The Baltimore County union, the Towson news. (Towson, Md.) 1909-1912, 1909-10-30

always hd0 ~ 4h0AoNoJO' O1Oh
jumped up from the table, snatched
the dish of cabbage and bore it out
side to the chicken-yard, where he
scattered it far and wide. On his re-
turn he said, with mock roughness,
IF ever / see another bit of cabbage
in this house, I'll get out my gun and
shoot the dishes off the table" Later,
as he smoked his pipe on the
veranda, he gave vent to the senti
ment on Peters character recorded
above.
After that he took to investigating
his brother-in-law, and was always
discovering new horrors. Say,
man like that would get strung up to
the first tree handy if he lived out
here" This was his final verdict.
At first Susan defended Peter, but so
quickly do ideas change and so rela-
tive are all values that she soon fell
into Jacks way of thinking of him as
some sort of dreadful domestic tyrant,
and remembered her life in West Mil
ton as an experience in purgatory.
All but the climate The New
England girl, used to fresh mountain
air and frequent rains, pined and
faded in the parching alkali winds of
Montana. Her pretty color left her
and her springy step. She had fire.
quent and terrible nervous headaches,
grew listless, and sometimes peevish.
Her husband was in an agony of ap-
prehension and remorse, and devoted
himself to her night and day, absent
ing himself from his business to wait
on her and shield her from every care.
In her nervous condition her fear of
thunder-storms increased to a morbid
dread, and at the least cloud in the
sky Jack would close his office, leap
on his horse, always standing ready,
and gallop madly to his house, to be
there and comfort Susan. He tried
in his rough and blundering way to
keep the cares of housekeeping from
her, and often tied an apron about his
big square body and washed the
dishes, taking great pains not to rattle
them and disturb the restless and
fretful woman in the next room.
1t was, indeed, in an effort to
achieve the impossible-to secure a
servant in that frontier country-that
he undertook the expedition which
proved fatal to him. He had heard
of Chinaman, forty miles away, who
was said to know how to cook, and
he had ridden furiously in that di-
rection with the determination to
bring the Chink home if it took
gum" No one ever knew what hap
pened-perhaps simply that accident
incredible to Western horsemen, a
fall from horseback; but his broncho
came back to town with an empty
saddle, and the searching party found
his body lying at the bottom of a
gully.
Susan was completely Frustrated
by the blow, and was scarcely con-
scious of what was done for her. Of
the funeral, of the long drive to the
railway station, of the interminable
journey back to West Milton, she re-
tanned only the vaguest impression of
misery. She did not even notice that
when Peter met her at the station it
was with the steady old farm-horses,
or that the shutters throughout the
house were thrown wide open to ad-
NIT a food of sunshine.
Peter was shocked to see his sister
SO changed and broken. Living
alone had done much to alter his
ideas of things, and all the kindness
and affection lying in the depths Of
his nature were stirred to life at the
sight of the pale, languid woman, who
had gone away from him a blooming
girl. Indignation at the West in gen.
eral, the arid, blighting West, and at
Jack in particular for taking her there,
glowed in his heart. Moreover, he
was moved by the despairing sorrow
of the widow to try and stand in her
husbands place. And so it happened
that Susan scarcely realized that
Jacks boundless devotion was no
longer about her. She was very i'll
for long time, when Peter nursed
her incessantly, learning to know the
absorbing interest of combating ill
ness. Then during her convalescence
she was SO weak that he was obliged
to do everything for her. twas quite
as hard in the little New England hill
town to get any help" as it had been
in Montana, and Peter put to good
use the knowledge of housekeeping
which his solitary life had given him.
He took pride in showing Susan how
we'll he could cook and wash dishes,
and one day he brought in on her
tray dish of boiled onions-an act
which white-winged angel could
scarcely have surpassed in disinterest-
ed devotion. Susan was suffering
from one of her nervous spells" at
the time, however, and only noticed
them to remark, fretfully, that there
was too much salt on them.
That little scene came up before
her with remorseless distinctness a
few months later as she stood, hag-
gard and anxious, with a crowd of
village women waiting for the news
from wrecked train on which num-
Der of West Milton men were return
ing from the county fair. If only
I'd thanked him for the onions -
she cried aloud again and again,
straining her eyes down the track,
ominously black in a starless night.
No one noticed the grotesque excla-
nation, each one being absorbed in
her dismay and woe. Indeed, when
the station-master drew her on one
side, and told her that he had just
heard by telegraph that Peters dead
body had been found, there was no
one to support her OF. go back with
her to the desolate house. The whole
village was desolate and filled with
the sound of weeping. Not person
felt the impulse or had the strength
to seek out the woman they had
come to know as selfish and self-cen-
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