Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-09-06

l9C&ZSSH@ ranching in Wyoming 1 was hum
k@HNSSAN cry for news of the and women
EkSs&62@ of Eastern civilization Who was
the lucky woman?"
American beauty,-'female girl Kipling
says. Most romantic thing you ever heard re-
Seeming story, the table woke up.
Who's your Barney Frere,-not the Frere who
built the Swakindar bridget" queried Dayton.
''Sa1ne fellow"
MAN that does things, or gets them done," in
terposed Winters, the fourth member of our festive
quartet who prides himself on knowing everything
and everybody.
Il should say sol" calculated Admission. docs
things and sees things too, by all accounts He's
two-sided, the queerest compound OF sense and
sensbility l ever met"
Anticipating something uncommonly interesting
we hitched chairs closer. This is the story of
Barnaby Frere and Barbara Felton, whom have
named 1.-The Lady of Dreams. ....,..
nARNABY FRERE, like Young Lochinvar came
l. out of the West ten years prior to the time
of which telling, being then about twent yfour
years old. In physique he embodied the traditional
Western type: SIX feet OF stature and generous IN
smooth shaven, and gray eyed, favoring the Scot
fish ancestors from whom he only two or three
generations removed.
A graduate of fresh water school OF technology,
he landed in New York with less than fifty dollars
in his wallet looked over the ground, presented one
or two letters of introduction and as a result
to Bethlehem Pennsylvania, where he entered the
employment of one of the largest structural steel
concerns in the country. In the next few years he
ing enterprises in the United States
When the British bidders defaulted ON the
Swakindar bridge contract, Freres firm stepped in,
whsked him off to Bombay with a gang of ten or
dozen white mechanics a shipload of steel beams,
Orders and trusses, and few tons of rivets, gave
him six months time limit, and turned to other
matters, confident that he would win.
The way Barney accomplished the task would
alone make story But here we concerned
with something infinitely more romantic than
assembling the component parts OF mere lnsensate
Steel,-nOthIng
ing together from the ends of the earth of loving
hearts beating each for the other. That's how
Barney Frere described it, for some of the
intimate details afterward secured from his own lips
In his busy and strenuous life he found little time
for thoughts of women. But tucked away some
where in his subjective consciousness the vivid
had always been with him. which he often
jured up at will. He could and frequently did,
draw faithful likeness of this girl of his dreams,
and, being firm believer in the theory of re-
incarnation, possessed doubt whatever that IN
previous state of existence he and she had met
somewhere somehow, ago. That he should
her in this life never entered his head.
HAVING few days leisure when he crossed the
IL Atlantic for the first time, he to Paris
The train made brief halt at Rouen, and in COM
pany with others of the passengers Frere
aghted to stretch his legs.
As he walked up and down, blowing clouds from
cigarette, he suddenly encountered a young
woman,-the living image of her whose features he
treasured in his memory She tall, slenderly
though exquisitely formed, and pusating with that
wonderful magnetism which we call nervous energy.
A of golden brown hair her GROWING
beauty; her complexion of a delicate rose leaf
pink; full and generous mouth and fine, firm
chin told of decisive character. But the most
striking feature in an altogether striking ensemble
the eyes, large and luminous, sometimes gray.
sometimes almost blue surmounted by dark,
strongly defined eyebrows.
Barney Frere instantly surrendered lnvolun-
tarily, as though bowling to acquaintance he
dotted his travelling cap. The girl looked him