Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-03-21

y newspaper more broadly to the light She
had been reading silently to herself as she sat
beside her patient in small room at the city hos
pital
The injured man turned his huge blond head in
her direction He was propped against the pillows.
and his left shoulder swathed in bandages that
passed across his chest. The bandages grimly
suggestive and disturbing; for the left shoulder
a mass of linen and below the linen there was only
emptiness. His right and only arm lay prone
the counterpart. The blue eyes-bue
fowers-in the broad, boysh face. full of
questions The nurse glanced down the printed
column
See here" she said and thrust the paper before
his face and pointed to small item.
The patient shook his head II it; but
can't read it, nurse. said he in deep. low voice
in which there something of the old world
Saxon. Il never learned to read"
The nurse showed no surprise. She withdrew the
Journal and read aloud
suicide by throwing herself front of the Golden State
She I at the time Her Thomas
who risked his life in the vain effort to hers and
proving. said that Miss Hartley who was beautiful
and talented girl sought self destruction because of
unhappy love affair
So she's gone" said Thomas Lanswick. the man
on the bed-"gone as my arm is gone And it's
all been o no use at ALL
But it was brave thing you did," said the
nurse and because it was that you will find
strangers turned into friends ready to help YOU.
The papers all call you hero"
1t be the first time my names printed in
help. sha n ever need it, said the neverl
l can work with one arm, too. I'm talykeeper
the Pacific docks for firm O British factors; but
it's the thought, the grindin thought, O the happi
and luck that's gone with the ARM of the good
days o love and home and all the rest that was
to come with her" The heavy hand on the white
sheet clenched and unclenched; the wild blue eyes
full of dumb and simple sorrow
81 do not understand" said the nurse. who
little Older than the stalwart young Yorkshirenan
who lay before her. a manned wreck of splendid
manhood brought in bleeding to death ten days
before.
well, it's fit that we do" said Thomas Lanswick,
and-oh, don't we hold your thumbs that way
when mans to your left! Belize we don't know
it. but it's old wtchs trick in the North Country
and my mither had found it heap O. evil to the
ailn. Nurse Kelvin, yeve been kind to me-and
l must be tellin' my tale. must, III die from
the very woe of it!
7 COME from Yorkshire right from the moors
There's nothln SO drear in Gods world, nothin'
but sky and rocks and boys from everlastin to
lastin, -there's naught in America drear. It's
place of awful stiffness and cold winds The devil
made the bitter land and the curse o the Almighty
brushes it down Even the gorse is scant and the
heather thin and poorly. In summer the big soan
geese and the wild swans fly it to the north:
in the winter they fly it to the south keenin'
and cryin. My fethers cottage right in the
heart of it. by his peat pits; not another house for
miles, and never a school at all So we see it came
l cannot read.
The nearest house was haunted where a
bloody, murderin' squire lived aforetime till he
died in dirt and drink. For fifty years his ghost
kept ravin in those walls The winds were terrible
there,-all o Satans lmpS and hends riClin' and
twistin in the hurricanes from hell! When was the
age SIX night the cursed squire a-squirm-
IN In yellow fire at one o the broken windows, and
he held up his right The hand gone; but
the stump burned like torch / ran home half
dead, and my parents said the squire's body could
not rest in its grave because of his missing hand
My fether said he would have need of it at the
Last Day. 1t was the scythe of crofter had Topped