Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-06-08


took her away.
She gave him warm little smile of farewell as she
vanished from the doorway.
TT was bare twenty minutes since John Stanfeld had
into that room commonsense, matter tact
Young American enjoying his first real holiday his first
independence. If he ramping about these Cornish
hills on foot instead of viewing them superclously
from upholstered motorcar, it because his youth
and strength and fine, lean hardness liked something
hard to do,ked the exertion and the zest OF scram
bling up these thncad, granite hills with pack on his
back liked the freedom to leave the road to lose him
self in the lanes to find lodging for the night wherever
the whm seized him.
The fondness for freedom, for adventure. for hard
work. was an honest inheritance. His father had been
a New Highlander; but in 1889, when Oklahoma Terri
tory was opened for settlement he went out there with
the young English wife whom he had married only few
months before.
How these two had met, John didn't know. Indeed,
he knew very little about either of his parents He
knew his father had died, and that his mother when he
still very young had brought him back to England,
to her fathers home in this very Cornish village where
he had arrived on foot that morning.
Neither his grandfather nor his mother had sur
vived long after their return. The home had been
broken up There year in private school under
the nominal supervision of various distant relatives
whom he didn't remember and was glad to forget and
then offer, by letter. from one Charles Harding,
who had been friend and neighbor OF his fathers
during his brief and tragic life in Oklahoma.
The land his father had taken up, which the widow
had abandoned on his DEATH had turned out valuable
The friend had paid the taxes it, had himself pros
pered largely and now offered to adopt the boy.
So John then eight years old. had been put on
steamer in the Captains with his ticket bought
through to Oklahoma City, where his new guardian
awaited him. From that point on, his life had been
typical of the progressive prosperous, democratic
Southwest. He and his new father-for that was the
relation in sentiment well in law that soon estab
lished itself between then1-saw village grow into
city the very site where Charles Harding and Henry
Staneld had made their settlement in the wilderness
The boy grew up to his maturity in an .atmos-
phee of social growth and progress and prosperity that
has been unexampled even in this part OF the world
final dramatic touch to the picture the striking OF oil
The result that when Charles Harding had died
only few months before his adopted was left rich
man-rich, too, in good deal more than oil wells and
bank stock and ranches and real estate holdings In
1ourishng city He rich in the selfreliance, the
knowledge of men, the capacity for hard work, that
the life he had lived will develop in provided he is
lucky enough to be born with the germ of it.
One thing he had been deprived ofthe easier side OF
life the making fine art of play, the cultivation of
copanionshp for its sake, above all the society
of women, were things his reading had given him a
ondhand intimation Of but his personal experience
almost nothing 1t consciousness OF this lack
led him to decide upon holiday, when the business
connected with settling up his adopted fathers estate
left him at liberty But it CHARACTERISTIC of him
that instead of going straight to Paris and setting HIM
self up the Bristol the Ritz he went to Plymouth
put on suit of knickerbockers, and set out foot
the Devon and Cornish to the village that
had been his mothers home.
THAT was the whole of his story up to twenty min
utes ago. If anyone had asked him just before he
into that with his black pipe in his teeth
the red me of the lanes halfway up to his knees the
of that mornings shower dripping from his tweed
coat, whether his holiday had turned out SO far
pleely according to his hopes, he'd have said sturdy
yes 1t good to be alone free from responsibility
under human obligation to anybody He wasn't
homesick lonely; there wasn't any secret void in
his heart that ached little for any companonsp
let alone that of woman, to fill it.
Now, the end of twenty minutes he couldn't have
given that without knowing that it wash true
He ne III.
seen her there before he'd fairly committed himself to
taking that seat by the fire. When he did see her. it