Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1911-06-30
PROLOGUE
A QUARTER OF A CENTURY BE-
FORE.
The Storm Within.

Nv ONSIIb iA'i''
The storm was one of the worst
that had ever burst from the noun
tains and swept across the plains.
The wind came in wild bursts of ire
mendOus speed. Even in the lulls,
which were only comparatively such,
1t blew perhaps 20 miles an hour. The
fierce blasts were laden with fine
snow-frozen spindrift from a white
ocean Of old Needles of ice sharp
er than their prototypes of steel cut
the bare flesh of those whom evil for
tune kept abroad on such q night,
bringing the blood to the freezing
6kin. The onslaught of the scream
ing tempest drove the hapless cattle
mad with pain and terror. The thick
snow compelled them to huddle to-
gether at last, and shelterless to suf-
fer, freeze, and die in the pitiless hur-
ricane
Just where the foothills lose them
selves in the prairie lay huddled a lit
tie town or camp. Every door and win
dow was shut and barricaded against
the searching storm.
In one of the poorest and most mis-
cradle shanties on the outskirts of the
town a woman waited alone. A COM
mon Kerosene lamp stood on a table
before the window, set there as If In
signal.
The house, a mere shack which
shook and quivered under the ire
mendOus assaults of the storm, and
might have been blown down If it had
not been buttressed and protected by
heaps of snow yet threatening to over
whelm it, contained but one room. In
the corner farthest from the door
stood a tumbled, frowzy bed. A rick
ETY. chest Of drawers, a kitchen table, a
rusty cook stove, a few uncertain
chairs Of the plainest and cheapest
quality. were all the rest of the fur
niture. A few clothes hung from pegs
driven in the boarded wall. A saddle
in one corner, a pickax and shovel, a
heavy quirt, and q rife hanging from
pegs beneath a she sufficiently
pointed out the avocations of the
owner.
Yet she was a woman who, what
ever he outward circumstances,
showed no poverty of spirit. She
ragged up and down the room as a
prtsoned tiger PAGES the narrow con-
e of his cage. Sometimes she
paused and stopped by the window, to
rest her head beneath her hand on
the sash and peer eagerly, passion
ately, out into the falling snow. She
could see nothing, and after having
stared with increased disappointment
Il further mutterings of angry
words, she would resume her rest
less and forward march.
Had there been any spectator when
she assumed hat picturesque position
at the window, where the light, how
ever 1t failed to illuminate the snow,
threw her own face and person in high
relief, the observer would nave beer
surprised at the coarse and yet not
unattractive beauty of her face and
figure. She was full Tipped and deep
bosomed, tall, 1.-the, strong. Her
cheeks were full of color, her hair
black and coarsely crisp and curly.
Her hands, which she clasped and III
Clasped n~ervOusly, were large and
redeemed by toll, but they were shape
~ nevertheless. But there was Meth
er refinement nor goodness in her
face. There were great possibilities
of evil which experience could have
detected. Hers had been a hard life.
n it had made her a hard woman.
She was perhaps twenty-five years
old, but looked older.
For hours the woman had waited in
that hut alone. 1t had been storming
badly when she began her vigil, and
the violence of the tempest had in
creased until she feared that no hu-
man soul could brave it. Tha she
very much wanted some one to at
tempt 1T, that she very keenly. ardent
ly, longed for that. was quite evident.
Great is the power of love. Even
its COunterfeit-that which passes for
it IN the eyes of the ignorant and in
experienced-may stir men and wom-
en- to mighty deeds. This woman
waited the arrival of one who fancied
himself a modern Perseus about to re-
lease another bound and helpless An.
dromeda from a ~devouring monster.
Whether the man who fatuously !
filled that role-or the boy, rather, for
he had not reached mans years or
estate-would arrive before her hus-
band. was the problem that filed the
woman's mind. In view of the bIiz-
Zard raging, h might have wondered
whether, in case either of them
sought the house. they could find it or
reach it alive. If she had stopped to
consider that phase of the possibili-
ties. she would a been profoundly
glad had both ventured and had both |
wandered on in the night until beaten
down and mastered by the spirit Of
the storm, so that the searchers, after
its violence had abated, might find
them frozen to death as many another
poor fellow was found frozen there
after. For while the woman loathed
and hated her drunken brute OF a hus-