Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 287, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1916 — Page 2

TIPPECANOE

Recounting the adventures and love which came into the lives of David Larrence and Antoinette O’Bannon, in the days when pioneers were fighting red savages in the Indiana wilderness •> (Copyright, 1916, by Bobbo-MerrHl Co.)

LOVE-MAKING

Do you enjoy the spectacle of a pretty girl coquetting with a man who loves her devotedly and Is cut to the heart by her teasing? Then you’ll find stirring interest in this installment. It la the year 1811, and David Larrence, exiled English weaver, comes to Corydon, Indiana territory, Intending to kill an old enemy. He makes friends with Patrice O’Bannon and charming Trinette, his daughter, and with Job Cranmer and his daughter, Lydia, recently from England. He learns that Cranmer is a spy against the United States when he a war plot. Cranmer disappears. The settlement organizes a militia. David's regard for Toinette becomes very warm.

CHAPTER VI. Moonlight. David was thoughtful, while the light banter ran on. “Governor Harrison,” he said, "may I have a word with you alone? I have some Information that I wish to lay before you.” The young governor bowed assent and led the way to a quiet corner. David told the story of the meeting between Girty, Cranmer and Scull. Harrison’s face grew grave. "Why did you not report this sooner?” he asked sharply. “I wrote at once to John Tipton, at Vincennes,” David answered. “I asked him to tell you immediately. I have had no reply from him, but T have supposed that he gave you the message. John’s handier with his rifle than with a pen, Governor Harrison, as you know.” “Yes,” smiled Harrison, “It’s agony for him to write. But I fear that he has not received your letter even yet. He has been away on a hunting and scouting trip for weeks. I myself am going a while, but I shall Inform General Gibson, who is to have charge of the territory in my absence, and shall direct him to have his rangers make a thorough search for these men.' As for Tecumseh, rumors that his brother, Elkskatawa, the Prophet, is stirring the warriors to discontent have reached my ears. Rest assured, Mr. Larrence, that we shall keep careful watch _ over these matters. I thank you for what you have told me.” David felt that a load had been lifted from his mind. He had done his duty to the land that had received him with such simple hospitality. “I know Cranmer,” the governor went on, “but I never suspected so honest-appearing a fellow. You say he went to Vincennes? I am certain that he has not bedn there of late. Let me know if he to Corydon. The whole Northwest' has reason to know that renegade Girty, but I fear it is useless to hope for his capture now. He knows the wilderness like an Indian. As well hope to find a wild bird in the tree tops. By now he is doubtless back in the British posts above Erie. You say that the third man was one known to you as Scull? The name is a new one. Strange, how he disappeared. We’ll watch for him.” He returned to his friends with an added word of thanks. David’s face darkened as he thpught once more of Scull. Where was he? How could he hide himself so completely? The memory of the man’s betrayal of David’s father rose up in David anew; and he thought once more of the oath that he had sworn, over the “purple posy” of the weaver’s brotherhood, to avenge that wrong. When the party had broken up at last in laughing “good nights,” Toinette, Blackford and David strolled toward Toinette’s home together. Ike began humming a song as they walked along: Could you to battle march away. And leave me here complaining—“A mighty fine wasn’t it? — Pm sure ’twould break my heart to say, When you were gone campaigning. . .. “Trust a woman to suit her own gweet will.” “What’s the song, Ike?” “That? Oh, a catch that we used to sing at Princeton, jfoor old Billy Paterson wrote it years ago, rest his •oul! The* late attorney general—class of 1783,” lie i added explanatorily. His rich swung on into the lilt of the chorus:^ “Ah, non, non, non, pauvre Madelon Would never quit her Rover, ▲h, non, non, non, pauvre Madelon Would go with you the wide world , over!” He broke off abruptly: “Wouldn’t tt be fine to have a wench hanging to your coattail as you marched!".. He said good night abruptly at Toinette’s door and went on. When he had gone, they two, Da-

By SAMUEL McCOY

vid and Toinette, lingered on, they knew not why, under the meondrenched trees. _ "And now,” she said, leaning toward him In the moonlight, “tell me how you like Corydon—as much as you know of us.” v He was so happy at seeing her 'that it was easy for him to fall Into ber, own lightness of speech. “Ah, I fell in love with America years ago—on the day I reached Corydon. Now I am only bothered to know if America likes me.” ‘ . * “Why, of course she likes you—!<ft>k what she has done for you already.” Her glance rested on .his healthy, vigorous form approvingly. “Yes; but her favors reproach me now; I am afraid I can never accomplish what this country expects of her young men.” M > , * She pretended to look at him thoughtfully. “No, I don’t suppose you can ever climb very high.” She laughed teasingly, “How do you like your work?” “Selling toys tu the Indians and laces to the ladies? Not very romantic.” “I should think the ladies would be romantic, even if the Indians are not. “Oh, but they all want soldiers; Tm only a weaver by trade.” “That remjnds me —you’ve never told me about* yoi&r life in England. Please do It now— but wait, I’ll tell you myself.” She 'half closed hex’ eyes and began reflectively: “Let me see —I’m lobking into the past. You may not know it, but I’m a real Irish soothsayer.” She let the ghost of a delicious bit of brogue linger on her tongue. “I’m beginning to see your ancestral estates now. Gracious. a ducal palace takes shape J” “There’s no doubt about your being an Irish soothsayer,” David commented sarcastically, “the ducal castle was certainly there, but unfortunately It belonged to the duke of Newcastle. Our ducal castle was behind St. John’s palace In Bottle lane j It had one room in it and no floor.” “That’s nothing to be ashamed of—half the cabins in the woods here are no larger, and their floors are earthen too.” “Ah, but every settler here has as much land ns the duke of Newcastle 1 Air to breathe, freedom!” “You interrupted me —be quiet, or I won’t finish. You idled about the estate all day long or you rode over the countryside with your hounds—” “His name was Timon, that one mongrel of mine; he had *friends who lived on him—l beg your pardon.” -i.,. “Horrors! Will you be quiet! And at night you lay on silken cushions in front of the great fireplace, reading some tale of the court —” “I know it was wrong, but one is naturally idle after twelve hours at the loom. I did read a good deal with Harry White.” “Who was Harry White?” “Harry White was my best friend. Henry Kirke White—the son of Mr. White, the butcher. He was just my own age. We worked together at a stocking loom when we were fourteen, making stockings, but f the next year, his father apprenticed hiffiTTo a firm of attorneys.” “And you kept on as a weaver?” “I kept on as a weaver. But he lent me his books at night. He was as poor as I was, and he drove himself into his grave with study. He died when he was twenty-one, five years ago. But Mr. Southey, the poet laureate, collected all the poems Harry had written—” “A poet? A butcher’s son?” “He had won a sizarship at Cambridge when he was nineteen —he had got his first poems printed the year before. That was how he attracted Mr. Southey’s attention.” “And he’s dead! Oh, I’m so sorry!” “He told me once that a friend he had made at Cambridge, a boy named George Gordon, Lord Byron, said that his poems would never die.” “He was a poet too?” “I think so. He is living yet He’s only twenty-three.” “Why, you’re only twenty-six, yourself ! Don’t talk like a grandfather 1” “I feel like one.” “Why?” The sympathy In her voice wa3 as sincere as that in her eyes. David had never known such a woman —had never known what it was to have the divine sympathy of womanhood. He began to tell her of his life, of his sufferings, of his hopes for the future, of his aspirations^and through it ait the girl listened, a white rose in the moonlight, and poured the balm of her pure spirit upon his head. CHAPTER VII. i ( “ The Course of True Love. Corydon lay baking under the sun of August. Along the parched ground the waves of heat, the “lazy Lawrences,” danced maddeningly. Toinette "was rejoicing in the arrival of a great box from New Orleans —sent by fiatboat to Louisville, hauled thence on a clumsy oak-runner sledge, Jolted slowly over the rutty road, by the patient oxen. Toinette cried out

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

rapturously as she drew forth from the great chest walking dresses of white jaconet muslin; a China robe of India twill; a preposterously inadequate cloak of sarsenet silk; tiny slippers of white kid and rose-colored silk and a precious packet containing a ferroniere, a headband of flat gold links with a great pendant of pearls hanging from its clasp down on the forehead. It was Patrice’s birthday gift for hto daughter, ordered through an old friend in New Orleans. There were to be two weddings in town that morning—as the weekly newspaper put it, Mr. Philip Bell was to marry the agreeable Miss Rachel Harbeson and Mr. Isham- Stroud the agreeable Miss Patsy Sands —and Toinette vacillated deliciously in her “Choice of a costume to grace the two occasions. The weddings over, she made her way home in her silken slippers, swathed herself in an apron and prepared their dinner. David had not been at either wedding. She was thinking of him as she busied herself at the hearth, and old Patrice read happily from his beloved “Arcadia.” She drew the flat board on which the cornmeal had been baked to goldenbrown out from the fire, set the roasted wild turkeY on the table, pushed back a flying lock of hair from her flushed face, and roused her father from his book. It was her happiest birthday feast in the new land. In "the evening the old gentleman jogged off on horseback to General Harrison’s farm, to pay his respects and be served with a glass of Madeira. Toinette preferred to remain at home—Mr. Blackford would call, perhups David as well. She finished her work and sat down to amuse herself with some embroidery, a candle made of the wax of the myrtle berry throwing its light upon her flying fingers. The summer dusk fell rapidly around' her. The night closed in, heavy, warm, full of sleepy sounds of bird and insect. Someone’s feet' at the doorstejL--a--bftnd rapped at the door. Toinette lifted the latchpin. It was David. She swept him a curtsy. One of the functions of woman’s dress is to snatch a man out of his dull shufflings upon earth and show him a world glorified. That function was performed in this case. David saw Madame Recamler (he had heard of such a person) curtsying to him in the house of Patrice O’Bannon. Madame Recamier spoke, and 10l it was Toinette: “Why don’t you say how you like it?” It was evidently the gown of cobwebs that was meant. “Exceedingly well. . . . Excuse my asking, but is that all of it?” “Imbecilel The latest from Paris! It’s too bad to waste it on you.” “Well, well!” David pretended a dry indifference. Tolnettb turned up her nose. “Why weren’t you at the weddings?” “Couldn’t. I was off on a hunt.” •"Lucky?” “No—only a couple of deer.” “The brides were sweet.” She sat down at her needlework once more and David, seated in the dimly lighted room, his high linen oollarband gleaming palely between his dark face and the somber blacks of his cravat and his coat, watched her In silence. When he spoke it was to introduce a new subject: "Congress has voted to increase the army by twenty-five thousand men,”

"Governor Harrison, May I Have a Word With You Alone?"

he said abruptly, “and has provided for the enlistment of fifty thousand volunteers in addition.” She let her hands fall to her lap. “Does that mean war is sure?” “Not yet, But they talk of It freely. England will yield to none of our requests.” She srriled proudly to herself at his use of the word “our.” He went .on with his news: “Mr. Clay wants a stronger navy.' Curious isn’t it ? that Kentucky should be in harmony with the seaboard states in this.” “Yes—they called us ‘the wild men on the Ohio’ last winter.” He smiled at her flash of resentment. “Are you still as eager for war as you were once?” Tolnette shuddered. It was unnecessary to reply to the thrust. David went on evenly;

“Well, the whole time of the congress is taken up with the debates. Things are at a breaking point The president seems likely to gfet what his message asked for in the way of timber for ahlpbuild—Toinette, look at me I" She looked up, startled at the change in his voice, and saw what she had feared —and vaguely longed so was about to come. David had risen to his feet The room seemed suddenly filled with a tremendous tensity. Her heart beat uncontrollably; she calmly threaded a needle anew. “Do you know what failure is?” he flung at her. The torrent of his heart rushed out with the words. “J have struggled,” he said harshly, “but I give up now. I work from daylight to dark, I read at night at the law, I weary myself with arguing with Ike Blackford. These things ought to make up my world for me. But they don’t. There isn’t any world for me unless you—” He checked himself, then began anew. "I think about myself. I go back over my life —all its poverty—every miserable line of its starved existence. And then —I think about you. ... I want to know what right you have to make part of my world. It’s not your world. I don’t belong there. Why do you come into mine? You ought not to be in my thoughts. But you are. I can’t drive you out of my mind. You have been there ever since I first saw you, ever since . . .” His voice broke. From the first wild challenge of his gaze she had averted her face and had listened with bowed head. As he paused she threw a frightened glance at him and saw that the knuckles of his clenched hands were whitened with the strain. She tried to speak but could think of nothing that she could say. Her hands picked aimlessly at the threads in her lap. After a moment he regained control of his lips and went on, passionately as before, but with an undercurrent of pleading that softened his word!: “I have been tryiqg to believe that I could conquer all this in myself—that it was too preposterous to endure. But instead of that it has grown stronger ... so strong that it is now everything. You are in everything I do. I cannot keep silent. I—” “Exactly what do you want, David?” It was a very cool little voice that broke in on him. He was wounded to the heart. For a moment the hurt look in his eyes struck her with pity. But she steeled herself and went on: “I’m afraid I don’t know just what you’re talking about. Do you mean that I am wronging you in any way?” A wave of hot anger swept through him that she could choose to adopt so pitiful a misconstruction. But the girl was fighting with the weapons of her sex, fighting to regain control of the situation. He stood very proudly, waiting to give her an opportunity to retract “If I have offended you . . .” “I have made a mistake,” he said haughtily. “I see that I have been ridiculous.” She shot a frightened glance at him. Had she gone too far? She forced herself to go on, still clinging to her makeshift armor, still hiding behind her poor'little defenses: “Can you think that I do not realize how hard life Is up here on the frontier? It calls for all that is best and bravest in us to go on fighting against heat and cold and hunger, actual want. But it takes strong men—men who endure and do not complain.” “Do you think lam whining? You know I am not.” He waved her words aside impatiently. “It is something else —” He stopped, impotent to advance in the face of the travesty of his passion she had thrown in his path. The room was very still. Outdoors the crickets chirped unceasingly. For a long while they stood facing each other In silence that rested more and more heavily upon David’s heart. Toinette raised her eyes timidly. David’s look had not changed; it seemed to enfold her with a mighty passion of wounded love, proud, suffering, pleading to be understood. She spoke again, falteringly: “We shall always be friends, shall we not?” There was no answer. She waited, not daring to raise her eyes from the ground. She heard him move slowly across the room, heard the latch lifted and the door opened; heard his deep, grave voice saying goodby, as in a dream; heard the. door close. There swept over her the realization of all that he had suffered and risked for her, all the fine manliness that lifted him above the poverty of his life. The silent room seemed to apeuse her with a hundred inscrutable eyes. He had laid bare his love for her and she had dragged it in the dust of petty things. She stretched her hands out yearningly. “David!” she called. The room mocked her with its silence. He was gone.

CHAPTER VIII.

Fear. David went back to his dress-stuffs by day and his law books by night with a heavy heart. The days dragged by as slowly as they pass the beds qf the sick, feverishly hot, inexplicably hostile; till at last he welcomed'the necessity of a journey to replenish his stock of goods. Colonel Posey had once more postponed his return to Corydon and had asked David to buy whatever was needed to carry on the business. His supplies were to bo ferried across the river from

Louisville to Clarksville: and setting off at dawn one morning, he strode all day long through the silent woods. The sun was going down when he left the road, panted to the top of the Silver hills and flung himself down on the ground. Away to the south stretched the broad and majestic current of the Ohio till it passed out of sight among the blue hills of Kentucky; below him. In the lengthening shadows of the evening, rose the slender colnmnß of smoke from the cabin chimneys of Clarksville, a cluster of a dozen oi so log farmhouses. Beyond, across the rushing waters of the Falls, he could distinguish the roofs of Louisville, bright In the sunset light He looked his fill upon the broad expanse of the great river—the Beautiful river, as the Indians called It—its hurrying, tumultuous waters, the fiatboat ferry, slowly crawling across,

"I’m Afraid I Don’t Know Just What You're Talking About"

the green snores beyond—and then scrambled down the steep hillside to the village, where the smokes ol kitchen fires sent up their friendly signals. At the inn where he rested thai night the tavern keeper indicated a deserted cabin that stood near thfl river bank. “Thar’s the cabin whar Gineral George Rogers Clark used t’ livepore old critter!” “He’s not dead, is he?” “Him dead? Ye kain’t kill him wltl a ax. I seed him yistaday, over yan” —waving toward Louisville —“pore old critter —driv the Britishers outen these parts thirty year gone, an’ sete thar crost the river withouten’ a fo’pence.” David heard him listlessly. Hl* goods had arrived and Were piled in the tavern lean-to; and as he turned toward the shack to see that they were in readiness for the homeward Journey in the morning, he heard hi* name called by a girl’s voice. He wheeled and saw Lydia Cranmer. The girl broke into a laugh at the expression cf utter surprise. “You here, Lydia?” lae cried In amazement. “Did you come here from Corydon? Where’s your father?” “Why, yes, we’ve been here foi weeks. Father’s gone to see some friends at Fort Steuben tonight, but he’ll be back soon.” So this was where Cranmer had gone, after that night in the smithy at Corydon. David saw in a flash that upon himself alone must depend Cranmer’s capture. Hiding his excitement, he pretended to listen to Lydia with eager pleasure. She ran on in naive delight at seeing David once more. They were livi ing in the cabin nearest the inn, sh« said; and she begged David to com* and talk with her till her father returned. It was late when they heard Cranmer’s voice lifted fn a roaring ballad and distinguished his portly form moving uncertainly down the path that led to the cabin. David felt himself grow hot with repugnance as the man drew nearer. He had not seen him since that night when he had watched the three conspirators in the smithy. Cranmer’s heavy steps drew nearer; he started in surprise when he came on the fewo figures In the darkness and'there was a note of rebel in his laughter when he heard David speak. “Why, it’s young Larrence I Sweet* hearting out here in the dark, yog rogues? Well, when your raothei was your age, Lydia I . . .”

Do you believe that, In bitterness of spirit, David will marry Lydia and become Involved with Cranmer in spylng-*l«iuch as ho hates the spy now?

(TO BE COimiunßD.)

The Silver Lining.

The Tender-Hearted Coo* —No bad news, I ’ope, ma’am? . The Mistress—The master* beta wounded. The Cok —There novf, ma’am; don’t let that worry you. They tdls mat they-jcaa patch ’em up so’s they*** better than before.

Compromise.

“Never marry a man with a champagne appetite and a beer incoma," said Maude. “Certainly not," replied MaymHt “Ice cream soda for mine.”

CAST CARE ON HIM

Christian’s Heart Should Not Be Troubled by the Anxieties % of the World. If eVer there was occasion for one to find comfort in God, the immediate present is surely such an occasion. We hear the psalmist crying in one of the. “broken-hearted psalms,” “I will love thee, O Lord, ray strength. The Lord is my rock/and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strong rock, in him will I trust; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower.” And again, “God Is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble.” If the psalmist’s experience of God is a possible experience in onr time, foolish is the man or woman who leaves any step untakeu, nny stone unturned, that might result In such an experience. Happy are they who can now say out of the abundance of their own experience, “This God is our God for ever and ever; he shall be our guide unto death.” Happy are they who know in the depths of their hearts that. Peter knew whereof he spoke when he set down the words of our text: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” Happy and very desirable citizens of this world are they who know by personal experience the Eternal Caretaker, and believe mightily in his eternal goodness. Living as the Fool Lives. I feel It Increasingly that we Christians who are old enough to know better are careful in a wrong sense and troubled about far too many things; that we are overcharged with the cares of this we are “doped” with these cares; that much of the best that is in us, which, If it lived till it came to the birth, would mean blessedness here and blessedness forever, is choked to death by the pares of this world; and that hundreds and thousands of those who profess and call themselves Christians are living and dying as the fool lives and dies — the fool who said to his soul, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” but to whom God said, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee”—l feel it increasingly that many of us who are old enough to know better, and to set a better example to those who ore coming after qs, ore making an awful and altogether unnecessary, and it may be incorrigible. mistake. Always in Our Father’s Care. God is our Eternal Caretaker. In onr Father’s house are many mansions. This world Is one of those many mansions. God Is our Caretaker while we are in this mansion. But that Is not enough—certainly not enough for the hifmnn spirit that has a passion for immortality—not enough for the ascending spirit of man that Is never so much its great self as when It stands with one foot on this earth and one foot on the sea of eternity. Our God is, and it Is his dear delight to be, our Eternal Caretaker. Not only In this mansion .in which we find ourselves today, but in that equijjly real mansion in which we may find ourselves tomorrow, and in each and every one of the innumerable mansions into and through which It is to be a part of our great experience to venture, our God is to be our Omnipotent Caretaker. And this being so, we ought—ought we not? —to be ashaisrPd to let our hearts be overmuch troubled by the cares and anxieties of this world. “He careth for us.” That is enough to know. Knowing that, one can sing with Whittier in his hymn on the Eternal Goodness: And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from him can come to me On ocean or on shorts. I know not where his islands lift Their fronded palms In air;* I only know I cannot drift Beyond his love and care. —Rev. Mercer G. Johnston.

LOVE THAT CONQUERS ALL

Christian Duty Becomes a True Pleasure When He Feels the Divine Charity. It is not difficult for any of us to love those toward whom we feel drawn. There is nothing of the Divine charity in this. The Divine charity bids us love those whom we find to be naturally unlovable. Probably most people know some one whom they find it hard to love, someone who has injured them, who has made himself disagreeable, who is a successful rival, who has an unpleasant manner. Do you know any such? Have you an unkind feeling towards them? Should you be secretly pleased to hear that something ill has befallen them? If so, refld&t that God has given them to you in order that you may have an opportunity of cultivating this Divine gift of charity. Seek opportunities of doing nets of kindness to such persons. Speak kindly about them when their acts or characters are discussed. If it is in your power to promote their Interests, do so. If no such opportunities are afforded you, learn to pray for them. You cannot long dislike a person whose name is daily in your prayers. If you persevere in such a course, you will find that your mind is undergoing a change, even a renewal. Nothing is so likely to make us love others as the endeavor to do them a kindness.

Persons extremely reserved are like old enameled watches, which had painted covers that hindered your sflfr* ing what o’clock It was.—Walpole.