Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1903-03-11
A Knave of
Con SCience
By FRANCIS LYNDE.
tCopyrisht 1900. by Francis Lynde-)
CHAPTER xxx.-CosrrSrrn

Andrew Galbraith was silent on the
short run before the gale to the pier
head at the foot of Main street. For
one thing, he was not a man of many
words; and for another, he was
chilled through and thoroughly un-
comfortable.
None the less, he made shift to
thank his rescuers in fitting phrase
at the point of debarkation, and to
intimate, as a gentleman might, that
MS gratitude would wait upon fit
ting opportunity to take a more SUBJ
stantial form. Charlotte offered to
walk home, that Griswold might see
Mr.. Galbraith safe to his hotel, but
. 1nls the old man would by no means
permit.
Ma, na," he said, relapsing, as he
did now and then, into the Scottish
mother-tongue. I'm wet as any
drowned rat, but I'm not that badly
flashed. Take the Teddy home, Mr.
Griswold, and do you two be seeing
after yourselves. You're as wet as
/ am"
Accordingly, Griswold accompanied
went home to change his clothes.
Just what he meant to do afterwards
was not very clearly defined, but dur
ing the changing interval he made up
his mind with sudden determination.
Whatever should come of it, the
thing for which all other things must
wait must be said. He had reached
the parting of the ways; he knew, as
he might have known from the mo-
ment of love-making on the Belle
julie" that life without Charlotte to
share it with him would henceforth
be no more than a shadow of the
real.
He had good excuse for going
straight away back to DIR. Farnham's.
The very least he could do would be
to call and ask if she had come
through the adventure with no worse
consequence than a shock and a wet
ting. And yet, when he had let him.
self out of Mrs. Holcomb's gate he
did not go directly to the house on
the lakes edge. Instead, he made a
long detour, walking aimlessly and
deeply buried in thought. This thing
to be done lightly. So far from it,
the more he pondered over it the
more he realized that it was likely
to prove the turning point in his life.
Now, that he gave himself the back
ward glance which he had steadily
refused since the morning of the
Bayou bank incident to take, he saw
that he had been living tentatively;
passing from day to day as one who
waits upon the event of the day;
looking neither backward nor for
ward. Though he had worked faith
fully, doing the thing that lay next
to his land, he knew now that his
work, on his book or in the Office
with Raymer, had. been purely ex-
trinsic to any well-considered future.
But now the future demanded
thoughtful onsideration-would have
it, whether or no; and, as was in
evitable, the past colored every fore
casting picture.
For one thing, he had come to that
stone of stumbling which he had
forseen in his earliest imagininps
touching his future relations with
Charlotte. Without being unduly be-
sotted. the hope that he should not
plead with her in vain was almost an
assurance. If he could gain his own
consent to let the past lie buried in
oblivion, the vista of the future
opened out before him with all the
barriers to happiness brushed aside.
And yet, try as he might to resolve