Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 218, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1915 — A Vision in the Forest [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Vision in the Forest

By CARL CARTER

(Copyright, 1915, by W. G. Chapman.) **l must confess this is a ghost story," said Jamieson at the club. “However, you can put it down to three nights and days spent wandering in the Adlrondacks, if you prefer to. It doesn't matter to me. I’ve half a mind not to tell it anyway, only I remember the expression on Tarrant’s face when he told It to me. “Tarrant and his wife had been married six years, and that is Just about the time when trouble develops, if it is going to develop at all, especially when a couple are childless. They Just began to disagree. The truth was, they were Jiving an artificial city, life, and both were getting bored. “Tarrant and Molly had been deeply In love with each other when they married. Molly couldn’t understand why Jack seemed not to care for her any more, and Jack Tarrant wondered why the sweet girl he had married was always nagging and finding fault with him. They talked of a separation.

“The matter was still up In the air when they decided on spending their usual summer holiday separately. Molly went home to her mother and a lot of crank female friends —the unmarried kind who try to separate happy couples. Tarrant went up to the Adlrondacks to fish. "The first day or two he mooned about, very miserable, and yet relieved at the sense of freedom. He had expected to long for Molly; on the contrary he began to think of all the unhappiness that had been in their lives. The thought of the tie between them maddened him, and that waft how he lost his way in the woods at sundown. "Tarrant had no woodcraft at all.

He wandered on and on, and by the rime he decided to shout for aid he was at least ten miles from anywhere, right in the heart of the most desolate tract in all that wilderness. He slept somehow that night, and the next day Was the most terrible of all. The second night je became delirious —but through it all he knew that he hated Molly. “He had no more knowledge of the passage of time, but toward evening he came suddenly upon a little deserted place in the heart of the forest. There had been a clearing there once, and there was still a tumble-down log cabin. Tarrant approached, trying to pull himself together sufficiently to appear intelligent, when suddenly there emerged from the cabin the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen. "Tarrant was not in a condition to appreciate feminine beauty just then, but there was some quality in the girl’s face that seemed to stun his faculties, so that he could only stare and stare at her. It was not so much the physical beauty as the sweetness of soul, the wistfulness and sadness that set his heart beating tumultuously, and, at the same time, seemed reminiscent of something. He felt that he had seen the girl before- —this country woman dressed in a homespun dress. "It was impossible, of course. Tarrant began to wonder whether reincarnation was true, and whether he had known her in some previous existence. that had slipped from his memory With his birth. Suddenly he realized that he was behaving rudely. The girl had turned away and gone inside the hut. K . “Tarrant went in, but, when he entered at last, after knocking repeatedly, he found the hut empty. He decided that the girl, alarmed at his behavior, had gone out of the back. “Being a gentleman, of course he could not stay, but he could not resist ‘taking sbme bread, father stale and dry, and some cold bacon that he found on a table. He withdrew with ■these into th* forest and made a rav?enous meal. Then, tired out, and injured to mosquitoes, he fell asleep, j "It was earliest dawn when he ■awoke. He opened his eyes tn aston--ishment and at first he-could not re--msmbei where he was. Then, all atl

once, Be saw the girt again, standing where he had seen her before, at the door of the cabin. “He approached her very courteously. raising his hat This time she did not run from him, but stood still and smiled. He apologised for having frightened her the night before, and asked her if she could direct him to his hotel.

“He must have presented a terrific spectacle, all scratched, dirty and bruised from his long tramp, and with the wildness of delirium still in his eyes. But the girl only smiled again, and stretched out her hand, indicating a trail. Tarrant thanked her, but she went back into the hut without a word. Afterward he remembered that she had not spoken to him at all. “Plunging heavily along the trail, Tarrant walked till the sun came up. Then, lifting up his eyes in amazement, he saw, not half a mile away, his own hotel. “Fifteen minutes later he was back, and ten minutes after that he was enjoying chicken broth in bed. After that he slept the dock around. “When he awakened he told his adventures to jthe hotelkeeper, who had formerly been one of the local guides. But when he mentioned the girl in the cabin the man was silent. Tarrant pressed him hard. “‘Who is she?’ he insisted.

“At last the man raised his eyes sullenly to his. 'She died a score of years ago,’ he answered. 'She was the wife of the old squire, before the landb was bought by the state. She died when her baby was born. She was always kind to folks, and she loved children.' “That was all Tarrant could get out of him. He tried to find the trail through the woods many times, but none of the guides admitted knowledge of it, and the landlord flatly refused to show him. And Tarrant, thinking over the matter, all at once understood why he thought he had seen the woman before.

“The look in her eyes was the look that he used to see in Molly’s eyes—long ago, when he courted her, before the rubs and jars of married life had worn away the sweetness of their love. “Tarrant was no fool, and after a while he began to piece the warning together. That look which had so allured him, that look which he had seen in the dead woman’s eyes and in Molly’s—what was it but the universal, loving soul of woman, embodied now here, now there, but always noble and always sweet? “And Tarrant knew that in loving Molly he was loving the spiritual quality which is given to all men in some form, in life, but is so often thrown away and lost through misunderstanding.

"That night he hurried home, and all the way in the train the wheels beat ‘Molly.’ He arrived, fearful that she had already taken some irrevocable step. He wanted a chance to tell her, to explain . . . but when he reached the house it was alight, and it was Molly who met him within the darkened hall. "He flung his arms about her and stammered out acknowledgment of his hideous mistake. “He felt her tears upon his face. ‘Dearest,* she whispered, T came home. I couldn’t stay away from you longer. I was writing to you. What a mistake we have made dear. And there is something . . . listen!* “Incredulously Tarrant heard the whispered story, while his heart beat madly. When she had done he folded her in his arms. *We shall never part again, through all our lives,* he said. “And it was only afterward that he remembered how the woman of the lonely cabin had died, and understood why she had cope to’ him.”

He Wandered On and On.