The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1912-08-15

her father on her right, and beyond him
Mr.. b S n his clerk; she saw
them all in profile as they looked
straight before them, at the coroner
and at each succeeding witness.
Luke sat farther on, and, as he was
slightly turned toward her, she could
watch his face all the while that she
listened to h hall porter's evidence.
1t was perfectly still, the features as
it moulded In wax: the eyes, which
quite dark and almost as If they had
folded, and not a muscle In face or
body moved. No stone carved image
could have been more calm, none could
have been SO mysterious.
Louisa tried to understand and could
not. She watched him. not caring
whether the empty headed fools who
sat all around saw her watching him
or not.
When the coroner asked the hall por-
ter about the stick and the man gave
his reply, Luke turned and met
Louisa's fixed gaze. The marble like
stiffness Of his face remained I'M
changed. only the eyes seemed as If
they darkened yisibly. AT least to her
it seemed as If a velvety shadow crept
over them, an inscrutable, an un-un-
1erctandable shadow, and the rims as
sui,1e1 "a purple hue.
1t was her fancy. Of course. But
ShS ioIlil diiy DtlSllI,E VI
varying tones of gray, blue or green,
with never a shadow beneath them.
Now they appeared c~avernous and
dark and again as he met her gaze,
that swift flash of intense misery.
No longer had she the feeling that
she was living in a dream, no longer
that this was a theater wherein She
and Luke and the dead man were pup
pets dancing and squirming for the
benefit of shallow hearted dolts. That
sense Of unreality left her together with
the hysterical desire to laugh which
mad plagued her SO in the earlier part
OF n proceedings. On the contrary,
now an overwhelming feeling of in
tense reality oppressed her, SO thai she
could have screamed with the awful
soul agony which the sight of Luke's
misery had caused her.
All her nerves We're on the rack, her
every faculty concentrated on the one
supreme desire to understand and TO
know.
Love, the omnipotent, had encoun-
tered an enemy-grim, unexplained
mystery-and he sat bordering, almost
cowed by this first check to his SUI
preme might. Louisa had sought and
compelled Luke's gaze and love had
CLEANED in one great flash out of her
eyes. Yesterday, at her glance, he had
knelt at her feet n buried his sorrow
with his aching head in the scented
palm of the dearly loved hand.
Today the look Of love brought but a
suffelt Oh misery and additional load of
sorrow. h eyes in response remained
fearless and hard Inc circled with the
dark rings Of utter hopelessness.
I'll grant you that if Louisa Harris
mad been an extraordinary oma a
woman endowed with a wonderfully
wonderfully passionate or
wonderfully emotional nature-if in fact
she had been the true product of this
century's morbid moderility-she would
whilst admitting Luke's guilt, have
burned with a passion of self sacrifice,
plnlng to stand beside him piloried in
the dock, and looking forward to a YER
liable world of idealiStic realism in the
form of a picturesque suicide. after
seeing the black flag hoisted over New
| gate prison.
But Louisa, though a modern pro-
duct Of an ultra-modern world. was
an absolutely ordinary woman-just a
commonplace, sensible creature VINO
thought and felt in a straight and es-
sentlally wholesome manner. Though
she had e Tolstoi and Dostoyefsky
and every Scandinavian and Russian
crack-brain who has ever tried to make
wrong seem right, black appear white.
and anilnalism masquerade as love, vel
she had never been led away from her
own clean outlook on life.
She loved luke and would have Civ
eT-dld in fact give-her whole life to
him; but she loved him without an
alysis or thought of self. 1t never en-
tered her mind at this moment to Won
der II he were guilty or not guilty. if
ne was capable or not of COMMITTING
Il crime to gain his own ends. All that
troubled her was his misery, which she
would have given her very soul to al
levlate, and the hopelessness in him
which she had given the world TO con-
sole.
The mystery troubled her, not the
sin: the marble-like rightly Of his face.
not the possibility of the crime.
TO the moment, however, she was
brought back quickly enough to pre-
sent realities. The coroner-satisfied
Win fredeflck Powers answers-was
giving him a moments breathing space,
The grating of fountain pens against
paper was heard from that corner of
the room where sat the Journalists: the
crowd waited silent and ,expectant, for
-unyersed though most people there
present We're In proceedings of this
klnd-yet instinctively every one felt
that one great crucial momen was just
about to come, one&great, leading ques-
ton was just about to be put.
The coroner had fingered the papers
before him for the space of a few
at the witness, his elbow resting on
the table, his t1eshy chin buried in his
hand, in an attitude which obviously
was habitual to him.
This visitor" he said, speaking
loudly and clearly, who called the
night before last at the Veterans club
and had an interview with the deceased,
you saw him well, of course?'
Yes. sir was the prompt reply.
You would know him again?"
Certainly, sir"
Looking around this room now
should you say that he was present %
The man looked across the ROOF
straight at Luke and said pointing to
him:
Yes, sir; the gentleman sitting
there, sir"
AS every one had expected the reply,
no one seemed astontshed. The many
pairs of yes hat turned on Luke now
expressed a certain measure of horri-
fed compassion. such as might be be-
owe on some dangerous animal
brought to earth by a well-aimed gun
shot.
The coroner made no comment. He
turned to the jury, glancing along either
row of solemn faces, on both sides of
the long table Then he said:
Would any of you gentlemen like
to Or1 ar