Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1905-12-08

 it = lie questioned Kitty. For she had doubted her pleasure in the mountains in the conviction that they would Do too dramatic for her simple taste. Kitty closed her eyes and sighted the peaks as if she were getting the color scheme for an afternoon toilet.
 Mass, bulk. rather than line. No. it's not like drop curtain. but it's dis tinctly 'hand painted All it needs is :, great cliff It's the kind of thing that would sound well in q description Oh. assure you I intend to make lavish use of it. but it leaves nothing to ones poor imagination!'
 Peter had distinct feeling of being annoyed No. she could not appreciate the mountains any more than they could appreciate her. They were incon gruous antipathetic antpodal. Kitty in her pink and white and flaxen pret- tiness and her trim habit was in har mony with the bridle path of city park ln this great. lonely country she was an alien He thought of Judith and the night they had climbed Horse Thief trail, of her quiet endurance, her keen pleasure in the wild beauty of the night her quality of companionship. her loyalty. her silent bearing of many burdens. Yet until he had seen them both against the same relentless back ground he had never been conscious of comparing the two women.
 Mamie Wetmore had fallen behind She was riding with a bronzed young lieutenant from Fort Washable The two ahead rode long without speaking Then Peter broke the silence impa {, tiently.
 "You did not really mean that, did you:' He was boyishly hurt at her f1ippant summing up of his beloved blue country. and Kitty, tired with the long. hard ride, and missing that some thing in Peter that had always been hers. turned on him pair of blue eyes in which the tears were brim ming suspiciously. They were well out of sight of the others and had come to the heavy fringes of a pine wood Was it the psychological mo ment at last? Then suddenly their horses that had been smiling the air suspieioIsly, stopped. Kitty.s horse. which Was in advance of Peters, rushed toward the thicker growth of pines as if all be(llam were ill pur- 1 suit Peters horse, swerving from the cause of alarm. bolted back across the traii over which they had just made | their wav. A large brown bear, feed ing with her cub and hidden by the trees till they were directly in front of her, had caused the alarm.
 
 And presently the hush of the shad- owy green world in which Judith lay was broken by a light, sobbing sound It had beeil so still that lying on her bed of pile needles, she had likened it to greut waves of silence, rolling up from tue valley, breaking over her and 1 sweeping back again. noiseless, green from the biliowing ocean of pine branches. and sunlit. Judith bent over the rocky ledge and saw a girl mak- l ing her way down the game trail, di ! sheveled and fearful. Her hat was gone | y had the greening tinge of corn silk blew about her shoulders; her trim skirt was torn and dusty, and she looked about. bewidered, hardly real izing that through the unexpected course of things she had been stranded in this great world of sunlit splendor and loneliness. She closed her eyes.
 
 pressed her with deepening sense of calamity. Suppose they never found her: How could she find her way in this endless wilderness afoot She sank to the turf and began to cry hysterc- ally.
 cognition that this was Miss Cole brooke. Amusement seemed to have l dulled her powers of action--amaze ment that she. who had stolen to this place and crouched close to earth that she might see the triumph of this pre- ferred woman and, having seen and paid her grievous dole, steal away and take up the thread of endless little things that spun for her the web of life was forced instead to be an un. willing witness of the others distress
 Judith had risen with her first i'm. pulse, which had been to go to Kitty. but halfway through the thicket she hesitated and reconsidered Undoubt. edly Peter would soon come, and Pc ter's consolation would be more potent than any she could offer. She shrank in shuddering self consciousness at the thought of her presence at their meet ing. the uninvited guest. the outgrown friend and confidante, blundering in at such time, pitifully full of good in tentions. She recoiled from the picture as from precipice that all unwitting y she had escaped. What madness had induced her to come on this expcdi- tion? \ sudden panic at the possibil- ity of her discovery possessed her. Sup pose Peter should find her skulking like