The pioneer express. [volume] (Pembina, Dakota [N.D.]) 1883-1928, 1902-07-18
CHAPTER l.

CHAPTER l.
The Breaking of an Environment.
The single street OF Grayborough
runs down hills that face the sea on
that rock-bound coast Of Maine where
I'll winter long turbulent waves show
changing gray faces to gray sky. Far
cut are little islands OF stones that
curve as picturesque visions for sum-
mor tourists and, when the storms
come down, eat ships. 1t is COM
01nfty Of shopkeepers, boarding
house keepers, retired seamen. resi-
dent farmers, lawyer or two, one
doctor, four ministers, woman who
writes for fiction weeklies, and is
therefore literary person. seagoing
men who sail along the coast in
echooners, and listless mechanics, car
psnters, wheelwrights and so on. For
three hundred years the same families
hAye lived there and they have inter-
married until every one is akin to
every one else. You cannot stand in
front OF the little hotel and say that
Jedediah Robbins is skinflint with
out arousing the wrath of Mehitabel
Brown. whose great-grandmother mar
ated great-grand-secon Of
Saonal visitors come from the great cit
tss. attracted there by the stinging salt
air and quiet. For six weeks the place
e excited into spasms by men in knick-
sebockers, girls in bicycle skirts, the
Whack OF tennis rackets, the click Of
golf balls, moonlight firtations, man
6otin serenades, light laughter and
song The residents look with set re-
growing faces upon these evidences Of
immortality and when the chill Septem-
6ee has come settle back into the won't
I'd routine with gossip-material to last
them through the winter. The life in
Grayborough is hard, narrow, devo-
tdonal, monotonous. In 1897 old Eph-
CAIN Butler, who used to be mate OF
the schooner Polly" to and from the
BeFmudas for onions, went to Bangor,
stayed three days and returned with a
quart OF Medford rum, from which he
publicly and fearlessly drank in Sam
ael Higgins grocery. It will take him
three years longer to regain his social
status.
Near the end of the street furthest
from the bay lives Miss Tabitha Eng
efsh. who owns to forty-dve years. She
Us narrow-hipped and flat-bosomed,
w1th iron gray hair, thin lips and
large nose. Earlier in life she had
isantngs toward Universalism, but has
szepented and is now an earnest Pres
ltyterian. She has little house and a
4fttle garden and little income de-
vtved from her fathers estate. With
Ter lived her niece. Lois English. AS
che story under narration is practically
che story of this young woman, it is
proper here to state who and what she
Was.
On that staid, still, somber town she
bloomed as some strange tropical flow
'er might bloom for an hour upon
rock-ribbed pinnacle of Greenland. She
was of straight New England strain,
except that three generations back
upon the distaff side of the house there
had been an admixture of French
blood from Canada, and in her the
deathless Latin fire showed as 1t had
Showed In her mother and her mothers
mother. With this dash of the fiery
songinspired fluid of Provence came
6er name, Lois Her mother had died
whom the child was five months old.
Three years later her father, as brave
and competent seaman as ever set his
life upon a cast in all those stormy wa
Gers, went to a grave which had
yaWned before him since his boyhood
Aunt Tabitha took the infant and
reared her into womanhood according
TO her lights, which were dim, but
steady. The girl, showing evidence
even when a child of strange beauty
and strange contradictions of charac
Ter. went through the public school at
Grayborough, through the high school
at Augusta and through g modest sem
fnary for young ladies in Massachu
Sstts. Her father had left enough
suoney to educate her and the wish
that 1t should be expended in fitting
her for a battle with the world. Her
xfgid aunt scrupulously accounted for
every dollar of it. Subsequently Lois
was trained for year as profession
al nurse in Philadelphia, sickened of
tho business, attended Normal" or
two and became school teacher. She
spoke German slowly but correctly and
a. q gift of heredity, battered French
with the soft slurs and ease Of the
people just above Marseilles. She was
an expert needle-worker and fair mu-
Sleian, possessing contralto voice Of
wonderful depth and purity with a
strange pathos and passion in 1t that
sounded strangely to the people among
whom she was born. Upon the native
warmth Of her character was grated
through early environment certain
aspreGsion Of manner. y She walked
asnonE them avolcano Of an Icy OUT
N1Ed seeming. Thoroughly pure, thor
Oughly h0nest, disdainful Of petty trick
- artincs With dreams which she
EsAllsd alone ana ambitions which
- aeiAsd d hid. she went her way
! llllEiy out ~ sympathy with the small
a6airs which made up he,