Year: 1876

keep it as he did but one day Squire
Wheeler, to all the neighborhood's as
tonishment, rode over to the farm.


What he did there was never exactly
known, but in little while it was rn-
mored that the SUIT WAS withdrawn, and
next spring, Lucy Reid WAS to be mar
ried TO HI, sou, Stillman Wheeler. And
SO it was. One bright March day she
went to the old church yonder and gave
herself to him.


He was good looking man, but never
over smart, the neiglbors whispered !;
and I always thought that it was his
fathers money, more than anything else,
that kept him up


''But Justin, Grandma Deane-what
become of himl"


fThere is n dark look about the whole
matter. Lucy was made the victim of
some terrible faifehood. I never blamed
her father, for the losing of the home
stead seemed completely to shatter him.
only knew that Squire Wheeler and
his son were at the bottom of it, and
that Lucy Reid went to the altar believ-
ing that Justin had been false to her. F"


"Dear me, how dreadful did he
ever como back 20


eyes, the next May. Lucy had been
a wife two months. Justin had not heard
of her marriage. She was at home vis-
iting her father. When she first saw
him she fell down like one stricken with
and there learned all. Both had been
| deceived.


1t was terrible scene the old front
room Witnessed. Justin swore vengeance
and it was not till, with c!asped hands
and streaming eyes, the young wife knelt
to the only man she ever loved, and
| pleaded for the life of her husband, that
he promised for her sake to spare his
life.


But from tho day of Justin's visitLucy
was changed woman. All the light
| and gladness of her being seemed dead
in her. She moved about her house
pale and quiet, with look of patient
suffering in her once sunny eyes, that
made my heart ache to behold"


"And her husband-did she ever tell
him what she had learned" y


81 think not. His father and Lucy s
| had died in less than two years after the
marriage. The Squire was much less
wealthy than was supposed. The next
spring Lucy and her husband nlovrcd
west, and somehow people lost sight of
them"


''And Justin %


"You know the rest my child. He
became moody, unhappy man, asking
no sympathy and giving none. But he
was always smart at bargain, and in q
few years he had laid mp enough to buy
Deacon Platt's farm when his son went
South.


Ever since he has added acres to his
lands and hundreds to the banks but
for all that, he is man soured toward
all his race, man who was never known
to give little child smile, or a beggar
crust of bread.


have sometimes thought his heart
was like desert, without a tree to shade
or q stream to gladden. it. And yet it
bore bright blossom once and believe
me, children, for 1t is the word of an old
woman who has seen and known much
of the ways of men, it is always so. The
heart may be great wilderness, but in
some of its byways there has grown a
flower"


Cora and I looked at each other, and
at Uncle Charlie. Just then Aunt Mary
came in. She had been out, and not
heard of Grandma Deane's visit.


But Cora stole up to her uncle, and,
winding her arms about his neck, whis;
pered:


'I shall believe it always. Uncle Char
lie, now have heard the story of Far
mer Keep, that there is a blossom in the
wilderness of every heart"


1t was sultry August day, in the
summer I passed at Meadow Brook. The
wind, low and slumberous as the hush
of q mothers 8 voice at nightfall, crept up
among the corn, and down among the
rye and wheat fields, that lay like broad
green folds about the dwelling of Farm
er Keep.


There was no poem of flowers about
the front yard (; no graceful, harmonic
ing touches of creeping vine or waving
curtains about the old red homestead !;
and yet it had quiet, substantial, mat
ter -of-fact physiognomY, that somehow
made home feeling about your heart.


I think it must have been this uncon-
scious feeling which decided the course
of the girl who stood at the point where
the roads diyerge, and gazed wis.fully
about her that afternoon.


She seemed very tired, AMI her coarse
straw bonnet and calico dress were COW
cred with dust. Ii you had looked in
her face you would not have forgotten
it. 1t could not have seen more than
fifteen summers. It was very pale, and
its sweet, sad eauty made you think of
nothing but summer flowers drenched
with summer rains.


Her eyes were of that deep, moist blue
that rolls out from under the edge of
April clouds, and her lips, ripe and full,
had that touch of sorrowfulness about
them, which tells you always the heart
beneath is full of tears.