The Monticellonian., 1902-11-13

stream itself?"
 The girl nodded brightly. ''Yes," she said, you can take the trail through the tamaracks. It begins just here" Then the girl turned her attention once more to the brown thrasher, who gave symptoms of be- ing willing to start his solo again
 Schuyler thanked the girl courte- eusly and after reeling in his line started along the trail indicated. When he reached his friend James l Payson's lodge the first thing he said was: Jim, in the name of all that's lovely who is your sunbonneted neighbor with a voice like bubbling spring and eyes like those of the girls in old Herrick's poems?"
 Jim Payson laughed. You must have run across old Cheney's daugh- 1 ter. He has four or five hundred 1 rocky acres with little house on l them. Mary is his only daughter and he put her through Vassar and.made quite lady of her. She is a beauty and no mistake. Hit you frst time. eh, old man?'
 Schuyler colored little and said: 'Well, not exactly hit, Jim. I must not be hit, you know, but the girl is attractive and no mistake"
 That evning Jim Payson asked his guest if he wouldn't like to go over and call on old Cheney. There was no hesitancy in falling in with the i proposal. They found old Cheney on the porch smoking his pipe. He was white-haired old fellow of the far mer type, and while he admitted it was hard wringing crops from the stony Catskill slope, yet he said he wouldn't give up his mountain side with its air and it's scenery for the best valley land on the continent. Then George Schuyler met Mary Cheney. James Payson did the intro dueing. Schuyler found this noun tain flower all that he had expected from the glimpse that he had caught of its beauty in the morning. The girl was refinement itself, and as Schuyler looked at the old fellow sit ting in the porch corner pulling con tentedly at his corneob pipe he won- dered how this slip could have come from such a parent stem.
 Well, it's otter to make it short. George Schuyler stayed week and then fingered for two more. He wrote to New York that he was enjoying the fishing. So he was for about an hour every morning. One day he brought himself up with round turn. He thought of his duty to Helen Ganzevoort.
 He knew in his heart that he loved this girl of the mountain side who had voice like one of the veeries that sang every day at sunset.
 That night he went to Mary Cheney and told her all. He knew somehow that the girl had grown to love him as he had grown to love her. They stood on the porch looking down onto the far-off valley. IL was twi- light and the veeries and the vesper sparrows were singing everywhere. He told her of his childhood en- gagement to Helen Ganzevoort. T lave not seen her since she was II years old he said. "She cares noth- ing for me; she cannot. She doesn't even know me The whole thing was 8 bit of parental foolishness, but there is the question of my duty. I shall leave for New York the day af- ter tomorrow. I will see Helen, and upon what she says and does depends all. I may have done wrong, Mary, in lingering here, but I loved you, and let that fact plead for me" He left her standing there just as the last bird voices of the day were hushed and the whippoorwill took up his nightly chant.
 Two days later George Schuyler stood in a Fifth avenue drawing room waiting for the coming of Helen as he had last known her nine years before as a child. The eyes seemed to look at him a bit reproach- fully.
 There was q light step behind him. He turned quickly. For a mCment he felt frozen. then the blood went through him like torrent In front of him in evening dress stood the girl whom but 4S hours before he had left on the mountain side. Mary" he said
 Something like smile came into the girls face. Not Mary, George" she said, but Helen" George Schuy- ler's mind was befogged. T don't understand" he stammered.
 Its easily enough understo ood, George" she laughed. You didn't suppose for moment, did you. that I wished to marry man 1 never had seen and who I knew was to marry me from sheer force of duty? Your mother told me you were going to stop at the Beaverkill to fish, and MT. Payson. who is an old family friend, and Giles, who is an old family ser want, and who by the way, made good farmer, did the rest"
 Helen, what do you think of me?"
 "I think, George, that you fell in lcve with me for what l am. and smiling-'I think I shall have to take you for what you are. ."-Chicago Rec ord-Herald.
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