Martinsburg statesman-democrat. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1906-1921, 1909-04-09


shaded lamp. the wheel chair and the
feeble old man with his furr0wed face
and gray mustaches. What he himself
should say he had not had time to re-
fleet
The figure in the chair looked up as
the door opened. "Hughr' he cried
and half lifted himself from his seat.
Then he settled back, and the sunken.
indomitable eyes fastened themselves
on his sons face.
Hugh was lodramatic-cheaply so.
He saw the girl start at the name, saw
her hands catch at the kimono to draw
it's folds over the bare white throat,
saw the rich color that flooded her
brow. He saw himself suddenly the
moving hcro of the stagery. the
tractive force of the situation. Real
tears came TO his eyes; tears Of insin.,
cere feeling, due partly to the cheap
whisky he had drunk that day, whose
outward consequences he had so dras-
tically banished, and partly to sheer
nervous excitation.
"Fatberr' he said, and came and
caught the gaunt hand that shook
against the chair,
Then the deeps of the old mans
heart were suddenly broken up. MY
sonv' he cried and threw his arms
about him. Hugh. my boy, my boyn'
Jessica waited to hear no more.
Thrilling with gladness and flushing
with the sudden recollecti,n of her
bare throat and feet, she slipped away
to her room to creep into bed and lie
wide eyed and thinking
What did he look like? or bis face
she had never seen even counterfeit
presentment. Through what adven-
lures had he passed. Now that he had
come home. forgiving and forgiven,
would he stayi He had been in his
room when she entered it with the
I roses-must have guessed. If he had
/ not already known. that she was blind.
| Would he guess that she had cared for
that room, had placed fresh towers
| there often and often?
| Since she had come TO the house IL
| the aspens Jessica had found the
presence in horizon lightened With
throng of new impressions. The
direful catastrophe of her blindness
| 1t had been the sudden result of an
accident-had fallen like thuuderbolt
upon nature elastic and joyous 1t
! had brought her face to face with a
revelation of mental agony, made her
| feel herself the -hapless martyr OF
that curt thing called chance She had
always lived largely in books and
/ pictures. and her world was still full
of ideals and of brave adventures
/ Gratitude had made her love the mo-
rose old invalid with his grabbed tenn
/ pers, and the wandering son, choosing
Z for pride's sake a resourceless battle
/ with the world-the very mystery of
| his whereabouts-had taken strong
/ hold of her Imagination. OF the quar-
i rel which had preceded Hugh's depar-
! ture she had made her own version
/ very night, when the disinhertance
she had dreaded had been so nearly
consummated, seemed now to have an
, especial and an appealing significance.
\ Presently she rose, slipped on the
red kimono, and, taking key from
the pocket of her gown. stole from the
room. She assembled a stairway and
unlocked the door of a wide, bare at
tic where the moonlight poured
through skylight in the roof upon an
unfinished statue. In this statue she
had begun TO fashion, in the imagined
! figure of Hugh. her conception Of the
; prodigal son-not the battered and
husk filled wayfarer Of the parable,
but fgnre OF character aud pathos,