The daily Alaskan., 1913-11-20
A YOUNG MANS SCHEME
 By M. QUAD Copyright, 1913, by Associated Lit
 erary Press.

tue young ulbu MuO uLlGLeu tue words was at work in the field, and he straightened up forrest his weary back aud mutter:
 And I'll make her love me before
 I'm through with herl She may think don't amount to shucks, but all l
 want is a chance to prove that l do. Durn farm work! Durn widders! 'Durn love! Durn everything|
 He kicked the fence to show his dis gust and wearily resumed work. Ebe-
 nezer Schermerhorn, hired man, was in love with the Widow TOmpkins,
 whose farm adjOined that of his boss
 on the west. Ebenezer was twenty
 four years old, plain of face and un- gainly of form and without a hundred | dollars worth of property.
 One evening 0s he dropped in to see
 the widow about borrowing some farm 1 implement next day he found her read ing a love story. She read a few chap tnrs to him and afterward aCknowl- edged that she had always been TO- mantle and that if she ever married again it would be to hero.
 The farmers hired man didn't rush right off that night and try to be hero, but sat down and did some thinking.
 Three or four days after Ebenezer's thinking bee q tramp came along the road and. seeing the young man hoeing corn just over the fence, halted for a
 word or two. Ordinarily Ebenezer would have icaped the fence and run the wayfarer half a mile, but on this occasion he Invited him over to the com and sat down with him for a con- ndcutal conversation. The result of that conversation was that at s o'clock that evening the tramp appear
 cd before the Widow Tompkins and made threats of what he would do if she didn't set out viCtuaIs, hunt up old
 clothes and come down with a dollar in cGsh.
 Ebcuezcr was not far away-just far enough to come running up and knock
 the tramp head over heels and rescue
 the widow. But as he started to come running he fell down and got tangled uD with the bushes, and before he could get away the widow had broom stfcEcd the tramp into flight She Hdfdn't say she was glad that the would be hero was so near at hand. What
 she did say was that she wasn't afraid
 of any tramp walking the roads.
 Ebenezers first try was a failure, but within a fortnight he was ready
 for another. Two or three farmhouses in the township had been robbed, and
 this fact became the basis for his sec oud plan. One night at midnight he left his bed. descended to earth by way of a window, and, armed with a club. he became a guard for the wid- Ow's house He circled around 1t and patr0lcd the garden and the orchard, and he felt that he would give year of his life if a robber would appear. Tye would first fell him and then arouse tnp house. and when the widow came
 to know that he had been guarding her
 for love her heart would melt toward him.
 But no robber came Instead of that ! his footsteps awolie the widow, and,
 peering out. she saw some one walking about, and she got a shotgun and raised window and blazed away. The gun
 was loaded with bird shot to shoot
 hawks that might come sweeping down on chickens, but in this case they an- swered just as well for a man. Eben- . ezer received about twenty of them aud ran two miles to a doctor to have them picked out He also had a va cation from work for a week under ! the excuse that he had sprained his hack turning over in bed.
 Niucy-nine out of every hundred would be heroes would have given up right here, but Ebenezer was a man 1 t0 hang on. It was while he was limp ling around on his vacation and doing lot of standing up and wandering over the fields that he came upon the widow fishing in the river at a certain point. He did not show himself, but fifty feet from where she sat under a |. tree he discovered a bumblebees' nest in the grass. It was a large and lib- cral nest, and it gave him q thought The bees wouldn't bother anybody so long as they were let alone. If stirred 1 mp they would look for meat.
 ! There was a haystaCk not far away, and Ebenezer had matches in his pocket. He retired behind the stack l land collected a hatful of stones from ! the plowed land. These he threw one ! by one at the spot where the bees were pursuing the even tenor of their ways. The plot thickened. You can 1 thickcn a bumbIebee plot in a very short time. All you've got to do is to ] tread on their coattails When the in-
 sncts found the rocks dropping on their ! heads they swarmed out of the grass to look for the enemy. They should l have seen the widow and descended upon her. and at her first shriek Eb- euezcr would come charging down with a wlsp of lighted hay in either hand. But things went wrong. The bees then went for him alone. They
 ran him up and down the haystack; | they ran him over fences and back;