Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1905-05-12
CHAPTER Y.


The rain had put off its coming until
every broad black-green glossy jimson
leaf, and all the delicately palmuted foil.
age of the wild hemp, and the maple,
and the white oak had long lain under
the common veil of sober gray, thrown
everything over by the rolling wheels and
tramping feet of the Overcoat road in
the light, sandy loam-came down at last
in a steady, growing patter that awoke
Lizzy Wickly for the twentieth time
throughout the hot, feverish, restless
night.
For the twentieth time she lay and
listened to the southwest wind, sweeping
in gusty circles that dashed the cool,
hard rain against the window panes with
a shot-like rattle as if it were the dimin
utive pebbles of that threatening, spec
ter-trodden, omnous Overcoat road, ris-
ing up and flying at her in a conjoined
onslaught of all possible evils.
How she tried to recall the almost
perfect happiness that had been hers only
few weeks ago! And how did she only
succeed in fully understanding that she
had then been really happy and had not
known it. The angel of bliss had tar
ried with her for nights and days, and
she, too, culpably unaware
Her brain pictures came and went in
one unvarying triangle Of great troubles
Her fathers dreadful mental disease,
with all the divergent and dependent
misery of this more than living death,
blighting and destroying their happy lit
tic home Mt one terrible blow. Her
strong and growing passion for a man
whom she had never seen face to face,
and whom she only knew through the
partial word pictures of his friend and
| assistant; together with the attitude of
that friend and assistant toward her.
And finally, as the smallest angle of
this triangle of constantly pressing griefs
the loss of her property upon which
she had built her hopes of future sue
cesses to be achieved in the great city
that was so fast spreading down and
| across the prairies that its subtle at
traction had long ago reached the wooded
hills of the Wabash country, and was
| drawing to itself all of the ambition, the
| daring, the discomfort the spirit of ad-
venture of these wide valleys and shaded
hills, and wood-hedged prairies.
Cutting into the second angle of this
triangle, and even into both the others
was a perplexing mixture of regret and
indignation centered upon Mr.. Mason.
Regret that she had been left, so far as
he knew or could know, in the attitude
of having treated him with inexcusable
rudeness and lack of feeling
What did he think of her; what could
he think of her in the light of that last
evening when he had appeared for a brief
time endowed with god-like attributes
that enabled him to defy the very demon
of the hurricane?
What a magnificent man must his prin
cipal be, indeed, TO have developed such
heroic qualities in this underling-the
man who labored with him for a stipu-
lated price, as he had confessed to her,
How had he slipped away like a thief
under cover Of the night with all the
| gossips of Sandtown wagging their heads
and smiling the knowing smile of absolute
| faith in the certain vllainy of the flee
| ing man! Why had he not taken time
| to come to her openly and without fear.
as he had done often and often beforep
And could it be true as more than in
timated by Conrad Redden, that he was
now in the neighborhood for the base
and heartless purpose of purchasing all
the heavily mortgaged property of the
Sandtown people for One-tenth of its real
value, just at the time when series of
unfortunate specu!ations had crushed the
| Sandtown Farmers Bank, and thus mt
it out of the power of the people to bor-
row money with which to save their
| homes?
(To be continued)