The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1924-12-21

and among the first to volunteer was her
mothers young French lover. The young
girl saw them march away, her father and
her sweetheart, and she waited for them in
vain under the orange trees, for they never
returned; and when the stately old house
had been burned to the ground, and the dew
astation had been complete, she fled with
her broken hearted mother to New Orleans.
A few years later she found herself almost
alone in the world, for her mother died. and
after time she yielded to the advice of
friends and the counsel of relatives and the
earnest pleadings of new lover and mar
ried him. He was not romantic, ardent
young Frenchman. He was a widower,
twice her age, with relatives back in Ken
lucky who were not by any means overjoyed
at the news of his marriage to the young
Frenchwoman. So William Trent yielded to
the wishes of his wife and stayed in Louisi-
ana, where Amelie had been born % years
ago. She was just nine years old when her
mother died, and then followed that long
period of her life spent in, the boarding
school.
Sitting there that summer morning, she
went over all of these events in her mind,
and that night she opened her mothers old
cedar chest, that she had kept through all of
these years, and took out a package of let
tiers. From under the faded ribbon she
drew one that especially interested her to-
night, for it was the only memento that her
-
was dated from a northern prison, and was
the first and only letter written to her by her
sweetheart after he marched away that
morning and left her standing broken
hearted under the orange trees of her plan
tation home. Amelie scanned the faded
lines. How very strange it was that this
lover in the long ago, languishing in prison
of the far north, should have written to her
mother down under the orange trees these
words:
when 1 close my eyes these dismal
prison walls fade away and see only you,
standing there with dream in your blue
eyes! 1 can smell the jessamine that you
wore in your hair the last delightful eve
ming l was with you on the dark murmuring
river with its mystic lights and shadows!
But one thought sustains me in these trying
hours and that is that if God spares me, 1
shall return to you and home and happiness
down in our dear louisiana"
At the end she read the initials of this
French soldier-lover, whose name she had
never known. &c. NJ"
Then she went out on the little porch and
sat in the perfumed stiffness of the summer
night under the soft silvery stars, and there
she finally made up her mind to do what
she had been thinking of doing for many
days.
Next day Mr.. Robert Cartwright hitched
his horse at her gate and came nervously
up the long flower-fringed aisle of her little
garden. Mr.. Robert Cartwright was presi-
vile, and was known as the richest man in
the county, He had been an intimate friend
of the Trent family all his life, and had
looked after the Trents' affairs in Merry
vile almost ever since he could remember.
He had been administrator of Miss Mary
Trent'S estate and had considered Amelie
his especial ward ever since her father, his
boyhood friend, had died. Mr.. Cartwright
was well past 10, but his mind had lost none
of its keenness and his judgment none of it's
Sureness.
mir. Cartwright" Amelie began, when he
had been seated in the little pink-and- white
sitting-room. II need $500. How is the
best way for me to get it,"
There are only three ways to get money
when you haven't got it," he said quickly;
that is, to get it honestly-beg it, borrow
it, or make it. I take it that a Trent
wouldn't be apt to beg it. don't know how
you'd go about making it, and l couldn't
give my consent to your borrowing it,
Il had thought" she continued, without
exactly taking account of his remark, that
1 might mortgage either this place or the
other one."
Il hate the word" he put in hastily.
That's what brought your father down to
where he was. Miss Amelie, I've always
tried to be a friends of yours, and I've al
ways tried to advise you to your best inter-
ests, but l can't see my way clear to allow
yOJl---that ic tn RI hOrrOyuinO