Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1914-04-03

= 80 6A@@ NAA~ 1912
of his father. of the fatal duel of which
he had never known. She liked the
way he had spoken of his fatherl
AS she leaned, out of the stiffness
there came to her ear a mellow sound.
1t was the bell of the courthouse in
the village. She counted the strokes
falling clearly or family as the slug
gish breeze ebbed or swelled. It was
eleven.
to shut out the wan glimmer. and in
the darkness crept into the soft bed
as If into a hiding-place.
>
A warm sun and an air mildly mel
low. A faint gold-shadowed mist over
the valley and a 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 1eering limb, and here and there
on the b~luish-ivory sky. motionless as
a pasted wafer, hung a hawk; from
time to time one of these wavered and
slanted swiftly down. to climb once
more in a huge spiral to its high tower
of sky.
Perhaps it wondered, as its tele-
scopic eye looked down. That had
been its 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 wi1dness 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 a 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 a sleepy express clerk at the
railroad station: two swans now sailed
majestically over the lily-ponds of the
lake, along its gravel rim and a pair
of b-ronze-colored ducks waddled and
preened, and its placid surface rippled
and broke to 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 b~leakness 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 al the results of his labors. He
was not now the fippant b~oulevardier
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, u
vexed by the clamor of gold and the
complex problems of a competitive ex-
istence-that he had inherited a need
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 1t all, anyway" He
reached down, seized a 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 yise-like.
Just about right, Ell? But wait till
we get those ramblersi"
And to think" he continued, whim-
sically releasing him, that | might
have gone on, one of the litt1e-neck-
clam crowd I've always trained with,
at the same old pace, till the Yer
mouth-cocktail- Palm-Beach career got
a double Nelson on me and the umpire
counted me out. At this moment I
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 1t, for a mile of Mil
lionaires' Row."
He went into the house and to the
library. The breeze through the wide
flung bow-window was fiuttering 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 1t 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 lis face.
He knelt before 1t and tried its knob.
After a moment it turned easily. But