Alma record., 1914-03-19

| T.
vision of him wandering. candle q
hand through the empty echoiDs
rooms, looking at the voiceless por-
traits on the walls, thinking perhaps
OF his father, OF the fatal duel of which
he had never known. She liked the
way he had spoken of his father!
As she leaned, out of the stiffness
there came to her ear a mellow sound.
II was the bell of the courthouse in
falling clearly or family as the slug
gish breeze ebbed or swelled. II was
eleven.
She drew back, dropped the curtain
to shut out the wan glimmer, and in
the darkness crept into the soft bed
as If into hiding-place.
A warm sun and an air mildly mel
low. A faint gold-shadowed mist over
the valley and soft lilac haze blend
| ing the rounded outlines of the hills.
| Through the shrubbery at Damory
| Court a cardinal darted like a GRIM
son shuttle, to rock impudently from
| a feering limb, and here and there
on the bluish-ivory sky, motionless as
a pasted wafer. hung hawk; from
time to time one or these wavered and
slanted swiftly down, to climb once
more In a huge spiral to its high tower
of sky.
Perhaps it wondered, as it's tele-
scopic eye looked down. That had
been it's choicest covert, that dishev-
eled tangle where the birds held per
petual carnival, the weasel lurked in
the underbrush and the rabbit lined
his windfall. Now the wildness was
gone. A pergola, glistening white, now
upheld the runaway vines, making a
sickle-like path from the upper ter
race to the lake. In the barn loft the
pigeons still quarrelled over their new
cotes of fresh pine, and under a clump
of locust trees at little distance from
the house, a half-dozen dolls cabins
on stills stood waiting the honey-stor-
age of the black and gold bees.
There were new denizens, also.
| These had arrived in a dozen zinc
tanks and willow hampers, to the
amaze OF sleepy express clerk at the
railroad station: two swans now sailed
majestically over the lily-pOnds of the
| lake along it's gravel rim and a pair
of bronze-colored ducks waddled and
| preened, and it's placid surface rippled
and broke 10 the sluggish backs Of
goldfish and the flirting fms of red
Japanese carp.
The house itself wore another air.
It's look of unkemptness had largely
vanished The soft gray tone of age
remained, but the bleakness and for
| lornness were gone; there was about
all now a warmth and genial bearing
that limited at mellowed beauty, fire
light and cheerful voices within.
Valiant heaved a long sigh of salts
faction as he stood in the sunlight gaz-
ing at the results of his labors. He
was not now the fippant boulevardier
to whom money was the sine qua non
of existence. He had learned a sover-
eign lesson-one gained not through
the push and fight of crowds but in
the simple peace of a countryside, un-
vexed by the clamor of gold and the
complex problems of a competitive ex-
|
of activity, of achievement that he had
been born to do.
"Chum," he said, to the dog rolling
on his back in the grass, what do
you think of it all, anyway" He
reached down, seized hind leg and
whirling him around like a teetotum,
sent him flying into the bushes,
whence Chum launched again upon
him, like a catapult. He caught the
white shoulders and held him vise-like.
Just about right, eh? But wait till
we get those ramblers!"
And to think" he continued, whim-
sically releasing him, that | might
have gone on, one Of the littleneck-
clam crowd I've always trained with.
at the same old pace, till the Yer
mouth-cocktail-Pa Palm Beach career got
double Nelson on me and the umpire
counted me out. At this moment l
wouldn't swap this old house and land
and the sunshine and that 'gyarden
and Unc' Jefferson and Aunt Daph
and the chickens and the birds and
all the rest of il, for mile of MI
lionaires Row"
He went into the house and to the
library. The breeze through the wide
flung bow-window was fluttering the
papers on the desk and the map on
the wall was Tapping sidewise. He
went to straighten 1t. and then saw
what he had not noticed before-that
1t covered something that had been let
into the plaster He swung it aside
and made an exclamation.
He was looking at a square, uncom-
promising wall-safe, with a round fig
ured disk of white metal on it's face.
He knelt before 1t and tried it's knob
After a moment 1t turned easily. But
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