The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-12-06

| lis head. That's what they were all saying or thinking as they sat CT wandered about.
 1 Such are the difficulties of serious men. And even while it all went on, Mary Matheson had gone about her choosing in the way that seemed fit
 to youth. In the warm-lit publicity of Miss Alma Beedie's birthday party, shaking off so soon the mem ory of that brief glint of pistol play under the apple trees, she took a fantastic VOW to marry the one that brought her the wedding ring promised with her left hand on Miss Beedie's album and her right lifted toward the allegorical print of the Good Shepherd that the one who. first across the Sound to the jewellers at Gillyport and bacl again, fetched her the golden ring
 that he should be her husband flor better or for worse, till death us do part, and So forth and so on, AmenL"
 And those who were there remem- bered afterwards that while Joshua stood his ground and laughed and cIapped with the best of them, his brother Andrew left the house. They said his face was a sick white, and that he looked back at Mary for an instant from the doorway with a curious. hurt expression in his eyes. as if to say, "Is it only game to you then? And if it's only a game, is it worth the candle?" They re-
 nembered it afterward, I say; long .afterward.
 They thought he had gone out for just q moment; that presently he would return to hold up his end of the gay challenge over the cakes and cordial. But to that party Andrew Blake never returned Their first hint of what was afoot they had when Roidown Nickerson, the beachComber, came running in, shining with the wet of the autumn gale that began that night. He
 wanted Joshua to look out for his brother. Being innocent of what had happened at the party, he thought Andrew had gone out of his head.
 Here I come onto him in the lee of Whites wharf putting a compass into the old mans sail dory. and I says to him, What you up to. Andrew?' And he says with kind of laugh. oh. taking a little sail for 
 Now, just imagine. Josh, with this here weather coming on-au hell bu usting loose to the north'rd!"
 They say that there came a look into Joshua's eyes that none of them had ever seen before. He stood there for a moment, motionless and silent, and RolIdown, deceived by his attitude, was at him again.
 You don't realize, man, or else you'd stop him!"
 "Oh. I'll stop him." It was hardly above a breath. 'Tn stop him!" And throwing his greatcoat over his Joshua went out.
 You may believe that the house would not hold the party after that giggling, shivering, the young people dropped down HemaT street to the shore. And there under the phantom light of a moo. hidden by the drift of storm cloud they found Andrew gone, and a they saw of Joshua was a shadow a shadow in black frock clothes wading away from them over the half-Covered flats, deeper and deeper to where the Adams sIoop rode at her mOOrinEs, a shade tailing in the wind. They called, but he did not answer, and before they could do anything he had the sail up, and he. too. was gone, into the black heart of the night.
 It is lonesome in the dark for boy of six when the floor heaves and the bed shivers and over his head the shingles make a sound in the wind like the souls of all the lost men in the world. The hours from two till dawn that night I spent under the table in the kitchen, where Miah White and his brother Lem had come to talk with Duncan. And among the three of them, all they could say was My heavens! My I say till dawn; but our kitchen might have given on a city lirshaft for all the dawn we got.
 It is hard to give any one who has lived always in the shelter of the and an idea of the day that fol- owed, hour by waiting hour-how 'olks walked the beaches and did not | oOk at each other in passing, and now others, climbing the bluff to nave better sight of the waters be | 7ond the Head, found themselves 1 blinded by the smother at fifty yards l md yet still continued to stare.
 Of them all that day. Mary | datheson was the only one who kept l still. And she was as still as an | mage. Standing half-hidden in the | Intidy nook behind the grocery, she | 'emained staring out through the | larhor mistS from dawn till another | leavy night came down, and no one | an say whether she would have | gone home then had not the appalled, | widow, her mother, slipped down be- | ween the houses to take her.
 She was at home. at any rate, | when Joshua Blake came back
 After ali-that waiting and watch | ng. no one saw him land or the | battered. black beach. for it was in l he dead hour Of the morning; of | he three persons who are said to | nave met him on his way to Aary's, | wo were v0 tardy with their claims i hat a doubt has been cast on them. l do believe. though. that Mother | Polly Freeman. the west-end mid | wife, saw him and spoke with him n the light thrown from the drug ] ,tore window (where. had 1 only lnown enough to be awake, l might 1 nave looked down on them from my ] bedroom and got some fame of my 'wnl.
 She says she thought at first he l was a ghost come up from the bot |