Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1916-08-15
FEATURING Tie HeTHEED5544AaR BILLIE BURKE,
EzsieGEeRIES RoMANCE
| - BY Mr. AND MRS RUPERT HUGHE5 >=--~>
D MRS RUPERT HUGAES So
COPYRIGHT 1916 BY ABEL AIDE ~ uUouES

was to gather wood for the fire. She
set Gloria to work.
Seeing the pitiful little thing in her
Indian rags, bending down to pick VI
sticks. Royce himself might have
passed her without second look.
Royce was not the only one in the
everglades hunting the estray. Freneau
had gone as far as his motor boat would
carry him. Then he had found a native
Indian with a dug-out, a cypress los
followed. The Indian drove 1t with q
pole He had heard nothing Of Glorias
presence in the thicket, but he promised
to guide Freneau to some of the scatter
ed villages.
Meanwhile Dr. Royce, hunting in every
direction had happened upon the home
of the Sipes, and had asked about Gloria
Fearing that he had come to demand the
return of Gloria's Jewels they pretend
ed not to have seen her. But Royce
caught a glimpse of Gloria's evening
dress, which Mrs. Sipe was trying to
hide He charged the Sipes with decep-
ton, probably with murder.
They FASTENED to confess that they
had seen her and helped her on her way
in the clothes of a boy. They sent
young Sipe to show Royce which way
Gloria had gone. Young Sipe, still angry
at Gloria and his parents, sent Royce In
false direction, too. He laughed as he
saw the crazy stranger in the tattered
evening dress starting away in his blind
mans buff. not knowing that rivals were
searching the wilderness, not knowing
that Gloria was now in Indian servitude
The young chief, Katcalani, kept
watching Gloria. Her whiteness, her
delicacy, the unconscious daintiness
with which she lifted a crooked faggot
from the brushwood, and the luxurious
aureole of her hair in the Florida SUM-
made him frantic to call her his own
He beckoned her to follow him and led
her to a distance where the stumbling
dusky women of his tribe could not see
him bow his turbaned head to the chalk
faced squaw.
Gloria hoped that the peculiar person
was going to help her to escape, and she
followed him with only little fear. But
he paused and began to declare his pas
sion with all an Indians eloquence.
His dialect was crude, but his emotion
was fierce. He compared her with the
most graceful palm, with the rarest
orchids. He said that the sunrise was
in her hair and the stars in her eyes.
He compared himself with the great
warrior Osceola, who had slain so many
whites. He offered to kill all the white
men in Florida to please her. He spoke
of his wealth. His turban had a silver
band made out of four silver dollars. He
had a gold watch, sixteen handkerchiefs,
and eighteen shirts. He had six Of
them on. Gloria should have his grand
mothers forty pounds of beads to wear
she should be a queen and she would
not have to pillow.
Gloria had often dreamed of her first
proposal of marriage. This was it. II
did not accord with her dreams. She
was Disguised aghast, afraid. She
could think of nothing to do
The caught sight of the dagger that
Katcalani wore in his belt. In a sick
horror of her fate she snatched 1t from
him. She had not the courage to kill
herself, or him, but she gave him the
knife and begged him to plunge it into
her heart. Katcalani glared at her in a
frenzy of humiliation and wrath. Then
the child-woman wavered on her tired
feet and suddenly dropped to the ground
in a dead faint.