Waterbury Democrat., 1901-07-24
Storm~Swept
lcODyTight. is0i. y Authors syndicate5
By F. H. Lancaster.

passionate outburst to be ashamed of-or to be forgiven. They had come to an understanding. When his pleasant afternoon jaunt was ended they would return to town to go their separate ways, and, yes, to avoid each other for awhile, until they grew accustomed to the dead feeling about the heart. In the meantime, while their wheels glided on smooth- ly side by side, each found cause for reorganization that the revelation had come in time. But it affected them differently, as was natural, since one was a man and the other a woman.
 To the man the afternoon stretched into interminable perspective. To the woman came the determination that this perspective should be shortened.
 "These roads seem to be getting steadily worse" she remarked, with careful civility. Shall we turn back?"
 sAs you like" he answered, mood fly, for he was a man, and playing part did not come so easily to him as to the woman.
 They turned, only to realize that while one storm had burst another had been brewing. Huge masses of blue-black clouds, shot athwart con tinuously by lightning flashes, tow cred above the treetops. An erie moan crept through the pines-a herald of the wild northwest wind that would thresh the forest with its fail, strik- ing down crest and branch-even lay 0ing an occasional monarch low.
 They both knew the danger, but while the girl bent with disdainful i'm difference over her handle bars the man looked around for shelter. He had a dim consciousness of having passed wayside building when the quarrel was on, and turn in the road now revealed it to nina little church, log-buiIt and straw-strewn. He wheeled. closer to his companion, and shouted against the rising wind, but she shook her bead
 sI say we must he reiterated.
 A moment later he was standing with his hand on the handle bar, and they were facing each other in the midday gloom. Her eyes, ablaze with unstinted scorn, could read in his only a dogged determination as re- lentless as the grip of his strong right hand.
 The whole gregation was sing ing. Their high-pitched, nasal voices soaring through the forest roar formed tumnlt fearfully and won derfulIy made. Tke rain, having driven in all the men and boys from their whiting and horse swapping, the small building was crowded, but Cor don secured seat near the door and motioned the girl into it. Yesterday, or even an hour ago, he would have longed to share it with her. Now he smiled to observe that by skillful arrangement of her skirts she had made that impossible. A rather un- necessary maneuver, it seemed to him, when it was all he could do to force .- himself to stand there beside her with his hand on the back of the bench.
 The united roar of nasal hymn and thundergust having spent it's force. the voice of the preacher arose against the raindrops on the roof.
 Gordon turned toward the man me- chanically. He was tall, stoop-shoul- dered. sunburnt. Evidently quite at home behind the pLowshares, and yet his place in the pulpit. seemed to suit him well. There was manly rever- ence in mein and gesture, and al- though there were lines about the lips that spoke of much smiling and a twinkle Iurlxed in his shrewd, kind Iy eyes, there were other lines on that weather-beaten face, deep cut and sad-a sign that time cannot set save with the stamp of pain.
 In a strong, slow voice he read his text: Blessed be the peacemakers." He closed the Bible and laid it aside, then he turned to his congrega- tion.
 Brethren" he began, in an easy conversational tone, "brethren, what is this here peace that the Good Book teels about, and who alls is the peace makers it calls blessed2 Is it them that jaws agin their neighbours cattle when hits their own pesky fences that's to blame? Whats the reason there ain't no peace in this here set flement2 You alls is 1aw-abiding citi- zens; there ain't no cattle driv off nor sheep stole. Even the hogs ain't meddled with. Brethren, let me tell you that story agin about the shucks."
 The attention of the congregation took on an added interest. Surely never did ancient Greek delight more in the sEuripedean thing" than does the south Mississippi cracker in this story of the shucks. Variously ap- piled, they had heard it without tiring, over and over again. But Gordon and the girl had never heard it.
 Moved by the expectancy of all about them, they reused from their bitter reveries to listen.
 There was two farmers," the old preacher began, checking off each statement against his horny palm. tThere was two farmers that started put to farm on sheers. each man to put his sheer of the seed and do his sheer of the work. and they were to divide the crap. We'll, brethren, hit &Qxked fine. Ihau made rood crap.