Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-05-18
"A WY edIfh or Golden Hair
By MARY s. BADEN.
 Copyright, 1908, by Daily stsry Pub. co.)

move aga1n!
 A light wind stirs the moonlit leaves outside the cabin window and they rustic and whisper. The batter of the mountain stream over the powders and it's swish over the sandbar are very audible in the midnight silence. From the inner room come, soft and regular. the deep breathings of the tired house mother and the trundle bed contingent
 The lamp flame fiickers and moves the mans shadow on the wall, but he sits as still as if he were dead.
 We'll, when hope Is dead-hope and energy and days and gold all poured into an ever-gaping black mine mouth that is as hungry and empty and black as ever when the last dollar, the last hope are swallowed up in it--how much better it would be, would it not, if the man, too, were dead?
 ' Foil, privation, danger, they had been nothing in themselves. They would be nothing now, if he had been able te come home with the golden guerdon he had striven for. But the homecoming had been hardest of all.
 Cuddled on a cot in the corner, a girlish figure stirred restlessly. His eyes sought the glow of the golden hair flowing over the pillow.
 Poor Golden Hair-the mine had been named for her. Was this golden-haired Millie's life to be as black failure as the mine had proven? Was that name of hope and pride to be summed now as a word that hurt, that was mock cry?
 He turned again drearily to the pa. per before him-his life insurance; the last plank between the beloved little band and the hungry sea of absolute poverty. Everything else, together | with the best years of his life, the | mine had swallowed. If he lived, this would probably have to go. If he died l just died, you know
 Perhaps 1t was the tense stiffness that woke the sleeper, perhaps it was the fickering light. Perhaps it was the mystic time for her to awake from l girlhood to womanhood. She had been l wandering in childish dreams. Sud- 1 denly she was broad awake and her soul had seized the look on her fathers face and she lay trembling with the knowledge of @ mans despair. She had heard, with the nght-hearted half consciousness of youth, his few sad words, as he had announced at home coming that the mine had played out J She had known that mother 'felt bad' over it.
 Now there was revelation in the face Sn the very figure of the man alone past midnight, facing despair, with failure back of him.
 The girl watched him through the meshes of her shiRing hair. What she read she could not have voiced, but the woman heart woke in her that knows without knowledge. She could see the top of the life insurance policy I as it turned backward; she knew what 1t was. She felt his thought.
 After a little she stretched out he1 slim, young arms, yawned, then tossed back her hair and sat up, blinking a the light.
 "Why, dad, up yet? What time 0 night is it?"
 Then, with her usual girlish bound she was out and at his side, with hel arms around his neck, alternatel, scolding and betting.
 "If this is the way you have beer doing, no wonder you have been grow ing thin and pale. The mine may pla, out, 20 mines may play out, your olt insurance company may play out, tossing the paper aside playfully, '.bu we don't want you to play out. If yo' sit up like this you wilTget sick ant die, and then what would we do with out you?"
 1n 4aI I1rS .-4 AT fear that had clutched her heart, ye without betraying it, soothing ant staying the man with the sense of thei loving need of him and a dim, formin, hope, till she had lifted his burden fo the night at least; and soon he, too was snatching the blest respite 0 sleep.
 But the girl lay awake, thinking thinking, thinking-a girls thought against a great, demanding, threaten ing new world, a world that could crusl men. The stress of it was on her stil next morning, and after helping tlr busy mother set the days househol machinery in motion, and inducing tn beaten man to lie down and drear again, she ran down to the stream an laved her head in it's cooling waters.
 Spread out in the sun to dry, tn yellow tresses shone like the heart o a mine. So thought young ma, springing up the steep path and at he side before she could gather the go1de1 masses into neat restraint.
 ''Why didn't you whistle? I didn' hear you coming" she said blushing.
 'I opened my mouth to, but kept open at sight of so much wealth. h answered. "What a lot of hair yo have and how long it is-and beaut full" he added admiringly, as it .es capped her in her nervous haste an billowed about her shoulders and bt low her waist. ... "Do you think SOP" she asked shyly , "I never saw lovelier hair" he al , firmed emphatically. Most girls woul , give fortune for if. know one wh . would" and he laughed. "She is tn , only one ever saw with hair anythin like yours." ...,
 "Who is that?" she queried, cur