The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1903-03-27


" because of the moments it took to
realize and accept misfortune so ter
rible when she lifted the coarse socks
and looked and saw no little gold mug
get, saw nothing. Then horror and
great fear grew in the blue eyes, and
pale agony crept over the childish face
and made it old, and the poor little
heart seemed to stop beating.
Effie said nothing and made no cry,
but she closed her eyes tightly for
moment and looked in the box again.
No, it was no illusion. The little mug
get was not there. The first gold her
father had found, which had been in
trusted to her care, which was to have
been taken to her mother-it was gone
She put down the box quite quietly
and walked out into the day. But the
sun was shining very strangely and
mistily now, and the blue sky had
grown black, and the trees seemed to
move weirdly. and the locusts had
ceased humming from fear, but the
strange bird was somewhere near,
shrieking brokenly: "What will father
say? What will father sayY'
But as the child stood there despair
ing her sight grew clearer, and she
saw a black figure among the trees,
and she was conscious of a pair of
dusky eyes watching her through the
leaves. Then only she remembered,
and she knew who had done this cruel
thing. King Billy! And she had been
kind to him. Effie suddenly burst into
passionate sobbing. The black figure
still lowered among the trees, often
changing its position, and the dusky
eyes still peered through the leaves.
And the laughing jackasses few down
to the old tree again and laughed more
madly than before-laughed at Effie's
trust, at Billy's gratitudel
1t was 10 o'clock, and darkness and
quiet reigned in John Archer's hut
Over among the tents behind the wat
tie gums a few gamblers and heavy
drinkers were still awake, and their
voices, raised in anger or ribald mer-
riment, might occasionally have been
family heard from the hut. But Arch
err, who had sown his wild oats, was
true worker and he had his little
daughter. for whose sake he had built
the hut away from the noisy camp.
Archer had come home late and
weary, as usual, had eaten his supper
and gone to rest without, to Effie's in
tense relief. speaking of the little gold
nugget The child was afraid to speak
of the loss, and she was not without
vague hopes that beneficent Provi-
dence would restore the nugget during
the darkness and save her from this
great trouble.
For this she prayed very earnestly
before she lay down to sleep. Or did
she sleep at all that night? She never
quite knew. But she thinks that it
was then that she first experienced
that terrible purgatoral condition
which is neither wakefulness nor
sleep when the body and mind are
weary enough to bring the profound
sleep which they require, but which
the brain is too overladen and too
cruelty active to allow, when dreams
seem realities and realities dreams.
1t must have been a dream when she
saw something small and yellow float
through the tiny window on the ghost
ly silver moonbeams. And yet when,
having closed her eyes, she opened
them again it was still there, lowering
about in the darkness, less bright now
and with pale yellow halo. But it
faded quite away. 1t was a cruel,
mocking dream.
Then was it dream when the old
curtain which divided her corner of
the hut from her fathers moved near
the ground, bulged slightly toward
her? 1t would be curious to see, and
she lay still, From under the curtain
seemed to come a thin arm and slow
with a great shock of hair. And the
moonbeams just touched a face.
think they kissed it, though it was
black. for they found in a black hand
the little yellow object which had
hoated in the first dream.
1t was all so real, so beautiful, that
the child lay still, scarce daring to
breathe lest the vision should melt
away, and when in her dream came
the voice of her father with the words,
Speak, or I'll fire" her lips refused to
open.
But it was no dream when the shot
came and the black king rolled over
on the earth dead, with the little gold
nugget he had come to restore pressed
in the death agony against his heart,
where, too, was little gold.
And the laughing birds Id the old
tree, startled from their sleep by the
shot, laughed once more, wildly and
madly at Billy's honesty.-Exchange