The age-herald., 1900-06-17

1 might be made by the SOunQ or man 8 body fallen upon the earth. | After a time he put out the lights raked 1 down the fire and put away all signs of l the nights revel and went to sleep in a | room over the store. He passed a restless 1 night full of terrors and bad dreams, and when morning dawned he took pains not 1 to go out upon the front sidewalk until he l had heard enough to assure him that the village was going on as usual, and that l the tragedy of the past midnight had been | swallowed up in the darkness and no one 1 the wiser for it.
 Ralph was afraid to make inquiries lest
 he should arouse investigation, but by | roundabout methods he found out that the l drummer had utterly disappeared from the village. So too, had Michael Burnett. When Michael's parents came to make l inquiries about their Ralph could truly i tell the cowardly half1truth-that he had l passed the evening at the store with | dozen other men of the village and that he i had left the store with them at the usual l hour of o'clock. It was not until Cap | tain Henshaw's sloop came home that there was any further word from Michael. Then they learned that he had suddenly | appeared in the dimness of a star-lit mid | night at the little wharf where the sloop | lay.
 Are you going out tonight, captain?" "Yes, at the turn of the tide if the wind keeps"
 q want to go with you" You, Michael?'
 "Yes, I am going to be a sailor"
 That is all right, Michael, the sea will steady you.'
 So Michael sailed away with Captain Henshaw but upon reaching a larger port he said goodbye to him, sent a hearty word to his parents and then shipped as common sailor a brig. Now the world | lay before Michael Burnett Whatever of idleness and irresolution lay behind him had culmnated in that last hour at Sea- castle. Shrouded in the blackness and survey of that midnight, he alone knew what had happened then, but the memory | of it haunted him like a fiend. Go where he would, on sea and on land in the storms and darkness. amid the swirling waters of stormy he would ever see rising up before him the deadly face of the man he had seized with murder in his heart Above the roaring of the storms he | could hear the rattling breath in his vic l tims throat and the heavy thud of his fall l to the earth. Again and again in his l dreams he seemed to be dragging the help | less weight of that fallen form out of | sight and out of the way of stumbling feet | to leave it forever in the darkness and si- lence and mmobility of death. Michael meant to drive all this from his ] memory By gambling? No. Drinking? 1 No, no, but by hard work, by laying hold 1 of whatever came to hand and doing 1t as 1 if he were ten men instead of one, and by | being the most daring the most active and l reliable man on the ship. This he became | wherever he went. He was never long in | one place. From ship to ship he went and 1 from port to port. Most he loved the open | sea and open conflict with the clements. It 1 reused him to something which made him feel that he was master of them all yes, l and master of himself. Such man can not long be hid. He will come to the top | as surely as cream to the top of milk. So 1 Michael worked up to second mate, and 1 from second mate to first.
 He did not forget the old brown farm 1 house at Seacastle. Many a good dollar | of his money found it's way there, and many gift from foreign lands was proudly displayed by the loving mother and the grand-sire of this daring and sue cessful man.
 l to win Evelyn Marston, but whether | it was that having that midnight secret on his soul weighed him down. I cannot tell but he seemed to be shrunken up to | a smalelr specimen than ever, to be less manly, less open and frank and hearty l and when he laid himself at her feet and asked her to be his wife she was obliged I to confess that though she hated to see 1 her last steady beau go out of her grasp l she did not love him enough to marry 1 him.
 1 After this. the school-master and the l lawyer and the minister. wi'o was a wid- over with four children, occupied her at l tention, and basked in her beauty, her pleasant ways and good manners But l she married none of them. Did she remember Michael? She kept up l occasional visits at his mothers, and never l a scrap of a letter came from him to the l brown house, but Evelyn continued to hold 1 it's paper in her hands and to bend her 1 bright eyes over it until she was ashamed to look any longer. But Seacastle seemed l fo he cold lonely l Where had it's glory gone? After all, she l thought the world is wide, why should I not see its great cities and fine sights, and l perhaps I will get over the one haunting | memory of this village. So she went south l to spend the winter with an invalid cousin. "Michaels ship is down that way" said 1 Mrs. Burnett, ''at least he sent us oranges l lately from Porto Rico"
 l Evelyn sighed to think how far off that | was, and how wide the sea was, and how slight the chance that she would meet 1 Michael Burnett. How little did she know
 i what gales were blowing that very mo- ment about Michaels ship. If a whisper l can start an avalanche a true loves sigh 1 may well start the winds that start the storms. Certain it is that Michaels ship | was that hour in peril for its existence, l straining in the torture of the wind and 1 wavelet, after a few moments conflict
 so disabled that they had to put into port l for repairs.
 l That port was St. Augustine, and when l Evelyn stepped her foot shore the first ] one she saw was Michael Burnett. How 1 resolute he was how brown and handsome 1 and maSterful.
 1 You did not marry Ralph Jackson?'' l "No."
 l 'Nor anybody" | Mo-"
 | "Nor ever will-but me-" But you, Michael dear" l So they who had gone through storms l and to find each other, through mid
 l night peril and weary waiting of many
 | years, were quietly married, and Evelyn
 ! wore real orange blossoms. | The drummer there in that very town
 l at that very time, representing the clothes
 | trm as usual. He had attendant with
 | him of late because of his infirmity oi
 ] epilepsy. which still came upon him occa-
 l sionally as of old. It of these
 l attacks which made Michael think he had
 1 left a dead man behind him the night he
 l fled from Seacastle.
 l Thus absolved from the burden of his
 1 guilt, crowned with the love of his beauti-
 | full wife, Michael ceased to be haunted by