Camas Prairie chronicle. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1901-1917, 1906-09-28

to dress himself in North's clothes. He |
would wait until his aid was absolutely |
required, and then rush out. In the dark
ness Sylvia would mistake him for the |
priest. He could convey her to the boat |
if recourse to the boats should be rem
dered necessary-and then take the haz- |
ard of his fortune. While she was in |
danger his place was near her
From the deck of the vessel the scene |
was appalling. The clouds had closed |
in The arch of light had disappeared |
and all was a dull, windy blackness. Gil |
gantic seas seemed to mount in the hori-
zon and sweep toward and upon them
1t was as though the ship lay in the
vortex of a whirlpool, so high on either
side of her were piled the rough pyra-
midical masses of sea. The vessel lay
almost on her beam ends, with her helm
up, stripped even of the sails which had
been furled upon the yards. Mortal
hands could do nothing for her. By
O'Clock in the morning the gale had
reached its height.
The sea, pouring down through the
burst hatchway, tore the door of the
cuddy from its hinges. Sylvia found her
self surrounded by a wildly surging tor
rent which threatened to overwhelm her.
She shrieked aloud for aid, but her voice
was inaudible even to herself. Clinging
to the mast which penetrated the little
cuddy, she whispered a last prayer for
succor. The door opened, and from out
the cabin came a figure clad in black.
She looked up, and the light of the ex-
piring lamp showed her a face that was
not that of the man she had expected to
see. Then a pair of dark eyes beaming
ineffable love and pity were bent upon
her, and a pair of dripping arms held
her above the brine as she had once been
held in the misty mysterious days that
were gone.
In the terror of that moment, the
cloud which had so long oppressed her
brain passed from it. The action of the
strange man before her completed and
explained the action of the convict chain
ed to the Port Arthur coal wagons, of
the convict kneeling in the Norfolk ISL
and torture chamber. She remembered
the terrible experience of Macquarie
Harbor She recalled the evening of the
boat building, when, swung into air by
stalwart arms, she had promised the res
cuing prisoner to plead for him with her
kindred. Regaining her memory thus,
all the agony and shame of the mans
long life of misery became at once APP
parent to her. She understood how her
husband had deceived her, and with
what base injustice and falsehOod he
had bought her young love. No ques-
ton as to how this doubly condemned
prisoner had escaped from the hideous
isle of punishment she had quit occur
red to her. She asked not-even in her
thoughts-how it had been given to him
to supplant the chaplain in his place on
board the vessel. She only considered,
in her sudden awakening, the story of
his wrongs, remembered only his marvel
GUS fortitude and love, knew only, in
this apparently last instant of her pure,
Inflated life, that as he had saved her
once from starvation and death, so had
he come again to save her from despair.
The eyes of the man and woman met
in one long, wild gaze. Sylvia stretched
out her white hands and smiled, and
Richard Devine understood, in his turn,
the story of the young girls joyless life,
and knew how she had been sacrificed.
In the great crisis of our life, when,
brought face to face with humiliation,
we are suspended gasping over the great
emptiness of death, we become conscious
that the self which we think we knew so
we'll has strange and unthought-of ca
pacities To describe tempest of the
elements is not easy, but to describe a
tempest of the soul is impossible. Amidst
the fury of such a tempest, a thousand
memories, each bearing in its breast the
corpse of some dead deed whose influ-
ence haunts us yet, are driven like feath-
ers before the blast, as unsubstantial
and as unregarded. The mists which
shroud our self-knowledge become trans
parent and we are smitten with sudden,
| lightning-like comprehensions of our own
misused power over our fate.
This much we feel and know, but who
can coldly describe the hurricane which
thus overwhelms him? As well ask the
drowned mariner to tell of the marvels
of mid-sea when the great deeps swal
| lowed him and the darkness of death en-
comprised him round about. These two
human beings felt that they had done
with life. Together thus, alone in the
very midst and presence of death, the
distinctions of the world disappeared
| Their vision grew clear. They felt as
beings whose bodies had already per-
ished, and as they clasped hands, their
freed souls, recognizing each the lowell
ness of the other, rushed tremblingly
together.
In a stately home in dear old Eng
land" a bronzed, serious-faced man
knows the peace and contentment that
come only with the calm after the storm
the rare joy Of love requited, the sol
emn satisfaction of innocence indicated,
the "glory of sunlit lawns" and "green
pastures and still waters"
They who had robbed Rufus Dawes,
convict, Of the best years of his life
could not restore their golden promise
or atone for the shipwreck of youth and
early manhood.
But they could tear the false veil from
the past. The storm that swept the
Lady Franklin to the cruel rocks drifted
to a friendly shore the man and woman
who, clasped in each others arms, saw
love ineffable in each others eyes for
the first time.
Rufus Dawes escaped to England, Syl.
via Frere followed on the next steamer
for, at the first port she had learned OF
the death of Maurice Frere, Drained by
| the maDaCles of a convict he had GOA 4.