The herald-advance. (Milbank, S.D.) 1890-1922, 1908-10-16
A WEDDING
TOMBSTONE
By CLAR1CE IRENE CIINCHAN
Copyright. by Shortstory Pub. Co..

$50 you never heard tell of Melindy
Barbour's weddin' t~ombstone?" said
grandma In a tone Of surprise. For
knew about that"
confessed the most abject igno-
rance and Immediately drew up to the
fire. This was partly to gain infor-
nation and partly because, although
the fireplace was wide and deep
throated and big logs were blazing in
It, there were biting %draughts of sting
Ing November air coming in at the
loosely fitting door. For grandmother
would not be persuaded to leave the
home that had been hers for SO years.
After knitting a few minutes in ST.
lence. she began:
you've seen the old stone house
down on the bank Of the river, all shut
In with pines and evergreens? It's
nigh a hundred years old. When I was
born 1t had been built ten years. When
was a young married m the
Barbours came to live there, and they
was proud, h~igh-feelin' people that no
body could get acquainted with. That's
what made EN- take it SO dretful hard
when-but here l am, way ahead Of
my story. You see, Mr.. Barbour en-
oezzled or did something Of that kind,
and went to prison. After he had been
there a year he up and hung himself,
and that Is the last of him so far as
my story goes.
Then his wife and little boy shut
themselves up in the stone house and
never went outside the gate hardly.
She'd had a good deal of schooling,
his mother had, and she taught him
herself as long as she could, and then
he bought books and studied by him
self. He tried going to school when
he was a small boy, but one of the
scholars threw it at him about his IA
Their, and Mortimer nearly killed him,
and after that his mother KEEP him
home. And she was such a proud
woman, vas Mis- Barbour, and lofty
and we're in her ways. She wouldn't
let nobody sympathize with her, which
everybody wanted to, as there's SO lit
tie going on in a place like Ragged
Corner. Mis- Barbour "a real selfish
with her grief, so she got herself dis
liked, besides folks bein' suspicious
after the way her husband turned out.
What did they live on? Oh. the boy
farmed it, and later they do say he
wrote books on what they call natural
history, though to my mind it was the
post unnatural stuff l ever heard tell
fall beetles and bugs with 300
muscles in their heads, anc as could
carry twelve hundred times their own
weight on their own backs, which
everybody knows he must have got up
as he went along. They were dret-
fully taken up with each other, he and
his mother, and she believed every
! thing he said was so, even about the
bugs and beetles. But she was his
own born mother, and that explains it.
When she died, Mortimer liked to
went crazy. He planted her grave with
| vi'lets and pansies, and at the head
was a white marble monument he had
gone to the city for-nothing nearer
would suit him. But he didn't display
no taste. Nothing on it, my dear, but
the old lady's name and the date she
died-not an angel, o a cherub, or a
! lamb, or a broken rosebud, nor a bit
of verse. And yet he always seemed
to set store by her.
"Then Mortimer, he just stuck to the
old house, same as ever, though now
he was alone. I used to wonder how
1t seemed to him late at night hearin'
the swash of the river and the sighin'
of them pine trees. He wor his hair
and 1t was curly up at the ends, like
the picture of John Wesley. But he
had eyes that vel right through you
and came out the back of your head.
And he never set foot into the meet
lng-house, nohow.
Nov, he was the last man in the
village I'd ever said would get mar
ried. But as sure as you set there,
when the little milliner, Melinda Nc
A~llister, came into the place, he was
struck. That wasn't nothing strange
all the young fellows was-but, mind
YOU. she was struck, too. No, you
wouldn't "a thought it. Everybody
l WdTucu u0l, dAu Ol0 ASA oNSut ~ 40
theirs hangin' himself in prison, and
how queer his mother was, and that
Mortimer was as odd as Dicks hat
band and wouldn't come to no good.
She listened, with her eyes big and
cool and a little hot patch OF red ca
her cheeks like a daub OF paint, out
she never said a word. That was Me-
Indy McAllister all over, never to say
a blessed word, but go and do just as
she saw At. First we knew they was
engaged, and it was given out in meet
ing. Next day her aunt she lived with
came in to e me, and wrung her
hands, sayin' she wouldn't be surprised
IL Melindy was murdered before the
year was out. What can you think of
a man who lives like q hermit, and
had a crooked father and = peculiar
mother?
But we wasn't prepared for the