Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-03-27
The Cues sf Of Helen e.s s*
By THOMAS EARLE
Copyright, 1908. by Daily Story Pub Gel

4 T bottom Herbert Scanlan was a | A kind-hearted man, albeit pleas ure-loving and worldly person, and had he suspected the heart Burning and misery it would cause he never would have done 1t. But. being wholly city-bred and know ing only the life of the me tropolis where the women are even wiser than the men, how was he to suspect the absolute simplicity and trust of the country maiden, where girls are girls until they reach ma turity and not young women before they attain their teens. He had gone to the country. on an enforced vaca- tion by his physicia S orders, accom- panied by the warning that unless he give up immediately; and for a considerable season the strenuous business responsibility, supplement- ed by the feverish pleasure which combined had put the gray into his black hair at the age of 2S, the end was not three years ahead. Always clear-headed and not at all ready yet to relinquish his hold on the life out of which he had absorbed so much pleasure and in which he held so much hope, he had adjusted his busi- ness affairs with a jerk and fled far from the cares and gayeties of city life, finding a refuge in homely farmhouse in the far west, miles from a rNilroad and as remote from a pleasure resort as from the grind of the city. It promised to be very dull for him until he became interested in Helen, the daughter of the house.
 Helen was 16, but acted and felt nearer 12. She had grown up with out youthful society, and had never viewed the opposite sex as in any way different from her own than in the matter of strength and the na- ture of the duties pertaining thereto. She was fal1ow ground indeed for the experienced beau who had experi- enced affairs in the capitals of two charming because of her ignorance. Nature had done much for her-he saw that plainly the first time he set eyes on her. Her skin, despite her careless out-of-door life, was as fair and peachy as the dream of painter, and into it the sun and the fresh air in which she had lived so much, had painted bloom that would have been the despair of "my lady" with all the rouge and massage. Perfect health and freedom from the pervert- ing and disfguring dress of conven- tionalism had rounded her maiden form into the alluring lines of phy- sical perfection, and the effect was none the less effective because of the loose and simple garments she wore. How it happened Scanlan never could figure out, but this daughter of these rough and hard-working farmers had somehow inherited (possibly from some patrician ancestor many gener- ations removed) features as perfect as Greek goddess, and her eyes were flashed with the fires of abun- dant vitality and natural intelligence.
 Scanlan was not an inmate of the Hudson home for many days before he found himself making violent love to this simple Maud Muller of the prairie farm. At first they were only good comrades, and he helped her milk the cows and feed the horses and drive the cattle and churn the butter and do all the other chores which fell to her lot on a farm, where everybody was working their hardest to lift the mortgage and keep the family fed and clothed. But she was so new a specimen to him and alto gether so inviting and charming and simple that he soon fell to teaching her the dangerous game of love.
 He meant no harm. How was he to know the tremendous power of the slumbering passions he was awaken ing? He had never known woman who was not altogether competent to take abundant care of herself in a Irritation or love affair, and it had generally been the man who was the victim in the affairs which had fallen under his observation.
 To Helen the summer was like a chapter from Fairyland and the handsome and debonaire man of the world was the veriest hero of all the knights of chivalry. Not that she knew anything about the knights of chivalry, even from books, but he awoke all the slumbering romance and passion in her starved nature. She gave him all the burning love of newly-awakened passion, and as the months passed the man began to re- alize that it was somewhat different from any affair in which he had yet been hitherto involved.
 Of course, the end had to come, as it does to all dreams, and one fine day in the early late fall he kissed her a fond good-by, swore. to be true to her and went back to the excitement and gayety of the city and forgot her.
 Then came to her the dreary months of waiting and watching, the first shadowy doubts, the heart-sickness, the misery and despair of isolation and loneliness and longing. True as tempered steel herself, she refused to believe that he had deceived her. As the months passed, mighty resolve took root. and grew, in her mind. She would go out into the great mys- terious world beyond the hills and the horizon and seek him. She was wise enough to know that she was