Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1904-10-12

flooded her with it's golden October
rays.
Just as tall, strong and powerfully
built as was John Henderson, there
was distinct difference between the
athletic fair-haired man standing 81
lently in the road and Henderson, who
stood in the doorway of the mill above
Evidently this was a stranger.
| And while his dark blue cotton
blouse and general appearance denoted
a workman, and the roughened hand
thrust carelessly in his pockets showed
signs of toll, there was an indescribable
look about him which Indicated a previ-
GUS life spent in a different sphere
which few could mistake.
His workman's cap set with military
precision and grace on his fair, curl
ing hair. His steps had the swing and
cadence of one trained to the march Of
Infantry, while his straight features
and strong indomitable blue eyes
seemed to indicate descent from some
Morse or Scandinavian ancestry.
His whole look possessed a singular
power and fascination belonging to
no original tiller of the soil or newer
of wood and stone.
James Smith, as he was known in
this distant village, and to the country
folks around, was nevertheless only
charcoal burner, living obscurely and
poorly in a remote and solitary hut
down on the distant borders of the
bayou.
BY his side stood Russian hound Of
great size and beauty, motionless as
his master; he too gazed absorbed at
the pretty picture Of Gretchen leaning
on the gate.
Some slight noise made her turn,
and she paused in bewildered surprise
at the unfamiliar sight Of a stranger
standing motionless in the road.
Coming forward with a leisurely
ease, while his great dog kept majes-
tically at his side, Smith, the charcoal
burner, accosted Gretchen with
pleasant grace and strangely COM
manding manner.
And when John Henderson, coming
up, invited him in with simple cordial
ity, they soon sat at the supper around
the board so daintily served under
Gretchens clever management, and the
talk was so pleasant of distant lands,
and various scenes Of life elsewhere
far remote from the dim solitude of the
great forests which hemmed them in,
that the hours flew swift and the
pleasant moments drifted and melted
quickly into the past.
1t was late when Smith, the char
coal burner, rose to go, and strange
cottage when he left
John Henderson accompanied him
to the bend Of the road and, shaking
hands, urged him to soon come back,
for he and Gretchen would be glad of
a companion to while away the evening
hours when the long winter nights
would set in.
"A charcoal burner? He's no work
ingman," said Gretchen, musingly.
Did you notice the ring he wears,
John, and how handsome his hands
are in spite Of his work? Where does
he come from?"
John Henderson could not tell, for
no one knew.
Two years before he had come on a
sand schooner as deckhand to the ad-
joining village and, plunging into the
forest, had joined some woodcutters,
and from that had drifted into his
present work.
Smith had curious foreign way OF
speaking, although his English was not
only fluent but scholarly, and some
times, if passing within earshot of his
log cabin, one could hear a mellow,
cultured voice singing strange and
beautiful ditties such as the woods and
wilds around the bayou had never
heard before.
Between John Henderson and James
Smith strong friendship sprang up
and often during the winter evenings
when the days work Was dcne the mill
wheel stopped and only the purling of
the water over the stones of the mill
dam was audible and the soughing of
the winds in the trees, Smith would
sit and chat by the bright wood fire in
Gretchen's pretty little parlor, cheating
time with his strange tales and talk
until, with Gliding laugh, Henderson
would send Gretchen to bed to keep
the roses fresh in her cheeks and the
light bright in her soft, brown eyes.
John Henderson prospered with his
sawmill, and his strong, gentle heart
WAS filled with happiness and content
ment. The bright winter days went
by peaceful and prosperous, spring
came with it's dogwood and wild flow
e1s; Gretchen's roses and sweet peas
flourished and her beauty grew apace.
Then summer came, with it's long, still
nights, it's restful quietude, the faint
whisrerings of the light breezes, the
CLINT of the freely and the call of the
birds, and Gretchen grew to be beau
tiful woman. But there was shadow
oyerhanging the wild rose perfection
OF her face and fear in the depths
Of her dark eyes.
Again the sweet, early days of the
fall swept over the land, but there was
threat of storm in the air, and
there was unrest and a vague dis
quietude in the cottage by the bayou,
although the sawmill, with it's ceaseless
clang of machinery and the monoton-
GUS whir of it's great wheel had
brought prosperity, ease and comfort
to it's inmates.
James Smith, the charcoal burner,
IL
If his poor log cabin, and Rex, his