The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1920-07-15
CHAPTER II,

Where the Water Stops to Rest.
HIS father! There was nothing in
the world the man hungered so much
to know. In the long days of toll the
thought sometimes woke and stung
him; in the black night he pondered
1t. His father! The past! All
locked behind the mask like face of
the 1ron-Gray Woman. The fever had
flared forth a. word-all too little. 1t
was the firse he had ever heard; it
might be the last. 1t left him hungry
to hear more.
AS he stopped over her, anxious to
do something to alleviate her suffering,
yet not knowing what, she raised her
face in a gasp for breath, and he saw
blood upon her lips. He snatched an
other cup of water and knelt beside
her, but for a long time she bumped
forward, her shoulders cupped in and
her arms locked as if trying to hold
back the cough, until she seemed &C
tually to conquer it by sheer force of
will. Finally she CROPPED with one
hand for the cup; supped the cool
water, Strengthened, and lay back in
her chair. There was no more blood
on her lips, and the man said nothing
of the tiny fleck he had seen there.
Mother, they're getting worse, these
spells. Let me bring the doctor down
from the village?"
Her eyes opened; she looked up at
him with feverish quickness.
1--WE lived twenty years without the
world. I'll not go back to it now"
But, mother, if we just keep on
this way, you'll-youlP-he hesitated
at the next word; finally let it fall
die"
"Die!" she seemed to fondle the
word. "a small thing-to die!"
She sat 1nusing as if she found a
comfort in the thought.
But 1 shan't die she continued,
with a hasty glance up at his face.
MY cough is worse today because my
medicine is gone
The young man started.
your elecampane gone!"
'I took the last of it yesterday"
"Mother!"
He went to the cook stove and lift
I'd the saucer from small jar in
which the roots were usually stepped.
It was empty and dry. There was a |
great tenderness in his voice as he
came back and bent over her chair.
L GU snail nave yum OiSShAhP@'iA~
tea" he said, +'if the roots are to be
found in the Flatwoods; and you
shall sleep tonight in the old cabin up
there under the cool trees"
A ripple of pleased expectation, OF
half awakened interest, broke the
1rear surface of the weary face-like
4 faint glow back of a curtain that
never raises.
He refilled the cup with cool water,
a spade out of the locker
under the forward, deck, and was just
IN the point of leaping to the bank
when he heard her speaking He
poked his head back inside the cur
aims, and she repeated what she had |
lust said:
Isn't the F1atwoods where the Wild
Man lives? Seems to me I once heard
hat there is such a man in these
woods"
He felt carelessly along the rusty bit |
# the spade with his thumb /
1T believe this is the woods"
Maybe hes-I mean-he's not dan !
serous?' /
Dangerous! A gray ghost of a man
With a pitiful face. They say he goes |
through the woods as still as smoke, |
md leaves as little trail"
A minute later he had leaped ashore,
prung up the slope, crossed the
branch tumbling along among the
ocks from the waterfall to the river,
climbed the bluffs, and plunged into
he deep woods.
The root of the elecampane was
much esteemed as remedy for coughs
tut 1t was by no means abundant.
70 one knew this fact better than the