filled him with dismay. The wild, un-
controllable, almost incoherent ram
blings of his mind startled him. His
plans We're methodically laid for his
departure the following day, but mac
tion was uncomfortable. 1t was very un-
like John Olmstead's nephew, but it only
made matters so much the worse that
he fully realized the fact. In strug-
gle to escape he started that night for
California.
BY degrees the strange week sank
into something like the memory of
an ugly dream. Often he seemed to
himself to be still dreaming. AS the
train rumbled on he sometimes tried to
rouse himself, with vague sense that
1t he succeeded he should discover that
it was only dream. Yet as often as
ne made the attempt he shuddered lest
lie might succeed; for in it there was
something more real than reality as he
knew it, and even at that moment he
would not have had it all dream.
The man on one side of the two-line
advertisement and the man on the
other side were two painfully distinct
and different creatures. The change
was not agreeable. 1t resulted in no
end of misery, and nothing else; yet in
the midst of the misery there was some
thing so agreeable and beautiful that
nothing in the old life could compare
with it.
II the turning of his hand would have
taken him back again to the time before
that advertisement appeared, he would
not have turned his hand.
If he could only have understood him
self it would have been very different.
But he did not understand. However
much or little Robert Stanton knew,
he certainly did not know that the new
sentiment possessing him was love.