The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1910-08-05

1t was about the time when Thorn
as Jefferson was beginning to recon.
slider his ideals. with leaning toward
brass bound palaces on wheels and
dictatorial authority over uniformed
lackeys and other Of his fellow crea-
lures. that fate dealt the Major its
final stab and prepared to pour wine
and oil into the wound-though Of the
balm pouring, none could guess at the
moment of wounding. 1t was not in
Caspar Dabney to be patient under a
blow, and for a time his ragings
threatened to shake even Nanny Ju-
lets loyalty-than which nothing more
convincing can be said.
'Mistuh Scipio," she would say, Use
JUS erbout wo'ed out! done been
KNOWN Mawstuh CASPIAN ebber sencc
was or Mistis' tiah-'ooman, and 7
amt new seen him so fractiods ez he
been sence dat letter come tellin' him
come get dat po' lii gal-child O. Nav
stub Louis's. Seems lax he JUS gwine
r'ar round twel he hut somebody"
etoainshrdlu etoian shrdlu etoain ct
Scipio. the Majors body servant.
had grown gray in the Dabney service,
and he was well used to the masters
storm periods.
''Doan' you trouble yo'se'f none err
bout dat, Mis- Juliet. Mawstuh Majuh
tekkin' hit mighty hawd cause Nav
stub Louis done daid. But bimeby you
gwine see him climm on his hawss an
ride up yondeh to whah de big steam
boats comes in an'fotch dat lii gall
child home: an den: uck-uh-h! look
out, niggahs; dar amt gwine be nuttin'
on de top side dishyer yearth good or
nough for iii Missy. You watch what
1 done toll yer erbout dat now!"
Scipios. prophecy, or as much of 1t
as related to the bringing of the or
phaned Ardea to Deer Trace Manor.
wrought itself out speedily, as a mat
ter of course. At the close Of the war,
Captain Louis, the Majors only son,
had become, like many another hot
hearted young Confederate, self-ex-
patrioted exile On the eve of his de-
parture for France he had married the
Virginia maiden who had nursed him
alive after Charlottesville. Major
Caspar had given the bride away-the
war had spared no kinsman Of hers to
stand in this breach-and when the
God-speeds were said, had himself
turned back to the weed-grown fields
of Deer Trace Manor. embittered and
hostile, swearing never to set foot OUT
side of his home acres again while the
Union should stand.
For more than twenty years he kept
this VOW almost literally. A few of the
older negroes, a mere handful Of the
six score slaves of the old patriarchal
days, cast in their lot with their for
mer master, and with these the Major
made shift thriftily, farming little,
tock-raising little, and, unlike most
of the war-broken plantation owners,
clinging tenaciously to every rood of
land covered by the original Dabney
title deeds.
| In this cenobitic interval, IL you
wanted a Dabney colt or a Dabney
COW. you went, or sent, to Deer Trace
Manor on your own initiative. and you.
or your deputy, never met the Major:
your business was transacted with
lean, lantern jawed Japheth Pettigrass.
the Majors stock and farm foreman.
And although the Dabney stock was
pedigreed, you kept your wits about
you; else Pettigrass got much the bet
| ter of you in the trade, like the shrewd
calculating Alabama Yankee that he
was.
L "A
| twelfth year of the exile; and the Vir-
ginia mother, pining always for the
| home land, died in the fifteenth year.
Afterward Captain Louis fought a
Ilong-drawn, losing battle, figuring
bravely in his infrequent letters to bis
father as a rising miniature painter.
He had his little girl back and forth
between his lodgings and the studio
where he painted pictures that nobody
would buy, and eking out a miserable
i existence by giving lessons In English
| when he was happy enough to find q
pupil
The brave letters imposed on the Ma
for. an they were meant to do; and
Ardea, the loyal, happening on one or
them in her first Deer Trace summer.
i read it through with childish sobs AMI
i never thereafter opened her lips on the
/ .torv OF those distressful Paris days.
lT .afer she understood her fathers mo :
five better: how he would not be .
charre on an old man rich in nothing
but ruin; and the memory Of the
pinchsd childhood became q thing sa-
cred
4 How the Major. second Rip Van
Wrinkle. found his way to New York.
ana 20 the pier OF the incoming French
Line steamer. must always remain .
mystery. But he was there. with tho
fierce old eyes quenched and swim
ming and the passionate Dabney lips
trembling strangely under the great
moustachss. whom the black-frocked
little waif from <ths Old World ran
down the landing staos and into his
arms. Small wonder that they chung
to each other. these two at the further
extremes Of three generations; or that
the child opened door IN the heart
Of the fierce Oh partisan which was
! locked and doubly barred against all
lothers.
It was Al new ana very strange 70
q child whose only outlook on life had
been urban end bauaL She had never
: seen Q mountain. and nothing more
; nearly approaching forest than the
parked groves of the Bots de BouloKne.
Would It Be permitted that she should
sometimes walk In the woods Of the
nrst Dabney, she asked. with the Quaint
J | French twtsttng OF the phrasen f1,at