Year: 1873

KATIE'S LANTERN.


Truth to tell, the comfortable, old
fashioned farm house, at the foot Of
the narrow and rocky ledge, had most
picturesque position. Away to the
southwark wound and smiled the fertile
valley, a goodly proportion of whose
acres appertained to Grandfather
Crownjnshield, and along the edge
thereof swept the curves of tho rail-
way, after what seemed It's birth in the
cloven ledge go very near to Katie
Crowninshield's home. As for Katie
herself, with her aweet, fresh face, and
her merry brown eyes, the little valley
and her nesting home were all the
world to her-all. indeed, that she had
ever known, for she had been but a
wee thing when Grandfather and
Grandmother Crowninshield became
father and mother to her, in place of
those whose faces she could now hard
~ remember. Neither did it ever oc-
cur to her that she was in any sense an
heiress, for she seemed rather to belong
to the valley than the valley to her !;
while the idea, if anything had brought
it to her mind, that her good old
grandparents were not to live forever,
would have turned the brightest June
day to the gloomiest December.


But, in these later years, ono great
entity had painfully struggled into Ka-
ties world, with an apparent mis- ion
to unite the valley with that great un-
known, which lay beyond the hills and
Lodges. Katie had seen the ragged rift
cloven in the granite wall, watching it
curiously from door or window, and
listening for the dull reports
of the blasting charges, until
the barriers were pierced and the
railway crept out and found it's way
down throug h the valley; and lever,
since the trains began to run, she had
connected with them the idea of a life
that was almost human. She had
waved her handkerchief enthusiastical-
ly to the very first train, and had been
literally responded to by passengers
and conductor and, although she had
been then little girl and was now a
young lady, she had never yet dreamed
of unmaidenly boldness in giving the
same white signal of welcome, at
times, when the great railway mystery
came rushing out of the cloven wall.
There was one train in particular to
which Katie's attentions were at last
pretty we'll restricted-a through-ex-
press, which went by at eight O'Clock
in the morning, and there was another
from the same direction again at eight
o'clock at night. From the former,
just as easily as her own dainty "good
morning!" futtered above the garden
gate, so certainly would there be a
feeting flash of white to answer her
from the platform of one of the cars,
or even from the engine itself, for that,
too. had happened. And Katie knew
very we'll that, in these latter days, at
least, her answer had always come
from the same hand. A tall, erect,
manly fellow he was, dressed in dark
blue cloth and Katie had been we'll
aware, for good while, that he was
the conductor of the trair, but she
had never yet been near enough to
speak to him, or get any clearer notion
of his face and it's meaning than might
be given her in those swift but almost
daily glimpses. When or how he
found his way back to the beginning
of his perpetual journey, was a ques-
tion that Katie never asked even OF
herself. 1t was enough that every
morning the swift train brought him
out of the unknown county beyond
the hills, and added q something that
had grown to be very pleasant TO the
peace and quiet of her day.


There was something very notewor-
thy, even to railway men, about the
manner in which the road broke in
upon that valley. A deep cut, a sharp
curve, and heavy down grade, com.
blned to make the precise point where
the conductor had learned to look fo1
Katie's greeting IN interesting one !;
and her white 'kerchief may even have
seemed to waive species of congratu-
lation at his repeated safe passage OF
what might at any time have shaped
itself into danger.


Be that as it may, the railway "cut ~
had brought to Katie Crowninshield,
among other results, q shorter. and
easier path to the home OF her aunt,
her mothers sister, who lived just a
little way beyond the ledge, and who
was never satisfied if too many days
passed by without bringing the sun
light of Katle's face across her thresh
old. And SO Katio had gone and re-
turned, many and many time, by the
narrow ,atl, between the granite walls.
Nobody in that peaceful region dreamed
of fear at being "out after dark :" and
again and again had good Aunt Betsy
detained her pet until night had fallen,
although her only companion home
ward WIS her little star of q lantern.


There came day when Katie's
handkerchief tluttered in vain, and
then another, when even the reply she
received from the train convinced her
that there had been change of some
kind, and she would receive no more
Signals from the same hand. And so
she sadly prepared to give it up, in
the first tit of genuine blues she had
ever indulged in ; but, few evenings
afterwartl, she fingered Mt the garden.
gate: little, after her return from
Aunt Betsey's, to sec the night express
go flashing by. 1t was grand sight
when it came, incomparably more in