Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1915-03-10

low. A faint gold-shadowed mist over
the valley and a soft lilac haze blend
ing the rounded outlines of the hills.
Through the shrubbe~y at Damory
Court a cardinal darted like GRIM
son shuttle, to rock impudently from
fleering limb, and here and there
on the bluish-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 huge spiral to it's 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-
petuaI 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 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 it's gravel rim and pair
of brOnze-colored ducks waddled and
preened, and its placid surface r1ppled
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 bleakness and for
lornness we're 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 fiippant 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 countryside, un-
vexed by the clamOr of gold and the
complex problems of competitive ex-
istence-that he had inherited need
of activity, of achievement that he had
been born to do. va
"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 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 vise-like
Just about right, Ell? But wait till
we get those ramblers!"
And to think" he continued, within.
sically releasing him, that l might
have gone on, one of the little-neck
clam crowd I've always trained with
at the same old pace, till the Yer
h-cocktail-P alm-Beach career got
double Nelson on me and the umpire
counted me out. At this moment
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 it, for a mile of Mil.
Ii0uairpc, Pow
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 it, and then saw
what he had not noticed before-that
it covered something that had been lei
into the plaster He swung it aside
and made an exclamation.
He was looking at a square, uncom
promising wall-safe, with round fig
ured disk of white metal on it's face
He knelt before it and tried its knob
After a moment it turned easily. But