The Spokane press. [volume] (Spokane, Wash.) 1902-1939, 1906-02-17
CLARENCE HAD A PRINCIPLE,
BUT HE AND LENA SHARED
UP AFTERWARD.

1t was a naughty yet frank coun-
tenance-a face that mingled
strength of will with pride, and a
tenderness with truth, yet had
enough poetic fire in it to make the
request his father made of Clar-
ence Livingston a very hard one
for him to grant. For Elmer Liv-
ingston, dying, remembered the
wrongs done by him in "the days
of nature" and recalling a lucky
adventure, which, by enriching
him, had beggared another, asked
his son to take that others daugh-
ter for his wife.
my boy, you will not refuse to
make my last hour easier?"
Father, would purchase you
| peace with my life, were it pos
sible. But there is surely some
other way than this, and 1 will
find it."
There is no other way" moaned
the sick man; "and since you bid
me unseal my lips, will tell you
how l gained my wealth, and plant
ed my life with thorns of remorse,
my son." And while the summer
night closed in, gray and spectral,
Clarence Livingston listened to his
fathers story of a credulous friend
betrayed and wealth snatched from
a too trusted hand, and bent his
head in a humiliation wholly new
and wholly intolerable.
Without, in the clustering shade
of the veranda, stood Lena Nun
roe drinking in the tale, with pulls
es beating as strongly as those in
the breast Of her Clarence; in her
own girlish bosom pain as keen,
regret as bitter, for she had loved
Elmer Livingston as second faith
err, and felt the sin of the dying
as keenly as the wrong done to
the dead. Besides, another pang
was hers-for Clarence had begged
his father not to ask him to be
more than a stranger to her!
Forgive me, my son! | did the
wrong for you," came hoarsely to
her from the dying lips of the ia
Their. MAKE her your wife and all
will be well. She is as pure as a
flower unplucked."
"She may be all you say" came
in the clear tones of the young
man; "but she is no more to me
than a flower that | have no wish
| to gather. If she loves me, it is
with a childish love that will not
| linger. Rest content, father; she
shall not suffer through you regard
for me. l will give her back every
i'll gotten dollar.
The girl, shaken by hushed sobs,
turned from the silvery night, and
| glided into the house like a shadow.
| Six years later an accident oc-
Cured on a midnight train which
filled hospital with moaning life,
or crushed or shapeless bodies in
which was left scarcely strength to
sigh. One nurse with two blue
eyes, tender and pitiful gave a low
| cry at last, as the surgeon, whose
assistant she was, paused beside a
cot on which a man lay uncon-
| scious.
Half an hour later he lay there
under her eyes, cold and still, with
| strips of linen across his bosom, a
| broken, bandaged arm a court
plaster holding together the red
| edges of a cash that ran perilously
near the temple, and she knelt
beside the cot with an ashen pain
in her young face, as she stroked
back the hair from his forehead.
"After six years." she whisper.
ed softly. after six years, during
which l have tried to forget your
face, to see it so cold and white!"
For the crushed and wounded
man was Clarence Livingston. the
kneeling nurse the girl whom he
had refused his dying father to
make offer of his hand Lena
Munroe.
Long days and nights followed
each other, and Clarence walked
from stupor to mad delirium, in
which he told his patient nurse all
of which she already knew and
much besides - told her of the
wealth he had vowed never to touch
lying in his solicitors hands for
the girl he could not trace; of the