Williams news., 1921-04-22

| was delicate and must De sheltered 1 Never in all the history of his family so fur as Dan knew, had there been . death from the malady that afflicted
 him. Yet his sentence was signed ant
 sealed.
 But he harbored no resentment
 against his mother. It was all in the
 game. She had done what she thought
 was best. And he began to wonder
 in what way he could get the greatest
 pleasure from his last six months oi
 life.
 Good Lord I'' he suddenly breathed
 "I may not be here to see the snows
 comet" Dan had always been partial
 to the winter season. When the snow
 lay all over the farm lands and bowed
 down the limbs of the trees, 1t had
 always wakened a curious flood of | feelings in the wasted man. It seemed
 to him that he could remember other | winters, wherein the snow lay for end
 less miles over an endless wilderness, 1 and here and there were strange, | many-toed tracks that could be fol- | lowed in the icy dawns. But of course l 1t was just a fancy. He wasn't in the | least miSled about it. He knew that he had never, in his lifetime, seen the wilderness. Of course his grand father had been frontiersman of the first order, and all his ancestors be- fore him-a rangys hardy breed whose
 wings would crumple in civilization
 but he himself had always lived in
 cities. Yet the falling snows, soft and
 gentle but with a kind of remorseless- ness he could sense but could not un- derstand, had always stirred him. He'd often imagined that he would like to see the forests in winter.
 In him you could see a reflection of the boy that played beside the pond of snow water, twenty years before. His dark gray eyes were still rather large and perhaps the wasted flesh around them made them seem larger than they were. But it was a little hard to see them, as he wore large glasses. His mother had been sure, years before, that he needed glasses; and she had easily found an oculist that agreed with her.
 Now that he was alone on the path, the utter absence of color in his cheeks was startling. That meant the absence of red-that warm glow of the blood eager and alive in his veins. Perhaps an observer would have noticed lean hands, with big | knuckled fingers, a rather firm mouth, | and closely cropped dark hair. He | was twenty-nfne years of age, but he | looked somewhat older. He know now | that he was never going to be any | older. A doctor as sure of himself as the one he had just consulted couldn't possibly be mistaken.
 He sat down on a park bench, just beneath the spreading limb of a great tree. He would sit here, he thought, until he finally decided what he would do with his remaining six months.
 ok fo | The recruiting officer had been very kind but most determined. The boys had brought him great tales of France. It might be nice to go to France and live in some country inn until he died. But he didn't have very long to think upon this vein. For at that instant the squirrel came down to see if he had a nut.
 It was the squirrel of Destiny. But Dan didn't know it then.
 Bushy-tan was not particularly afraid of the human beings that passed up and down the park, because he had learned by experience that they usually attempted no harm to him. But, nevertheless, he had his instincts He didn't entirely trust them, After several generations, probably the squirrels of this park would climb all over its visitors and sniff in their ears md investigate the back of their 1 1ecks. But this wasn't the way of 1 8ushy-tail. He had come too recent ] y from the wild places. And he won- { tered, most intensely, whether this { all, forked creature had a pocket full If nuts. He swung down on the [ ,rass to see. $
 'Why, you little devil I' Dan said n a whisper. His eyes suddenly parkled with delight. And he forgot Ill about the doctors words and his ,wn prospects in his bitter regrets : hat he had not brought a pocketful if nuts.
 And then Dan did a curious thing. 1ven later, he didn't know why he did t, or what gave him the idea that he T. ould decoy the squirrel up to him by II oing it. That was his only purpose e ust to see how close the squirrel a would come to him. He thought he c would like to look into the bright eyes q t close range. All he did was sud- a enly to freeze into one position-in d n instant rendered as motionless as a he rather questionable-looking stone r tork that was perched on the foun- h ain.
 Where Dan Failing decides