Evening star., 1914-08-09

thought he noted the CLEAN OF strange hight
in her eyes. For moment both were silent.
Only the driftwood cracked on the hearth,
and from without came the boom of the surf
and the distant, monotonous clang OF the
bell buoy off the point.
He closed the book sharply, with an un-
easy and wholly unaccountabe feeling that
he would have been wiser if he had not
opened it; scattering a cloud of fine dust
from its edges, and filling the room with that
pungent odor peculiar to the dust of old
libraries.
@See what dust you've raised!' Belle
cried, shifting the air disdainfully. @That's
all the good that comes of meddling with
them
He set the book on its shelf, and went back
to his place by the fire; but all the rest of
the day that curious, pungent odor of old
dust was in his nostrils, and ever and again,
across the obscurer currents of his conscious
ness, recurred that chance-read, pointless,
yet singularly resonant sentence, "A debt
unpaid, promise unfulfilled-'
ALL too swiftly the unnumbered days
slipped by. The trees blazed in their
autumn glory, and began to shed their
leaves; the wind was colder at night, the
sea grayer and sterner. So the day Of their
Homecoming came round.
Summer is over sighed Belle, folding
the last of her dresses away in the open
trunk. Tomorrow we go back to the stupid
world"
Brandow felt no regret or at most only
pleasant one. To him, "the stupid world
meant work He began to wonder all at
once how he had been SO content, all these
summer months, without the stimulus of
daily labor: After all, this was only playing
at life: real life would begin when he should
III b;c r,1oca IN the world with Re11e at hic
side. For the first time since the day of their
wedding he became conscious of a tomorrow,
of future to which the present was not
sufficient. Long after Belle had gone to bed
he sat dreaming by the freside, building
castles in the air.
He awoke out of his reverie with a start,
holding his breath, with strained ears trying
to identify the subtle cause of his dlstur-
bance; and heard only the sound of Bellies
regular breathing as she lay with her head
turned away from the lamplight. The fire
had died down, and the room was perceptlbly
chill. Brandow rose, yawning, and glanced
at the clock. 1t stood at few minutes past
one, and through the glass front of the case
he could see the pendulum, not swinging
regularly, but slowly vibrating to rest: even
as he watched, it stopped altogether. This,
then, was what had startled him,-the sud-
den cessation of that monotonous tick, tick,
OF which he had never been wholly conscious,
had walked him as surely as a pistolshot.
He tried to set it going again, but could not.
Probably it had come to the end Of its use
fulness. But the incident, trivial in itself,
unaccountably depressed him. To his mind
recurred the old belief that the stopping of
the clock was portent; and half the night
he lay awake, listening to Bellies regular
breathing, and fearing to stir lest he should
wake her too.
MOON, and they were driving through the
- gateway for the last time, Belle leaning
half out of her seat, to wave adieu to the
Mahogany Witch, curtsying to them from
the great empty porch, an enigmatical smile
on her withered lips. A moment, and she
was out Of sight.
The road was thick strewn with fallen
leaves, which ratified under the wheels, and
rose up in little swirls behind them; the sun
cleaned pale through half-naked boughs, -
it was time to be getting home. On the way
to the depot Belle was unusually SILENT and
Brandow, unable to dismiss from his mem
ory the old superstition about the clock, felt
no desire to break in upon her mood. Sandy,
never very laxative, stared straight before
him at the horses ears, his lips puckered to
a mournful whistle that never came forth.
But once aboard the train, the rush and
roar of EVERYDAY life seemed to enq1lf them