The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-06-15
THE BAPTISM.

Do you want me to go out in such
 wild weather wife? It is showing
 hard
 ''Was that enough to keep you at
 home when you were counting me?' re-
 piled the soft voice persuasively.
 "It must have drifted pretty thick in
 the ravines of the mountains where the
 wind could get hold of it.
 If the brigadier, Gottfried Earth, should hear you now, Louis, he would say the Alsatians were afraid of the
 snow--'
 The young man shrugged his shoul- ders ol1stinately.
 Besides" she continued, 'it is neces- sary; you are Christian, Louise, and you know that the little one ought not
 to wait longer without baptism; he is
 eight days old already. Carry him
 down into the valley, find a godmother and godfather for him, and have the church bells ring for our little one. An,
 I wish we lived lower on the mountain
 side that I might hear the bells ring for the baptism of my son. She ceased wearily, and lay quiet in the old-cashioned Alsatian bed, her eyes half closed to keep out the bright light of the day. Her loosened hair | framed the round face of a peasant girl of the Vosges, whose only beauty was her youth, the soft color in her cheecks and the gentle light of her brown eyes, l which were always the same. She knew l that she was loved. She was aceustom- ! t,oI ifar | for as long as she could remember. 1 Among many suitors for her hand she 1 had chosen the game-keeper for rich 1 iron merchant of Strasburg, one of the
 rare pure- -bloded Alsatians authorized
 by the administration for the guardian 1 ship of private properties situated on i the border line and infested with all 1 the tramps and poachhers of the em- pire.
 It required much courage for l the young woman to accept the long winter spent on the summit of the
 mountain, high above the pines and the beech trees, and with no neighbors but the clouds, the snow and the wind.
 More than one peasants daughter in her place would have regretted the val 1 ley and been at times ill-tempered. But
 she had never complained of anything, and this had given her a singular au- | thoritg over her husband.
 Again his wish the latter, how ever, nesitated to obey her wish. Seat l ed at the foot of the bed, in a low l chair. he looked now at his wife and l now through the window out across the | clearing, white and drifted snow, to where the dark line of the pine trees distinguished the heavens from the
 earth. Supple and broad shouldered, | his skin tanned and. his blue yes set deeply in his head, there was no lok of I don't see how you could do that save its strong endurance.
 i If I were not so poor" he said, "I
 would have little sled"
 What for?"
 gro carry the little one in Rosalie: 1 how do you think I can carry him I | do not know how, as you do, to hold 1 him on one arm and besides the snow
 is so deep now that
 Such a big man to be worried for so 1 1ittle;" laughed the wife. Put him in your game basket. Louise Schmidt, it
 is plenty deep; he will sleep there as soundly as if he were in his cradle and
 the cold will never touch him. If he
 wakes up and cries give him the bottle
 of milk, which will put in the bottom of the basket
 The guard consented and took down 1 the heavy bag of deer skin hanging on | the wall, in which he used to carry the
 provisions of bread and dried vege- tables from the valley to the cabin on the mountain top. l A quarter of an hour later he closed the door of the lonely house and took | the first step in the clearing. The snow
 was soft and fine and covered the whole | landscape even to the other mountains 1 across the Rhine, which Louis could \ faintly distinguish in the distance. ! He tested the trail with his iron shod strapped the bulky, warm bag, which was sometimes moved with a motion
 all it's own.
 1 Pushing his way through the border of pines the mountaineer had first to get over a declivity of sharp, brittle, | treacherous stones, where the path wound like fine-toothed saw. The guard knew the multiple dangers of this passage where the night wind had piled and drifted the snow But he
 started resolutely, thinking only of the ireturn, when it would be still more dif-