, 1906-11-08
What He Wanted.
az LYNN MURDOCH.


! Copyright, 1905, by Daily Story Pub. Coz
Mark was discouraged-there was
no doubt about that. He had been in
the city nearly four weeks and had
hunted hard for an ~opening-but to no
avail. He was strong and willing,
was Mark, but nobody seemed willing
to give him a chance to prove Lis
worth.
He was getting hungry, too, and be
gan to wonder where he was going to
sleep when his scanty store of money
was exhausted-as it would be in a
day or two.
The sitting smells of the city
streets, the close, airless deafness oil
the inside room in the lodging house,
the crowding and the noise and the
people-people, people everywhere,
had made him so sick and tired of the
whole miserable city that he fairly
cried for a sight of the green fields
and waving cornfields and orchards
and peaceful white houses and green
blinds and all the rest of 1t back in
"%Illinoy." This-to say nothing about
Henrietta, and of course he was a lot
more lonesome for Henrietta than he
was for the pastures and cornfields
and white house and blinds and all
the rest of it.
And the funny thing about 1t all was
that he had left all this peaceful Ar
cadia and invaded the enemy's country
because of Henrietta's name. He had
always called her Hen" but, 10! and
behold, after she graduated she would
not stand for 1t and insisted that the
full significance of the name she had
been christened with be applied to her
when she was addressed.
Fool that he was, he had taken it as
a joke, inasmuch as he had called
her Hen" during all the years they
both could remember. But 1t proved a
sorry joke for him, because she was
in deadly earnest; and she had chided
him as being q mere country pumpkin.
and dared him to go out into the world
to prove his mettle. Well, of mettle
there vas plenty, and so Mark left the
old farm, which was to be his, and
went out to the great city to try his
strength in a field for which he was
not at all equipped.
And here he was, heart-sick, weary
almost defeated-but with no
thought of surrender; no, no., that
word did not belong in the Dennison
vocabulary. Hunger he could stand;
fatigue he could stand; hardship he
could stand; but 1t all seemed so
hopeless to him that he doubted the
e~xpediency Of the fight.
whats the use?" he said to him
self a dozen times. 81 have a COM
Portable home, surrounded by green
fields and swept by the sweet winds
from the pastures and the prairies.
Why should l walk these miserable
stone-paved streets trying to obtain
the price Of a nights lodging in a mis-
cradle cell without ventilation and alb
solutely ~unclean?"
And then would come before him
the s~cornfull face of Henrietta and he
would grit his teeth, take in the slack
of his belt and start over again.
These we're the thoughts surging
through Marks mind as he walked
| uOWu luC OuicF1 ssitSE applying III
successfully for a job as coachman
to n of the swell families whose pal
ace bordered the th%oroughfare. He
was utterly discouraged, heartsick
and weary-he really was sick, al
though he did not know it. The roar
of the great city reached his tired ears
and filled him with sickening disgust
and loathing.
OF a sudden. above the din of COM
merce and the changing of alarm bells
and the babble of the n~ever-ending
throng, there arose a piercing shrek
the cry of a woman in mortal ter
ror. Mark Strengthened his STOPPING
shoulders and faced about toward the
direction of the screams, now rapidly
approaching. Added to the e
now sounded the clatter of wild hoof-
beats, and Mark sprang to the curb,
from which the crowd was pushing
wildly back.
The sight that met his vision was
such as to blanch his face. There,
scarcely a hundred yards distant, and
dashing toward him like the wind,
was a pair of splendid black horses
on a full gallop, dragging back of them
a magnificent carriage. There was no
driver on the front seat, but on the
back seat was a beautiful young girl
with terror-stricken eyes and blood
less face hanging on to the side of
the vehicle with straining muscles as
the carriage swayed violently back
and forth, narrowly missing other We
hicles which were scurrying out of
the way to the best ability of the
drivers and c~hauffeurs.
Mark saw instantly that the horses
would dash upon the sidewalk near
the very spot where he stood, and that
the carriage would be wrecked and the
girl thrown out and probably killed.