The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-09-26
THE EVENING STORY
Corinne,s Quest.
(By M. McCulloch-w illiams.)

woods with q timid holiness compact
of hope and fear. She started vio-
lently when a rotting rail broke as
she clambered over it, and was
tempted to turn back at sight of a
gaunt sow roofing hungrily among
the stumps, her litter squealing and
tumbling at her heels. But some
thing outside herself, it seemed, i'm
PEELED her forward. 1t was now or
never-within the next two hours
she must prove her quest fruitful or
fruitIess, else abandon it forever.
She had not been able to slip away
from the others until the sun was
westering sharply. In the morning
She stopped there, her breath COM
ing hard and quick. reat-grand-
father Myles had certainly had the
all in gold. And he had hidden it
against the homecoming of his SOL
der son. Then death had stricken
him before he could say more than:
"My-long-knife." He had struggled
to say more, but in vain. Nobody
was buried. In the troublous time of
Civil war, helpless women folk were
glad to have no money to tempt rob-
berry. Guerillas, the scum of both
armies, preyed impartially upon the
debatable land. 1t was fear of them
that had made Great-grandfather
Myles secrete his treasures.
His son, coming home to a burden
of land and debts, had struggled
pay the other, yet in the end had
been beaten. He died when he
should have been fairly in his prime,
[ leaving the burden of affairs upon
immature shoulders; Corinne's father
was then only a lad of nineteen. A
lIStV cd h11f
| in the unwrit ways of wind and
weather, he had quickly made good.
Hemphill the Myles place. flourished
| as it had not done since the old time
Its master married young, choosing
a pretty, high-strung, delicate crea-
ture, as unfit to mate with him as
woman well could be. She bore him
three children in as many years
then went mad, utterly, hopelessly-
| from the strain of stagnation, and
the drain of motherhood.
She had to be put away. Linley
Myles saw to it that she had every
care. But soon he began to drink.
little later to lose. Prosperity fell
brooding and surly, paying no heed
to anything, until presently the
sheriff came. Corinne, the eldest
child, was nineteen, and the hand
soonest young creature in the county.
She had her mothers coloring, her
/
had grown up, almost unraught, she
had a native poise, a fine detached
air of breeding that made strangers
wonder. Neighbors shook their heads
over it-she could come to no good
end. they said, holding her head so
high, when she ought TO be ashamed
to look anything but daylight in the
face.
The woodland had been full of huge
trees. They had been cut for lumber
thrifty d.
vantage of Linley Myles' necessity to
buy them on the stump" for little
more than a song. People said Linley
had made a lucky trade-since the
place was to be sold in half a year
at most, only the mortgage would
suffer. Linley was in pocket the
price of the timber-or rather he
might have been. He had sent the
pittance to the head of the asylum,
asking that it be held there as a sort
of provision for his wife.
THEME had shot himself, doing
a clean, workmanlike job. At the
funeral there was great gathering,
still a young stranger was noted. 1t
came out presently that he belonged
to the forest service, and had come
to Hemphill because of something
odd in a tree trunk which had been
traced to it: namely, a white oak
burl, three-crocheted and huge--so
huge clearers in ordinary would have
simply rolled it upon a log heap. But
the logger had understood the value
of gnarled and curly grain, and so
had carried away the burl, after cut
ting logs from each prong. When
the burl came to be worked up, there
was found inbedded in 1t a knife, set
sIantwiSe and overgrown, even to the
haft.
The young forester found the origi-
nal root easily enough-the white oak
had been almost solitary there upon
the hillside. He had been vastly inter-
ested in calculating growth and so on,
and in trying to find out how the knife
had got in such a place.
His Investigations had not borne
much fruit, but in course of them he
had come in contact with Corinne. He
had been struck with her beauty, but
less than with her shyness and sur
face apathy. He did not dream that
she was holding herself hard-nor what
a tempest of hopes and fears his words
lad let loose in her.
Those golden thousands still lay I'M
discovered. Intuitively she understood
that the knife had been her great
grandfather's, and that by it he had
meant in some way to mark his chosen
cache. 1t would not do to say as much
to rank stranger-not to anybody in
deed, until she had made her search
Unless she found the money, she would
have to leave at once. Her mothers
b-other-in-law would shelter her until
her brothers food and clothes for what
they could do on the farm.
She went straight to the big stump
how many times she had played I'M
der the wide shade of it's branchesi
She did not let herself think of that
as she mounted the fiat stump-face
and turned slowly about looking north.
south east and west. Thus a sudden
burst of reddening sunlight found her
and made her dazzling to two pairs Of
eyes.
The forester was coming in from the