The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1909-12-09
CHAPTER XIII.
A Great Purpose.

- 0TCdt FuTPosSs
Late springtime in old Virginia. The
climate was not unlike that of the is
land during the cooler portions of the
year, thought the man, standing on the
porch of the high-pillared old brick
house set upon hill overlooking the
pale green waters of Hampton Roads,
which stretched far eastward past
Newport News and Old Point Com
fort to the blue of the Chesapeake and
far beyond that to the deeper blue of
the ocean. Back of him a thousand
leagues of land and more than thou
sand leagues of sea interviewed be-
tween him and the object of his
thoughts. Not for a day, not for an
hour, scarcely for a moment even was
that island out of his mind There
was pleasure and pain in the recollec-
ton of it.
Upon the mans face stern mel
ancholy had settled. Not the melan-
choly of ineptitude and Indifference,
not the melancholy that made him do
nothing, unmindful of the large issues
of life in which he had been suddenly
plunged, not the melancholy that par
alyzed his activities. but the melan-
choly that comes from the presence in
the heart of an unplucked sorrow that
neither time nor chance nor occupation
could uproot; melancholy that came
from the sense of bereavement ever
growing more keen and more poig-
nant as the period Of bereavement
heightened and which sprang from q
consciousness of imperfections and
failures for which no after achieve
ment could atone.
1t had not been difficult to establish
his rights. Whitaker and the chap
lain, armed with the dispositions. had
taken the man across the continent
when the ship had been put out of
commission at San Francisco, and pre-
sented him to his uncle, the Charnock
In residence in that great house on
the Nansemond shore overlooking that
estuary of the James by Hampton
Roads. The old man, childless and
alone, had welcomed him gladly. The
newcomer was of the Charnock blood
1t was a strange moment for the is
lander when they took him into the
great drawing-room and showed him
the pictures of his father and of his
mother. He was the living image of
the man, tempered with some of the
mothers sweetness. This remarkable
likeness-indeed he was not unlike
his uncle as well-coupled with the
material proofs, the ring, the Bible,
the evidence of the ship, together with
what was known, removed every lin
gering doubt from the minds of those
most concerned.
The family was reduced to those
two, the uncle and the nephew. The
old man formally and legally recog-
nized the relationship and offered to
transfer the property rightfully his,
which since the discovery of coal had
increased enormously in value, to the
newcomer, but Charnock would have
none of it then. He recognized his
unfitness to deal with such things. II
the older man would retain 1t, he
could give 1t to him at his death.
Meanwhile he could teach and train
him how to use it. Bereft of his one
guide, his one inspiration in life, he
would need wise counsel and careful
leading indeed.
In addition to the formal recogpi-
ton, the elder man legally adopted the
younger and constituted him the heir
to his own property which was almost
as extensive and as valuable as that
which rightly belonged to the nephew.
And then these formalities being ~
pleted, the heatenantcommai