The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1907-08-14
Dy ELLIS PARKER BUTLER.

| VIC tiine W prove up MS case, which
is to say, that we'd wait and see if II
did rain like he had prophesied.
Next day Old Man Barlow come
out and took his place on a chair be.
fore Woolly's shack, but we noticed
he looked worried and kept casting
his eye off to the eastward, but no
rain come. Along in the afternoon
lot of clouds passed over and the
old man chirped up some, but clouds
don't rain in the dry season at Bad
Leg. and all they did was to pass
over, and by night Old Man Barlow
was pretty glum, 1 tell you.
Well, the old man seemed to know
we was losing faith in him as the
days passed, and he got mighty blue
and downcast, and kept away from
all of us. He would just sit on his
chair and keep his eye on the little
weather vane he had rigged up on
a post before the shack, and talk to
himself. When we passed by we
would hear him saying, winds in
the east; winds in the east" or,
Never knew it to fail before" or
She's got to rain," or some such
thing.
tell you it was mighty pitiful to
see that poor old man and the faith
he had in the weather, for he
wouldn't lose faith. He seemed to
feel nurt at the way the weather was
treating him, just as if some old
friend had got to acting mean, but
he never believed the weather would
go back on him entirely, and he sat
out there in the east breeze, day
after day. waiting for the weather to
come back and be forgiven. 1t was
a touching scene, and Ryerson sug-
gested that we ought to git up a
convention to petition the Almighty
for rain, but none of us being much
of a hand at that sort of thing, we
let 1t drop We figured that if faith
would do the work, Old Man Barlow
mad enough faith to bring a deluge,
but, as for us, we had never known
it to rain except after the wind shift
ed to the west at the end of the dry
season, so we couldn't be expected to
have much faith in rain coming from
the east
Poor old Barlow got more and
more downcast as the days went on.
and we got to going round to try to
cheer him up, but it didn't seem to
do any good. He used to shake his
head and say: Boys, l never knew it
to fail-'East wind brings rain
I've said it a thousand times, and
every time I said it, it brought the
ra1n,' and then the tears would pile
up in his eyes and run down and
splash on the ground like rain drops,
and sometimes he would think they
were rain drops, and then he would
look up, and when he saw the clear
sky, he would drop his chin down
into his whiskers and break down
complete, like a little weak baby.
Oh. it was terrible!
Sometimes we would walk up ia
him and sniff the air, and say: Air
smells damp this morning, Mister
Barlow but it never fooled him,
and we couldn't get him to smile. He
would just groan and shake his head
in the same old doleful way.
He got worse and worse as time
went on, and he got thinner and
thinner until he was a regular skel-
| eton, and his face was like a DEATH
head with whiskers, and with two
bright eyes looking out-always
looking for rain. And then one day
he took to his bed and went out of
his head. Sometimes he thought he
was back in Maine and then he
would smile a poor, skinny smile;
and sometimes he thought he was
Noah, but the saddest was when he
thought he was the east wind tryin'
to blow a heavy watering cart
through sand desert. When he
thought he was that, the toughest of
us had to Just sit down and cry. il
was so pitiful.
Then one day he failed pretty fast,
and we knew he was going, and as
ne fell back on the pillow with his
eyes shut, the rain began to fall out
side to beat sixty. When he heard
1t, a sweet, peaceful smile passed
over his face, and he opened his eyes
and said: She's comet" and then,
after a minute: "It's all right now,
life is worth livin'." and he seemed
to strengthen up right away.
For little bit he lay enjoying the
sound of the rain, and then he sort
of raised himself on one elbow and
looked out of the window, but in a
minute he caught sight of his little
weather vane, and the smile fled.
and he fell back and died. You see.
the wind was from the west.
We all stood there, thinking how
sad 1t was, | reckon, and none of us
knowing what to do or say, when all
of sudden Copper Judkins left the
room. The next we saw of him hs
was out in the rain mailing Old Man
Barlow's weather vane so it pointed
from the east. Which leads me to re-
mark that somehow a feller always
thinks of such things after they can't
do any good.-New York Times.
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