The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-10-20

7 IT'S gettin' kinder cool along toward
night these days. she said to herself.
ct believe I'll climb up attic and get
out one of those coats he used to wear,
and give it to Miggle Lope. I guess
| it's kinder to the dead to let their
things do some good, and he wasn't
| ever one mite near"
| The old lady had boarded IN her
| garret-chests all the clothing which
her dead husband had left behind him
thirty years ago; but now, moved by
her desire to serve the Portuguese, her
neighbor, she lighted her little brass
| lamp and toiled painfully up the steep
stairs to the small attic under the
caves to find and to bestow upon Lope
one of these sacred garments.
The effort was great; her breath
came short and a pain gripped her side
| as she bent over the chest, holding
up the heavy lid on her gray head,
as with one hand she raised the lamp
aloft and with the other shook out the
camphor- garments. Selecting
coat she arose to her feet, closed the
chest, made it's lock fast, then started
for the stairs. The pain held her and
her head swan, and she sank to the
ground. When she recovered conscious
ness she instantly recognized that her
summons had come.
Gathering together her strength and
resolution she pulled herself to her
feet and managed to set in its place
in a certain window the lamp which
her Portuguese neighbcr had arranged
should be the signal to summon him
in case of need.
4I,<@
signal He found Mrs. Rogers lying
across her high-posted, corded bed,
fully dressed, gasping for breath, her
dark eyes looking into eternity.
'Deara lady, poora deara LADY,"
murmured the fisherman. his arms
around her, his tears falling with the
abandon to emotion which her own
race could never have shown.
He arranged her pillows, and laid
her high among them, still holding fast
the withered hands that chung to his
warm ones. In his unknown tongue he
murmured words that the old Puritan
dimly felt were prayers, but she did
not shrink from them; idolatrous or
not, they comforted her: she leaned
her numb heart on the fisherman's
pity as she leaned her bodys weight
on his arm.
ST wonder who converted the good
Samaritan" she whispered. But her
"Lope" did not understand,
He stayed in the lonely old lean-to
house through the hours preceding
midnight, in which his mistress rap
idly grew weaker. Miguel Lopez had
lived too long by the sea not to know
that he must keep watch until the
turn of the tide. There was nothing
to do but to let his plying tenderness
be felt as far as it could reach after
the soul receding with the waters.
It was mournful vigil, but the man
was glad to do all that he could in
return for the long, tiresome readings
of which he had understood nothing,
except that they were kindly meant
And so her good works followed
Keturah Rogers, though not into the
way she had planned them to follow,
as often happens to our limited vision
of the future.
At the turn of the tide Lopez saw
the great change come, and dropped
on his knees, saying his beads rap
idly
Old Keturah Rogers was wondering.
He heard her say: "The righteous for
saken, nor his seed begging his bread
Just in time, Lord; barely in timer
Then she rose up, holding out her
hands, her dark eyes alight with joy,
crying:
''I took care of your spinnin' wheels,
mother. Mother, let me cut the
threadr'
And then she fell back into, the de-
pendence which freed her forever from
thralldom to human mercy.