Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 114, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1912 — Page 2

SYNOPSIS. Enid Maitland, a frank, free and unspoiled young Philadelphia girt, "18 taken to the Colorado mountains by her uncle, Robert Maitland. James Armstrong, Maitland's protege, falls in love with her. His persistent wooing thrills the girl, but she hesitates, and Armstrong goes east on business without a definite answer. Knid hears the story of a mining engineer, Newbold, whose wife fell off a cliff and was so seriously hurt that he was compelled to shoot her to prevent her being eaten by wolves while he went for help Klrkby, the old guide who tells the story, gives Enid a package of letters which he says were found on the dead woman’s body. She reads the letters and at Kirkby’s request keeps them. While bathing in mountain stream Enid Is attacked by a bear, which is mysteriously shot. A storm adds to the girl’s terror. A sudden deluge transform brook into raging- torrent, which sweeps Enid into gorge, where she Is rescued by a mountain hermit after a thrilling experience. Campers In great confusion upon dlscoving Enid's absence when the storm breaks. Maitland and Old Klrkby go In search of the girl. Enid discovers that her ankle is sprained and that she is unable to walk. Her mysterious rescuer carries her to his camp. Enid go®s to sleep in the strange man s bunk. Miner cooks breakfast for Enid, after which they go on tour of Inspection. CHAPTER XI. (Continued). “I will go and cook you some breakfast while you get yourself ready. If you have' not washed, you'll find a bucket of water and a basin and towel outside the door.” He went through the inner door as suddenly as he had come through the outer one. He was a man of few words, and whatever social grace he might once have possessed, and in more favorable circumstances exhibited, was not noticeable now. The tenderness with which he had . caressed her the night before had also vanished. His bearing had been cool, almost harsh and forbidding, and his manner was as grim as his appearance. The conversation had been a brief one, and her opportunity for inspection of him consequently limited. Yet she had taken him in. He was a tall, splendid man. No longer young, perhaps, but in the prime of life and vigor. His complexion was dark and burned browner by long exposure to sun and wind, winter and summer. In spite of the brown, there was a certain color, a hue of health in his cheeks. His eyes were hazel, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, and sometimes blue, she afterward learned. A short thick closely cut beard and mustache covered the lower part of his face disguised but not hiding the squareness of his jaw and the firmness of his lips. He had worn his cap when he entered, and when he took it off she noticed that his dark hair was tinged with white. He was dressed in a leath-

er hunting suit, somewhat the worse for wear, but fitting him In a way to give free play to all his muscles. His movements were swift, energetic and graceful. She did not wonder that he had so easily hurled the bear to one side and had managed to carry her —no light weight, indeed! —over what she dimly recognized must have been a horrible trail, which, burdened as he was, would have been impossible to a man of less splendid vigor than he. The cabin was low ceiled, and" as she sat looking up at him, he had towered above her until he seemed to fill it Naturally, she had scrutinized his every action, as she had hung on his every word. His swift and somewhat startled movement, his frowning as he had seized the picture on which she had gazed with such interest, aroused the liveliest surprise and curiosity in her tyeart. Who was this woman? Why was he so quick to remove the picture from her gaze? Thoughts rushed tumultuously through her brain, but she realized at once that she lacked time to Indulge them. She could hear him moving about in the other room. She threw aside the blanket with which she had draped herself, changed the bandage on her foot, drew on the heavy woolen * stocking which, of course, was miles too big for her, but' which easily took in her foot and ankle encumbered as they were by the rude, heavy but effective wrapping. Thereafter she hobbled to the door and stood for a moment almost aghast at the splendor and magnificence before her. He had built his cabin on a level •helf of rock perhaps fifty by a hundred eet in area, it was backed up against an overtowering cliff, otherwise the rock fell away in every direction. She divined that the descent from the shelf into the pocket or valley spread before her was sheer, except off to the right, where a somewhat gentler acclivity of huge and broken boulders gave a practicable ascent—a sort of titanic stairs—to the place perched on the mountain side. Thekhelf was Absolutely bare save for the cabin and a few huge boulders. There were a few sparse, stunted trees further up On the mountain side above; a few hundred feet beyond them, however, came the timber line, after which there was nothing but the naked rock. Below several hundred feet lay a

lakelet was rimmed with ice on the shaded side. This enchanting little body of water was fed by the melting snow from the crest and peaks, which in the clear, pure sunshine and ratified air of the mountains seemed to rise and confront her within a stone’s throw of the place where she stood. On one side of the pretty Jake in the valley, or pocket, beneath, there was a little grassy clearing, and there the dweller in the wilderness had built a rude corral for the burros. On a rough bench by the side of the door she saw the primitive conveniences to which he had alluded. The water was delightfully soft and as it had stood exposed to the sun’s direct rays for some time, although the air was exceedingly crisp > and cold, it was tempered sufficiently tb be merely cool and agreeably. She luxuriated in it for a few moments, and while she had her face buried in the towel, rough, coarse, but clean, she heard a step. She looked up in time to see the man lay down upon the bench a small mirror and a clean comb. He said nothing as he did so, and she had no opportunity to thank him before he was gone. The thoughtfulness of the act affected her strangely, and she was very glad of a chance to unbraid her hair, comb It out and plait it again. She had not a hair pin left, of course, and all she could do with It was to replait it and let it hang upon her shoulders. Her coiffure would have looked very strange to civilization, but out there in the mountains, it was eminently appropriate.

Without noticing details, the man felt the general effect as she limped back into the room toward the table. Her breakfast was ready for her. It was a coarse fare, bacon, a baked potato, hard tack cnsped before the fire, coffee, black and strong, With sugar, but no cream. The dishes matched the fare, too, yet she noticed that the fork was of silver, and by her plate there was a napkin, rough dried, but of fine linen. The man had just set the table when she appeared. “I am sorry I have no cream,” he said, and then, before she could make comment or reply, he turned and walked out of the room, his purpose evidently being not to embarrass her by his presence while she ate. . ~ Enid Maitland had grown to relish the camp fare, bringing to it the appe-

She Watched Him as Long as She Could See Him.

tlte of good health and exertion. She had never eaten anything that tasted so good to her as that rude meal that morning, yet she would have enjoyed the brimming, smoking coffee pot on It better, she thought. If he had only shared it with her, if she had not been compelled to eat It alone. She hastened her meal on that account, determined as soon as she had finished her breakfast to seek the man and have some definite understanding with him. e And, after all, she reflected that she was better alone than in - his presence, for there would come stealing into her thoughts the distressing episode of the ' morning before, jry

The Chalice of Courage

BT Bcm&lbe Stay dt Jtewns Jil i of jt Cqt) q trgrea f ( A RomanceTM C.'6 Tdr

By Cyrus Townsend Brady.

Author

as she would to put it out of her mind. Well, she was a fairly sensible girl; the matter was passed, it could not be helped now, she would forget it as much as was possible. She would recur to it with mortification later on, but the present was so full of grave problems that there was not any room for the past

< CHAPTER XII. A Tour of Inspection. The first thing necessary, she decided, when she had satisfied her hunger and finished her meal, was to get word of her plight and her resting place to her uncle and the men of the party, and the next thing was to get away, where she would never see this man again, and perhaps be able to forget what had transpired—yet there was a strange pang bf pain in her heart at that thought! No man on earth had ever so stimulated her curiosity as this one. Who was he? Why was he there? Who was the woman whose picture he had so quickly taken from her gaze? Why’ had so splendid ‘a man buried himself alone In that wilderness? These reflections were presently interrupted by the reappearance of the man himself. “Have you finished?” he asked, unceremoniously standing in the’ doorway as he spoke. “Yes, thank you, and it was very good indeed.” dismissing this politeness with a wave of his hand, but taking no other notice, he spoke again. “If you will (ell me your name—” “Maitland, Enid Maitland.” “Miss Maitland?” The girl nodded. “And where you came from, I will endeavor to find your party and see, what can be done to restore you to them.” “We were camped down that canon at a place where another brook, a large one, flows into it, several miles, I should think, below the place where —” She was going to say “where you found me,” but the thought of the way in which he had found her rushed over her again; and this time, with his glance directly upon her, although It was as cold and dispassionate and indifferent as a man’s look could well

be, the recollection of the meeting to which she had been about to allude rushed over her with an accompanying wave of color which, heightened her beauty as it covered her with shame. * She could not realize that beneath his mask of indifference so deliberately worn, the man was as agitated as she, not so much at the remembrance of anything that had transpired, but at the sight, the splendid picture, of the woman as she stood there in the little cabin then. It seemed to him as if she gathered up in her own person all the radiance and light and beauty, all the purity and fre*bnes« and splendor of the mom-

ing, to shine and dazzle in his face. As she hesitated in confusion, perhaps comprehending its cause, he helped* out her lame and halting sentence. “I know the canon well,” he said. "I think I know the place to which you refer. Is it just above where the river makes an enormous bend upon itself?” “Yes, that is it In that clearing we have been camped for two weeks. My uncle must be crazy with anxiety to know what has 'become of me, and —” The man interposed. “I will go there directly,” he said. “It is now half after ten. That place is about seven miles or more from herd across the range, fifteen or twenty by the river. 1 shall be back by. nightfall. The cabin is your own.” He turned away without another word. “Wait,” said the woman. “I am afraid to stay here.” She had been fearless enough before in those mountains, but her recent experience had somehow unsettled her nerves. “There is nothing onearth to hurt you, I think,” returned the man. “There isn’t a human being, so far as I know, in these mountains,” “Except my uncle’s party?” He nodded. “But there might be another —bear,” she added desperately, forcing herself. “Not likely; and they wouldn’t come here if there were any. That’s the first grizzly I have seen in years,” he went on, unconcernedly, studiously looking away from her, not to add to her confusion at the remembrance of that awful episode which would obtrude itself on every occasion. “You can use a rifle or'gun?” . She nodded. He stepped over to wall and took down the Winchester which he handed her. “This one is ready for service, and you will find a revolver on the shelf. There is only one possible way -of access to this cabin; that’s down those rock stairs. One man, one woman, a child, even, with these weapons could hold it against an army.” “Couldn’t I go with you?” "On that foot?” Enid pressed her wounded foot upon the ground. It was not so painful when resting, but she found she could not walk a step on it without great suffering. “I might carry you part of the way,” said the man. “I carried you last night, but it would be impossible, all of it.” ' “Promise me that you will be back by nightfall, with Uncle Bob and —” “I shall be back by nightfall, but I can’t promise that I will bring anybody with me.” - “You mean?” “You saw what the cloudburst nearly did for yoq,” was the quick answer. “If they did not get out of that pocket, there is nothing left of them now.” ’■

"But they must have escaped,” persisted the girl, fighting down her alarm at this blunt statement of possible peril. “Besides, Uncle Robert and most of the rest were climbing one of the peaks, and —” , “They will be all right, then; but if I am to find the place and tell them your story, I must go now.” He -turned,, and without another word or a backward glance, scrambled down the hill., The girl limped to the brink of the cliff over which he had plunged and stared after him. She watched him as long as she could see him, until he was lost among the treed. If she had anybody else to depend upon, she would certainly have felt differently toward him; < when Uncle Robert, and her aunt, and the children, and old Klrkby, and the rest surrounded her, she could hate that man In spite of all he had done for her, but now she stared after him determinedly making his way down the? mountain and through the trees. It was with difficulty she could restrain herself from calling him back. The silence was modt oppressive, the loneliness was frightful. She had been alone before In those mountains, but from choice; now the fact that there was no escape from them made the sensation a very different one. She sat down and brooded over her situation until she felt if she did not do something and in some Way divert her thoughts she would break down again. He had said that the cabin and its contents were hen. She resolved to Inspect them more closely. She hobbled back Into the. great room and looked about her again. There was nothing that demanded careful scrutiny. She wasn't quite sure whether she was within the proprieties or not, but she seized the oldest and most worn es the volumes on the shelf. It was a text book on mining and metallurgy, she observed, and opening it to the fly leaf, across the page she saw written in a firm, vigorous masculine hand a name, “William Berkeley Newbold,” and beneath these words, “Thayer Hall, Harvard,” and a date some seven years

The owner of that book, whether the present possessor or not, had been a college man. Say that he had graduated at twenty-one or twenty-two, h® would be twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old now, but if so, why that white hair? Perhaps, though, the book did not belong to the man of the cabin.

She turned to other books on the shelf. Many of them were technical books, which she had sufficient general culture to realize could be only available to a man highly educated, and a special student of mines and mining—a mining engineer, she decided, with a glance at those instruments and appliances of a scientific character plainly, but of whose actual use she was ignorant. A rapid inspection of the other books confirmed her in the conclusion that the man of. the mountains was indeed the owner of the collection. There were a few well worn volumes of poetry and essays, Shakespeare, a Bible, Bacon, Marcus. Aurelius, Epictetus, Keats, a smalt dictionary, a compendious encyclopedia, just the books, she thought, smiling at her conceit, that a man of education and culture would want to have upon a desert island where his supply of literature would be limited. The old ones were autographed as the first book she had looked In; others, newer additions to the little library, if she could judge their condition, were unsigned. Into the corner cupboard and the drawees, of course, she did not look. There was nothing else in the room to attract her attention, save some piles of manuscript neatly arranged on one of the shelves, each one covered with a square of board and kept in place by pieces of glistening quartz. There were four of these piles and another half the size of the first four on the table. These, of course, she did not examine, further than to note that the writing was in the same bold, free hand as the signature in the books. If she had been an expert she might have dediced much from the writing; as it was, she fancied it was strong, direct, manly. Having completed her inspection of this room, she opened the door and went into the other. It was smaller and less inviting. It had only ode window, and a door opened outside. There was a cook stove here, and shelves With cooking utensils and graniteware, and more rude box receptacles on the walls which were filled with a bountiful and well selected store of canned goods 1 and provisions of various kinds. This was evidently the kitchen, supply room, china closet. She saw no sign of a bed in it, and wondered where and how the man had scent the night. By rights, her mind should have been filled with her uncle and his party, and in their alarm she should have shared, but she was so extremely comfortable, except for her foot, which did not greatly trouble her so long as she, kept it quiet, that she felt a certain degree of contentment, not to say happiness. The adventure was so romantic and thrilling—save for those awful moments in the pool —especially to the soul of a conventional woman who had been brought up in the moat humdrum and stereotyped fashion of the earth’s ways, and with never an' opportunity for the development of the spirit of romance which all of us exhibited some time in our life, and which, thank God, some of us never lose, that she found herself revelling in it. She lost herself in pleasing imagina tlons of tales of her adventures that she could tell when she got back to her uncle, and when she got further back to staid old Philadelphia. How shocked everybody would be with it all there! Of course, she resolved that she would never mention one ep isode of that terrible day, and she had somehow absolute confidence that this man, in spite of his grim, gruff taciturnity, who had shown himself so exceedingly considerate of her feelings, would never mention it z either.; She had so much food forethought that not even in the late afternoon of the long day conld she force her mind to the printed pages of the book -she had taken at random from the shelf which lay open before her, where she sat in the sun, her head covered by an old “Stetson” that she had ventured to appropriate. She had dragged a bear skin out on the rocks in the sun and sat curled up on it half reclining against a boulder watching the trail, the Winchester by her side. She had eaten so late a breakfast that she had made a rather, frugal lunch out of whatever had taken her fancy in the store room, and she was waiting most anxiously now for the return of the man. The season was late and the sUn sank behind the peaks quite early in the afternoon, and it grew dark and chill long before thq shadows fell upon the dwellers of the lowlands. Enid drew the bear skin around her and waited with an ever-growing ap nrohanston. If she should bo com-

pelled to spend the night alone in that cabin, she felt that she could not endure it. She was never gladder of anything in her life than when she saw him suddenly break out of the woods and start up the steep trail, and for a moment her gladness was not tempered by the fact which she was presently to realize with great dismay, that as fie had gone, so he now returned, .alone. CHAPTER XIII. The Castaways of the Mountains. The man was evidently seeking her, for so soon as he caught sight of her he broke into a run and came bounding up the steep ascent with the speed and agility of a chamois or a mountain sheep. As he approached the girl rose tb her feet and supported herself

In Spite of His Hand She Swayed.

upon 'the boulder against which she had been leaning, at the same time extending her hand to greet him. “Oh,” she cried, her voice rising nervously as he drew near, “I am so glad you are back, another hour of loneliness and I believe I should have gone crazy.” Now whether that joy In his return was for him personally or for him abstractly, he could not tell; whether she was glad that he had come back simply because he was a human being who would relieve her loneliness or whether she rejoiced to see him Individually, was a matter not yet to be determined. He hoped the latter, he believed the - former. At any rate, he caught and held her outstretched hand in the warm clasp of both his own. Burning words of greeting rushed to his Ups torrentially; what he said, however, was quite commonplace, as is often the case. Word thought and outward speech did not correspond. » “It’s too cold for you out here, you must go Into the house at once,” he declared masterfully, and she obeyed with unwonted meekness. The sun had set and the night air had grown suddenly chill. Still holding her hand, they started toward the cabin a few rods away. Her wounded foot was of little support to her and the excitement had unnerved her, in spite of his hand she swayed; without a thought he caught her about the waist and half lifted, half led her to the door. It seemed as natural as It was inevitable for him to assist her in this way. and in her weakness and bewilderment she suffered it without comment or resistance. Indeed, there was such strength and power In his arm, she was so secure there, that she liked it. As for him, his pulses were bounding at the contact; but for that matter even.to look at her quickened his heart beat. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Drainage of the Zuyder Zee.

A great project Is again before the people of Holland —the draining of the Zuyder Zee. The sea, which, as every one knows, is at the north of Holland and covers an area of 50,000 hectares, a hectare being practically two .acres and a half. - ?' Just half a century ago a scheme to drain the southern portion of the sea was first mooted and although it re* celved considerable support, the opposition was greater, but now an association has been formed and a bill will be introduced into the chamber. Hie promoters see that with an increased population means must be taken to enlarge the country and this reclamation of the sea is suggested as capable of accomplishment If the sea is conquered there are several lakes which can be dealt with later.

Overheard.

"Heigho!” said JBlidad, as Jimpsonberry flashed by in his motor car. *1 wish I had a motor car." \ “Oh. nonsense, Bin," said Slathers. “What’s the uses You couldn’t gg. x ford to keep IV -No,- said BUdad, "but I could afford to seU iV—Harper’s Weekly, j