The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1917-10-27

sign of the cross; for his memory was
with a dark-eyed, soft-cheeked pea ant
girl of the parish of ST. Gabrielle, whom
he had left behind five years before,
and had never seen since. Word had
come from the parish priest that she
was dying, and though ne wrote back
in his homely patoIs OF his grief, and
begged that the good father would
write again, no word had ever come,
and he thought of her now as one for
whom the candles had been lighted
and masses had been said.
But JEFF Hyde's eyes were bright
and suffering as he was, the heart in
him was brave and hopeful He vas
thinking of 3 glorious Christmas Day
upon the Madawaska River three
years agone; of Adam Henry, the blind
fiddler; of bright, warm-hearted Pattle
Chown, the belle of the ball, and the
long drive home in the frosty night.
Late CarscaIlen was thinking of a
brother whom he had heard preach
years before And Late Carscallen,
slow of speech and thought, had been
full of pride and love of that brilliant
brother. But they, IN the natural
course of things, drifted apart; the
slow and uncouth one to make his home
at last not far from the Arctic Circle,
and to be this night on his way to the
the cup to his lips he recalled the words
of newspaper paragraph of a few
months before. 1t made reference
to the fact that ''the Reverend James
Carscallen, ID, preached before Her
Majesty on Whitsunday, and had the
honor of lunching with Her Majesty
afterward'' And Late Carscallen
rubbed his left hand ioyfully against
his blanketed leg and drank.
Cloud-in-the-Sky's thoughts were
with the present, and his "Ugh!' of
approval was one of the senses purely.
Instead of drinking to absent friends
he looked at the Sub-factor and said,
Howl" He drank to the Sub-factOr.
And Jaspar Hume, the Sub-factor,
what were his thoughts
His was a memory OF childhood;
of a house beside a swlft-flowlng
river, where a gentle widowed mother
braced her heart against misfortune
and denied herself and shaved that
her son might be educated. He had
said to her that some day would
be paid back hundred-fold. And he
worked hard at school, very hard.
But one cold day of spring message
came to the school, and he sped home
ward to the house beside the dark
river down which the ice was floating
he would remember that floating ice
to his dying dayl-and entered quiet
room where whlte-faced woman
was breathing away her life And he
fell at her side and kissed her hand and
called to her; and she walked for a
moment only and smiled on him, and
said, q Be good, my boy, and God will
make you great" And then she
said she was cold. And some one felt
her feet-a kind old soul who shook
her head sadly at the mother and looked
pityingly at him; and>a voice rising
out of a strange smiling languor muir
INJURED, "Tn away, I'll away to the
Promised Land-to the Promised Land
It is coId-so cold-God keep my boyl"
And the voice ceased, and the kind old
soul who had looked at him pityingly
folded Z arms about him, and drew
bis brown head to her breast and kissed
him with flowing eyes and whispered,
"Come away, dear, come away"
But he came back in the night and
sat beside her, and would not go away
but remained there till the sun grew
bright, and then through another
day and night until they bore her out
of the little house by the river to the