The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1900-12-07
= ISIS OoRNELIA LUNT was

lW the only child of two good .l PEG,
pie who had not married until
they reached the years which find most
welded pairs with their children well
grown up about them. They had been
happy, however, and when they died
left their daughter little income,
which, by close pinching, she could
manage to live upon.
Cornelia was not a pretty girl, but
thousands of palmer girls had married
and settled while she remained
spinster. Perhaps the fact that she
was by no means a good-natured per
son had something to do with 1t.
In her youth she had comported her
self scornfully to well-disposed young
men who belonged to the mechanic
classes and had declared that she would
only give her hand and heart to mer-
chant, physician, or clergyman.
Merchants were rare in Bottlehole, the
only specimens of that order being two
old bachelors, still connected with a
New York firm. The two doctors were
both married and the clergymen al
ways had large families.
Miss Cornelias ambitious hopes were
never realized and her fathers appren-
tice, Tim Cornell, who had admired her,
and had been quite a believer in her as
an elegant and genteel person." final
ly pronounced her mighty proud and
naughty" and abandoned his suit. Miss
Cornelia at last awoke to the knowl-
edge that she was getting on in life, and
that If she was not careful people
would find it out.
But for that dreadful family Bible in
which the record of her birth was writ
ten down, she would have felt safe in
slicing off ten years of her life-a pro-
ceeding which she fancied would in
crease her value in the eyes of certain
Mr.. Dumsday who had recently paid
her few solemn calls. He was really
an old man himself, but the older the
man the younger generally, one finds
his choice of a wife to be.
Poor Miss Cornelial She eyed that
well-thumbed Bible which her compan-
Ion and assistant, Cousin Betsy Baker
always would have upon a stand in the
parlor, with absolute horror
She sat over her CRATE fire late one
night thinking over the matter.
Who knew her exact age? Cousin
Betsy. But Cousin Betsy would not
wish to quarrel with her, and was too
] old woman TO think her anything but
young. The clergyman who baptized
her. But he was superannuated and
/ lived with his son-in-law in another
State. The family doctor was dead,
and the dear old gentleman who had
boarded with them from her babyhood
went to Europe years before, and was
probably dead. Good Mr.. Noire!. But
she should never hear of him again.
Yes, it was safe. She would do it.
1t was night-half-pas u at least
the hour when "churchyards yawn and
graves give up their dead" Miss Cor
nelia arose. she stood before the fire
with her back toward it, and took the
candlestick in her hand.
Any one who had observed her would
certainly have believed that she was
going straight to poor Cousin Betsy's
room to end that lady's life by jab OF
the sharp little knife blade, but she
paused at the candlestick, knelt down
opened the family Bible at the f1yleaf
and slowly, cautiously began to scrape
scrape, scrape at the last two figures OF
the record of her birth.
Then she crossed the room, took from
fireside cupboard pen and inkstand
wrote two other figures in the place OF
those she had erased blew upon the
leaf until it was dry, carefully touched
up the rest of the record to match il
brightness, and drew back to read the
amended lines, which now plainly
; stated to all beholders that she had en-
tered this world thirty years before in
, stead of forty.
; "Cornelia."
1t seemed TO come from above. Cor
nelia looked up expecting to see some
thing dreadful 1t was repeated:
"Cornelia. amt you coming to bed p
1t was only Cousin Betsy speaking
through a disused register, which hat
once conveyed heat from a stove in thu
stting-room to the chamber above.
All in a cold perspiration, Cornell;
managed to reply that she would com
in a moment, and then closing the Bibl
and putting away the writing material
she crept upstairs, world of horribl
unseen things close after her
Mr. Dumsday regularly "came
counting" now. And he was a ricl
widower. whose married daughter pro
fessed herself anxious that pa" shoul
have some one to take care of hin