Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1910 — THE QUICKENING [ARTICLE]

THE QUICKENING

BY FRANCIS LYNDE

CHAPTER VI. On« purple and russet afternoon, when all the silent forest world was •teeped In the deep peace of early autumn, Thomas Jefferson was fishing luxuriously In the most distant of the tipper pools. There were three fat perch gill-strung on a forked withe un4er the overhanging bank, and a fourth wae rising to the bait, yhen the peaceful stillness was rudely rent by. a ■crashing In the undergrowth, and a preat dog, of a breed hitherto unknown to Paradise, bounded into the little fflade to stand glaring at the fisherman, his teeth bared and his black hairs bristling. "Oh, pleasel Don't hurt my dog!” •aid a rather weak little voice out of the rearward void. “You come round here and call him off o’ me.” “He Is not wishing to' hurt you, or •nybody,” said the voice. “Down, Hector!" The Great Dane passed from suspicious rigidity and threatening lip twitchings to mighty and frivolous Cambolings, and Thomas Jefferson got tip to give him room. A girl was trying to make the dog behave. So he had a chance to look her over before the battle for sovereignty should begln. There was a little shock of disdainful surprise to go with the first glance. Somehow he had been expecting something very different; something on the ■order of the Queen of Sheba —done •mall, of course—as that personage was pictured in the family Bible —a plrl, proud and scornful, and possibly wearing a silk dress and satin shoes. Instead, she was only a pale, tired tiaby in a brier-torn frock; a girl whose bones showed brazenly "at every •ingle, and whose only claim to a second glance lay in her thick mop of Teddlsh-brown hair and in a pair of .great, slate-blue eyes two sizes too large for the thin face. A double conclusion came and sat in Thomas Jef-* ferson’s mind: she was rather to be contemptuously pitied than feared; «.nd as for looks—well, she was not to be thought of in the same day with black-eyed Nan Bryerson. When the ■dog was reduced to quietude, the small one repaid Thomas Jefferson’s stare with a level gaze out of the over-sized eyes. * “Was It that you were afraid of Hector?” she asked. “Huh!” said Thomas Jefferson, and the scorn was partly for her queer way of speaking and partly for the foolishness of the question. “Huh! I reckon you don’t know who I am. I’d have killed your dog if he’d jumped on me, maybe.” “You are Thomas Gordon. Your mother took care of me and prayed <or me when_l was sick. Hector is a —an extremely good dog. He would not Jump at you.” “It’s mighty lucky for him he didn’t,” bragged Thomas Jefferson, with a very creditable - imitation of his father’s grim frown. Then he sat down on the bank of the stream and busied himself with his fishing-tackle as if he considered the incident closed. “What is it that you are trying to 4o?” asked Ardea, when the silence bad extended to the third worm Impaled on the hook and promptly abstracted therefrom by a wily sucker, lying at the bottom of the pool. “I' was flshin’ some before you and your dog came along and scared all the perch away,” he said, sourly. Then, turning suddenly on her: “Why don’t you go ahead and say it? Is it ’cause you’re afeard to?” “I don't know what you mean." “I know what you’re going to say; you are going to tell me this is your grandfather’s land and run me off. But 1 ain’t aimin’ to go till I’m good and ready.” / “You are such a funny boy,” she remarked, and there was something In ber way of saying it that made Thomas Jefferson feel little and Infantile and Inferior, though he was sure there must be an immense age difference n bis favor. “I think you are mean, mean!” she sobbed, with an angry •tamp of her foot “I—l want to go to-ome!" "Well, I reckon there ain’t anybody boldin’ you,” said Thomas Jefferson, brutally. He was Intent on fixing the sixth worm on the hook in such fashion as permanently to discourage the bait thief, and was coming to his own in the matter of self-possession with grateful facility. It was going to be notably easy to bully her—another point of difference between her and JJan Bryerson. “I know there Isn’t anybody holding me, but —but I can’t find the way.” ‘‘You want me to show you?” he asked, putting all the ungraciousness be could muster into the query. “You might tell me, I should think! I’ve walked and walked!” “I reckon I'd better take you; you might get lost again,” he said, with gloomy sarcasm. Then he consumed all the time he could for the methodical disposal of his fishing-tackle. It would be good for her to learn that •he must wait on his motions. She waited patiently, sitting on the ground with one arm around the neck of the Great Dane; and when Thomas Jefferson stole a glance at her to see bow she was taking it, she looked so tired and thin and woebegone that he almost let the better part of him get the upper hand. That made him surlier than ever when he finally recovered his string of fish from the stream and said: “Well, come on, if you’re cornin’.” He told himself, hypocritically, that It was only to show her what hardships she would have to face if she should try to tag him, that he dragged, ber such a weary round over the hills and through the worst brier patches

and across and across The creek, doubling and circling until the easy mtle was spun out into three uncommonly difficult ones. But at bottom the motive was purely wicked. In all the range of sentient creatures there is none so innately and barbarously cruel as the human boy-child; and this was the first time Thomas Jefferson had ever had a helplessly pliable subject. The better she kept up, the more determined he became to break her down; but at th very last, when she stumbled and fell in an old leaf bed and cried for sheer weariness, he Relented enough to say: “I reckon you’ll know better than to go projectin’ round in the woods the next time. Come on— We're rifost there, now.” But Ardea's troubles were not yet at an end. She stopped crying and got up to follow him blindly over more hills and through other brier tangles; and when they finally emerged in the cleared lands, they were still on the wrong side of the creek/“It’s only about up to your chin; reckon you can wade it?” asked Thomas Jefferson, in a sudden access of heart-hardening. But it softened him a little to see he* gather her torn frock and stumble down to the water’s edge without a word, and he added: "Hold on; maybe we can find a log, somewhere.” ■ There was a foot log Just around the next bend above, as he very well knew, and thither he led the way. The dog made the crossing first, and stood wagging his tall encouragingly on the bank of safety. Then Thomas Jefferson passed his trembling victim out on the log. “You go first,” he directed; “s<? ’t I can catch you If you slip.” “Oh, you ptaufe go first, so I won’t have to look down at the water!” “No; I’m coming behind—then I can catch you if you get dizzy and go to fall,” he said, stubbornly. “Will you walk right up close, so I can know you are there?” Thomas Jefferson’s smile was cruelly misleading, as were his words. “All you’ll have to do will be to reach your hand back and grab me,” he assured her; and thereupon she began in Inch her way out over the swirling pool. When he saw that she could by no possibility turn to look back, Thomas Jefferson deliberately sat down on the bank to watch her. There had never been anything in his life so tlgerishly delightful as this game of playing on the feelings and fears of the girl whose coming had spoiled the solitudes.

For the first few feet Ardea went steadily forward, keeping her eyes fixed on the Great Dane sitting motionless at the farther end of the bridge of peril. Then, suddenly the dog grew Impatient and began to leap and bark like a foolish puppy. It was too much for Ardea to have her eye-anchor thus transformed into a dizzylpg whirlwind of gray monsters. She reached backward for the reassuring hand; it was not there, and the next instant the hungry pool rose up to engulf her. In all his years Thomas Jefferson had never had such a stab as that which an ( lnstantly awakened conscience gave him when she slipped and fell. Now he was her murderer, beyong any hope future mercies. For a moment of it held him ■vise-like. Th® the sight of the great Pane plunging to the rescue freed him. “Good dog!”.he. screamed, diving headlong from his own side of the pool; and between them Ardea was dragged ashore, a limp little heap of saturation, conscious, but with her teeth chattering and great, dark circles around the big blue eyes. “I’m awfully sorry!” he stammered. “If you can’t make out to forgive me. I’m going to have a miser’ble time of it after I get home.” “It will serve you quite right. Now you’d better get me home as quick as ever you can. I expect I’ll be sick again, after this.” He held his peace and walked her as fast as he could across the fields and out on the pike. But at the Dabney gates he paused. It was not in human courage to face the Major under existing conditions. “I reckon you’ll go and tell your gran'paw on me," he said, hopelessly. “Why should I not tell him? And I never want to see you or hear of you again, you cruel, hateful boy!” Thomas Jefferson hung about the gate while she went stumbling up the driveway,'leaving heavily on the great dog. When she had safely reached the house he went slowly homeward, wading in trouble even as he waded In the white dust of the pike. For when one drinks too deeply of the cup of tyranny the lees are apt to be'like the little book the Revelator ate—sweet as honey in the mouth and bitter in the belly. That evening at the supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother’s reply to a question put by his father. ■ “Yes; the Major sent for me again this afternoon. That child la back In bed again with a high fever. It seems she was out playing with that great dog of hers and fell into the creek. I wanted to tell the Major he is Just tempting Providence, the way he makes over her and indulges her, but I didn’t dare to.” And Thomas Jefferson knew that he was the one who had tempted Providence. . CHAPTER VII. From the grave and thoughtful van-tage-ground of 13, Thomas Jefferson could look back on the second illness of Ardea Dabney as the closing Incident of childhood. The industrial changes which were then beginning, not only for the city beyond the mountain, but for all the region round about, had rushed swiftly on Paradise; and the old listless life of the unbasting

period soon receded aulckly Into a faraway past, rememberable only when one made an effort to recall it. First had come the completion of the Great Southwestern. Diverted by the untiring opposition of Major Dabney from its chdsen path through the valley, it skirted the westward hills, passing within a few hundred yards of the Gofdon furnace. Since business knows no animosities, the part which Caleb Gordon and his gun crew had played in the right-of-way conflict was ignored. The way-station at the creek crossing was named Gordonia, and it was the railway traffic manager himself who suggested to the iron-master the taking of a partner with capital, the opening of the vein of coking coal on Mount Lebanon, the installation - of coking-ovens, and the modernizing and enlarging of the furnace ; and foundry plant—hints all pointing to Increased traffic for the road. With the coming of Mr. Duxbury Farley to Paradise, Thomas Jefferson lost, not only the simple life, but the desire to live it. This Mr. Farley, whom we have seen and heard, momentarily, on the station platform in South Tredegar, the expanded, hailed from Cleveland, Ohio; was, as he was fond of saying pompously, a citizen of no mean city. His business in the reawakening, South was that of an intermediary between cause and effect; the cause being the capital of confiding investors in the North, and the effect the dissipation of the same In various and sundry development schemes *ln the new iron field. To Paradise, in Jhe course of his goings to and fro, came this purger of other men’s purses, and he saw the fortuitous grouping of the possibilities at a glance: abundant iron of good quality ; an accessible vein of coal, second only to Pocahontas for coking; land cheap, water free, and a persuadable subject in straightforward, sim-ple-hearted Caleb Gordon. Farley had no capital, but he had that which counts far more in the promoter’s field; namely, the ability to reap where others had sown. His plan, outlined to Caleb in a sweeping caval-ry-dash of enthusiasm, was simplicity itself. Caleb should contribute the raw material—land, water and the ore quarry—and it should also be his part to secure a lease of the coal land from Major Dabney. In the meantime he, Farley, would undertake to float the enterprise in the North, forming a company and selling stock to provide the development capital. A company was formed, the charter was obtained, and the golden stream began to flow into the treasury; Into it and out again in the raceway channels of development. Thomas Jefferson stood aghast when an army of workmen swept down on Paradise and began to change the very face of nature. But that was only the beginning.

For a time Chlawassee Coal and Iron” figured buoyantly in the market quotations, and delegations of stockholders, both present and prospective, were personally conducted to the scene of activities by enthusiastic Vice-Presi-dent Farley. But when these had served their purpose a thing happened. One fine morning It was whispered on ’Change that Chlawassee iron would not Bessemer, and that Chlawassee coke had been rejected by the Southern Association of Iron Smelters. Following a crash which was never very clearly understood by the simplehearted sdldier Iron-master, though It was merely a repetition of a lesson well conned by the earlier Investors In Southern coal and iron fields. Caleb’s craft was the making of Iron; not the financing of top-heavy corporations. So, when he was told that the company had failed, and that he and Farley had been appointed receivers, he took It as a financial matter, of course, somewhat beyond his ken, and went about his dally task of supervision with a mind as undisturbed as it would have been distraught had be known some - thing of the subterranean mechanism by which the failure and the receivership had been brought to pass. (To be continued.)