The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1921-01-06
CHAPTER :-continued.

him with feveriSh quickneSS.
''Tve lived twenty years without the
world. I'll not go back to it now"
''But, mother, lie we just keep on this
way. youll-you'll'- hesitated at
the next word finally let it fall-"die."
"Die" she seemed to fondle the
word. "A small thing-to die!"
She sat musing as If she found a
melancholy comfort in the thought.
"But I shan't die" she continued,
with a hasty glance up at his face.
"NIy cough is worse today because my
medicine is gone"
The young man started.
"Yeur elecampane goner"
81 took the last of it yesterday
"Motherr
He went to the cook stove and lifted
the saucer from a small jar in which
the roots were usually stepped. 1t was
empty and dry. There was great ten
derness in his voice as he came back
and bent over her chair.
"Y0u shall have your elecampane
tea" he said, eff the roots are to be
4OuAU kfk tllC AdlWOOOS, uIO yO0 ohdAA
sleep tonight in the old cabin up there
under the cool trees"
A ripple of pleased expectation, of
half-awakened interest, broke the
drear surface of the weary face-like
a faint glow back of curtain that
never raises.
He relied the cup with cool water,
rummaged a spade out Of the locker
under the forward deck, and was just
on the point OF leaping to the bank
when he heard her speaking. He
poked his head back inside the cur
tains, and she repeated what she had
just said: 81 H
"Isn't. the Flatwoods where the Wild
Man lives? Seems to me once heard
that there is such a man in these
woods
He felt carelessly along the rusty bit
of the spade with his thumb.
sI believe this is the woods
.'AIaybe he's-I mean-he's not dan
gerous?"
"Dangerousl A gray ghost of
man with a pitiful face. They say he.
goes through the woods as still as
smoke. and leaves as little trail"
A minute later he had leaped ashore,
climbed the bluffs and plunged into
the deep woods.
The root Of the elecampane was
much esteemed as a remedy for
coughs, but 1t was by no means album
.dant. No one knew this fact better
than the Pearlhunter.
The small stream that feeds the wa
terfali at Fallen Rock is known as
Wolf run. Following up along it's
course the Pearlhunter presently came
to my thread of water that Joined it
from the west-p probably the outlet of
some small pond tucked away among
the hills. 1t is along the open margins
of swamps and ponds, and never in
the thick woods, that the elecampane
grows. Believing from the warmth
and dullness of its water that the tiny
stream came from pond, rather than
from a spring, the Pearlhunter fol-
lowed 1T.
1t had grown so small that the
Pearlhunter began to fear it would
disappear altogether, when there came
a break in the forest line just ahead.
A scramble through dense fringe of
hazel, and there it lay-a little pond
in the midst of a narrow glade in
pOcket of the hills, delicate inlay in
the forest.
The man glanced at the sun
turned, and hurriedly looked about for
the elecampane. Along the east edge
of the glade. not far out from the
fringe of hazel, he found tia clump
of some dozen stalks, three or four of
them ready to bloom. The rusty spade
was soon at their roots-probably the
first ground ever broken on the mar
gin of that pond Three plants he
digged. cut their stems close to the
ground, shook the dirt from their clus-
ters of fieshy roots, and hurried down
the tiny outlet back to Wolf run.
1t was upon the gravelly margin of
a pool that the Pearlhunter stopped to
wash the elecampane roots, and cut
them loose from the clusters in which
he had been carrying them. He had
finished the task and was storing
them away in the pockets of his blouse
when the song of thrush from some
where UP the stream gradually worked
itself across his consciousness.
The song puzzled him. There were
notes-certain little foreign flights; a
deecer witchery-that he could not
have believed possible to a thrush's
throat. The Pearlhunter had c nice
ear for the sounds of the woods He
stole cautiously up the bank. The
souna. when he had draw quite near,
did not appear to come from any tree,
but from some place down close to the
water of another pool-another spot
itust ahead where the water stopped to
rest.
Parting the bushes with the utmost
caution, he crept up to the edge of
the pool and peered forth. A woman
"a girl-gat on a fiat rock jutting out
from the opposite bank, her bare feet
swinging In the water her body bent
SLIGHTLY back and propped on her
bands her face upIifted, her puckered
,,ns nouring forth the song that had
A CrYn