Greenfield Republican, Greenfield, Hancock County, 1 February 1894 — Page 6

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He looked anxiously at the farmer who was seeking him, and who just then walked ominously across to where Henchard was standing, and he looked into the room and at her. "I like staying, but I fear I must go," he said. "Business ought not to be negleeted, ought it?" "Not for a siugle minute." "And it's true. I'll come another time—if 1 may."

She gave him her hand. "Certainly," she said. "What has happened to us to-day is very curious." "Something to think over when we are alone, it's like to be." "Oh, I don't know that it is commonplace, after all." "No, I'll not say that. Oh, no!" "Well, whatever it has been, it is ow over aud the market calls you be gone." "Yes, yes. Market—business! I ish there were no business in the warrld!"

Lucetta almost laughed—she would quite have laughed, but that there iwas a little emotion going on in hor 'at the time. "How you change!" she said. "You should not change like this." "I have never wished such things before," suid the Scotchman, with a simple, shamed, apologetic look for

me, I feel I have quite demoralized

thank you for the pleasure ol this visit." "Thank you for staying. What will you do when you get out?" "Something worse than I do here, no doubt," he replied, recklessly. "For goodness that—it is as if I were bjr inches. "I will not say it, but I may feel it. But no—maybe I'll get into my market mind when I've been out a few minutes."

Lucetta had reclined herself, and was looking dreamily through her fingers. She did not answer at once, and the maid repeated the information, with the addition, "And he's afraid he hasn't much time to spare, he says." *. '"Oh! Then tell him that as I have a headache I won't detain him today." v, phe message was taken down and she heard the door close.

Lucetta had come to Casterbridge to quicken Henchard's feelings with regard to her. She had quickened them, and now she was indifferent to the achievement.

Her morning view of Elizabeth

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BY THOMAS

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HARDY-

CHAPTER XXIII—CONTINUED.

"Have ye seen young Mr. Farfrae I Her emotions rose, fell, undulated, this morning?" asked one. "He filled her with wild surmise at their promised to meet me here at the suddenness and so passed Lucetta's to meet me here at the stroke of twelve, but I've gone athwart and about the fair half a dozen times, and never a sign of him though he's mostly a man of his word." "I quite forgot the engagement," murmured Farfrae. "Now. you must go," said she, "must you not?' "Yes," he replied but he still remained. "You had better go," she urged. "You will lose a customer." "Nov, Miss Tempieman, you will make me angry." exclaimed Farfrae. "Then suppose you don't go, but stay a little longer."

experiences of that day.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Poor Elizabeth Jane, little thinking what her malignant star had done to blast the budding attentions of Donald Farfrae to herself, was glad to hear Lucetta's words about regaining.

For in addition to Lucetta's house being a home, that raking view of the market-place which it afforded had as much attraction for her as for Lucetta. Thecarrefour was like the regulation Open Place in spectacular dramas, where everything goes on that can possibly be interesting to the adjoining residents. Farmers, millers, dairymen, quacks, hawkers, appeared there from week to week, and disappeared as the afternoon wasted away. It was the node of all orbits and there the movers paused, throwing themselves, as they conversed, into the form of capital K's, X's, and Y's, to ease the stiffness of their joints, in the old, old Casterbridge fashion.

From Saturday to Saturday was from day to day with the two young womennow. In an emotional sense they did not live at all during the intervals. Wherever they might go wandering on other days, on mar-ket-day they were sure to be at home. Both f:!:ole sly glances out of the window at Farfrae's shoulder and poll. His face they seldom saw, for, either through shyness, or not to disturb his mercantile mood, he avoided looking toward their quarters.

Thus things went on, till a certain market morning brought a new sensation. Elizabeth Jane and Lucetta were sitting at breakfast when a parcel containing two dresses arrived for the latter from London. She called Elizabeth from her breakfast, and entering her friend's bed-

his weakness. "It is only since com- rooa. SJi?a-beth saw the gowns spread ing here and seeing you." out OK. the bed, one of deep cherr\T "If that's the case you had better color, the other ligbter-a glove lying not look at me any longer. Dear

you!'' acrctx the gloves. Lucetta standing "But look or look not, I will see! beside tbe suggested human figures you in my thoughts. Well. I'll go in. s. attitude of contemplation 'I wouldn't think so hard about it," said Elizabeth, marking the intensitj' with which Lucetta was alternating the question whether this or that would suit best. "But settling upon new clothes is sake don't say g0 trying," said Lucetta. "You are ruining you that person" (pointing to one of the arrangements), "or you are that totally different person" (pointing to the"other), "for the whole of the coming spring and one of the two. you don't know which, may turn out

As he went she said eagerly, "You to be very objectionable." may hear them speak of me in Cas-. It was finally decided by Miss terbridge as time goes on. If they Templeman that she would be the tel" you I'm a coquette, which some' cherry-colored person at all hazards, may, because of the incidents of my The dress was pronounced to be a life, don't believe it, for I am not." fit, and Lucetta walked with it into "I swear I will not," he said fer- the front room, Elizabeth following vidlv. her.

entirely escaped him that he had called to see Elizabeth Jane. Lucetta at the window watched him

farmers' men. She could see bv his gait that he was conscious of her eyes, and her heart went out to him for his modesty—pleaded that he might be allowed to come again. He entered the market-house, and she could see him no more. W:. Three minutes later, when she had left the window, a knock, not of multitude but of strength, sounded through the house, and the waitingmaid tripped up. "Mr. Henchard," she said.

Thus the two parted. She had The morning was exceptionally enkindled the young gentleman's en-1 bright for the time of year. The sun thusiasm till he was quite brimming with sentiment while he, from merely affording her a new form of idleness, had gone on to wake her serious solicitude. Why was this? They could not have told

Farfrae -vas shown out, it having a fantastic series of circling, irridations upon the ceiling, and the companions turned to the window. Immediately opposite a vehicle of queer threading the maze of farmers and description had come to a standstill, as if it had been placed there for exhibition.

If Jane as a disturbing element /t changed, and she no longer felt strongly the necessity of getting rid .of the trirl for her stepfather's sake. ''.-'When the vonng woman came in, /sweetly unconscious of the turn in the tide, Lucetta went up to her, :and said, quite sincerely: "I'm so glad you've come. You'll live with me a long time, won't you?" stood as if

A|*e

Elizabeth as a watch-dog to keep paneling the 3$ber' father off-^what a new idea! knew that she had done this %^Yet it was not unpleasing. Hench-, till Lucetta, animated by the con"ard had neglected her all these days.1 junction of her new attire with the after compromising her indescriba- sight of Farfrae, spoke out: "Let us bly ir.

past by his unpardonable go and look at the instrument, whatignoraw of his wife's existence. :,The least ue could have done when he found himself free, and herself affluent, would have been to respond jieartily aud promptly to her invitation

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the end of each sleeve, a bonnet

the toy, of each neck, and parasols

fell so flat on the market-house and church and pavement opposite Lucetta's residence that they poured their brightness into her rooms. Suddenly, after a rumble of wheels, there were added to this steady light

It was the new-fashioned agricultural implement called a horse-drill, till then unknown, in its modern shape, in this part of the country, where the venerable seed-lip was still used for sowing as in the days of the Heptarchy. Its arrival caused as much sensation in the corn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross. The farmers crowded round it, women drew near it children crept under and into it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it mighthave been likened to an upright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck Lucetta. "Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano," she said. "It has something to do with corn," said Elizabeth. "I wonder who thought of introducing it here?"

Donald Farfrae was in the minds of both as the innovator, for though not a farmer, he was closely leagued with farming operations. And.as if in response to their thought he came up at that moment, looked at the machine, walked round it, and handled it as if he knew something about its make. The two watchers had inwardly started at his coming, and Elizabeth Jane left the window, went to the back of the room, and absorbed in the wall. She hardly

ever it is." Elizabeth Jane's bonnet and shawl were pitchforked on in a moment, and they went out. Among all the agriculturists gathering round, the only appropriate possessor of the

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new machine seemed to be Lucetta, because she alone rivaled it in color. They examined it curiously, observing the rows of trumpet-shaped tubes one within the other, the little scoops, like revolving salt-spoons, which tossed the seed into the upper ends of the tubes that conducted it to the ground tili somebody said, "Good morning, 'Liz'beth Jane." She looked up, and there was her stepfather.

His greeting had been somewhat dry and thunderous, and Elizabeth Jane, embarrassed out of her equanimity, stammered at random, "This is the lady I live with, father—Miss Templmen."

Henchard put his hand to his hat, which he brought down with a great wave till it met his body at the knees. Miss Templeman bowed. "I am happy to become acquainted with you, Mr. Henchard," she said. "This is a curious machine." "Yes," Henchard replied and he proceeded to explain it, and still more forcibly to ridicule it. "Who brought it here?"' said Lucetta. "Oh, don't ask me, ma'am!" said Henchard. "The thing—why, 'tis impossible it should act. 'Twas brought here by one of our machinists on the recommendation of a jumped-up jackanapes of a fellow, who thinks His eye caught Elizabeth Jane's imploring face, and he stopped, probably thinking that the suit might be progressing.

He turned to go away. Then something seemed to occur which his stepdaughter fancied must really be a hallucination of hers. A murmur apparently came from Henchard's lips, in which she detected the words: "You refused to see me I Catch me coming again!" addressed to Lucetta. She could not believe that they had been uttered by her stepfather, unless, indeed, they might have been spoken to one of the yellow-gaitered farmers near them. Yet Lucetta seemed silent and then all thought of the incident was dissipated by the humming of a song, which appeared to come from the interior of the machine. Henchard had by. this time vanished into the market-house* and both the women glanced toward the corn drill. They could see behind it the bent back of a man who was pushing his head into the internal works to master their simple secrets. The hummed song went on: "'Tw—s on a s—in—r aftern—n

A wee bef—re the s—n w—nt d—n, When Kitty \vi' a br.iw n—w e—wn, C—me ow're the li—lis to Gowrie." Elizabeth Jane had apprehended the singer in a moment, and looked guilty of she did not know what. Lucetta next recognized him, and, more mistress of herself, said,archly, "The 'Lass of Gowrie' from the inside of a seed-drill—what a phenomenon!"

Satisfied at last with his investigation, the young man stood upright, and met their eyes across the summit. "We are looking at the wonderful new drill," Miss Templmen said. "But practically it is a stupid thing —is it not?" she added, on the strength of Henchard's information. "Stupid? Oh, no!" said Farfrae, gravely. "It will revolutionize sowing hereabout. No more sowers flinging about their seed broadcast, so that some falls bv the wayside, and some among thorns, and all that. Each grain will go straight to its intended place, and nowhere else at.all!" "Then the romance of the sower is gone forever," observed Elizabeth Jane, who felt herself at one with Farfrae in Bible reading at least. 'He that observeth the wind shall now sow,' so the Preacher said but his words will not be to the point any more. How things change." "Yes. yes It must be so!" Donald admitted, his gaze fixing itself on a painfully small point far away. "But the machines are already very common in the east and north of England," he added, apologetically.

Lucetta seemed to be rather outside this train Of sentiment, her acquaintance with the Scriptures being somewhat limited. "Is the machine yours?" she asked of Farfrae. "Oh, no, madam," said he, becoming embarrassed and deferential at the sound of her voice, though with Elizabeth Jane he was quite at his ease. "No, no—T merely recommended that it should be got."

In the silence which followed Farfrae appeared only conscious of her to have passed from perception of Elizabeth into a brighter sphere of existence than she appertained to. Lucetta, discerning that he was much mixed that day—partly in his mercantile mood and partly in his romantic one—said gayly to him: "Well, don't forsake the machine for us," aud went indoors with her companion.

The latter felt that she had been in the way, though why was unaccountable to her. Lucetta explained the matter somewhat by saying when they were again in the sitting room:

I had occasion to soeak to Mr. Farfrae the other day, and so I knew him this morning."

Lucetta was very kind toward Elizabeth that day. Together they saw the market thicken, and in course of time thin away with the slow deciine of the sun toward the upper end of the town, its rays taking the streets endways and enfilading the long thoroughfare from top to bottom. Tbe gigs and vans disappeared, one by one, till there was not a vehicle in the street. The time of 'the riding world was over the pedestrian world held sway. Field laborers and their wives and children trooped in from the villages for their weekly shopping, and instead of a rattle of wheels and a tramp of

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horses ruling the sound as earlier, there was nothing but the shuffle of many feet. All the implements were gone all the farmers all the moneyed class. The character of the trading had changed from bulk to multiplicity, and pence were handled now as pounds had been handled earlier in the day.

Lucett.i and Elizabeth looked out upon this, for though it was night, and the street lamps w°re lighted, they had kept their shutters unclosed. In the faint blink of the fire they spoke more freely,

Your father was distant with you," said Lucetta. "Yes." And having forgotten the momentary mystery of Henchard's seeming speech to Lucetta, she continued. "It is because he does not think I am respectable. I hace tried to be so more than you can imagine, but in vain. My mother's separation from my father was unfortunate. You don't know what it is to have shadows like that upon your life."

Lucetta seemed to wince. "I do not—of that kind precisely," she said "but you may feel a—sense of disgrace—shame—in other ways." "Have you ever had such feelings?" said the younger, innocently. "Oh, no," said Lucetta, quickly. "I was thinking of—what happens sometimes when women get themselves in strange positions in the eyes of the world from no fault of their own." "It must make them very unhappy afterward." "It makes them anxious for might not other women despise them?" "Not altogether despise them, yet not quite like or respect them."

Lucetta winced again. Her past was by no means secure from investigation, even in Casterbridge since, for one thing, Henchard had never returned to her the cloud of letters she had written and sent him in her first excitement after the discovery that their hast}' marriage, was void, and his method of rewarding her for saving his life by wedding her had proved itself to be a generosity altogether delusive. The only evidences of that marriage in existence were two —the register, and the letters alluding to the event. He had not returned her the letters, so that possibly they were destroyed in which case there remained but one. She could have wished that there had been none at all.

The encounter with Farfrae and his bearing toward Lucetta had made the reflective Elizabeth Jane more observant of her brilliant and amiable companion. A few days afterward, when her eyes met Lucetta's as the latter was going out, she somehow knew that Miss Templeman was nourishing a hope of seeing that attractive Scotchman. The fact was printed large all over Lucetta's cheeks and eyes to any one who read her as Elizabeth Jane was beginning to do. Lucetta passed on and closed the street door.

A seer's impulse took command of Elizabeth, impelling her to sit down by the fire, and divine events so surely from data already her own that they could be held as witnessed. She followed Lucetta thus mentally—saw her encounter Donald somewhere as if by chance—saw him wear his special look when meeting women, with an added intensity because this one was Lucetta. She depicted his impassioned manner, beheld the indecision of both between their loathness to part and their desire not to be observed: depicted their shaking of hands: how they probably parted with frigidity in their general contour and movement, only in the smaller features showing the spark of passion, thus invisible to all but themselves. This discerning sile.it witch had not done thinking of these things when Lucetta came noislessly behind her and made her start.

It was all true as she had pictured—she could have sworn it. Lucetta had a heightened brightness in her eye over and above the. advanced color of her cheeks. "You have seen Mr. Farfrae," sriid Elizabeth, demurely. "Yes," said Lucetta. "How did you know?"

She knelt down on the hearth and took her friend's hand excitedly in her own. But, after all, she did not say when or how. she had seen him or what he had said.

That night she became restless in the morning she was feverish and at breakfast time she told her companion that she had something on her mind—something which concerned a person in whom she was interested much- Elizabeth was Earnest to listen and sympathize. "This person—a lady—once admired a man much—very much, she said tentatively. "Ab," said Elizabeth Jane.

He did not think so deeply of her as she did of him. But in an impulsive moment, purely out of gratitude, he proposed to make her his wife. She agreed. But there was an unexpected hitch in the proceedings as a result she was so far compromised with him that she felt she could never belong to another rr.an as a pure matter of conscience, even if she should wish to. After that they were much apart, heard nothing* of each other for along time,and shie felt her life quite closed up lor her. "Ah—poor gill."

She suffe»ed much on account of him. though I should add that he could not altogether be blamed for what had happennd. At last the obstacle which separated them was providentially remoyed and he came to marry her." "H?ow delightful!" "But in the interval she—my poor friend—had seen a man she liked" better than him. Now comes the point: Could she in honor dismiss the first?"

PISS®®!

Nevertheless Lucetta seemed relieved by the simple fact of having opened out the situation a little, and was slowly convalescent of her headache. "Bring a me a loqjeing glass. How do I appear to people?" she said, languidly. "Well—a little worn." answered Elizabeth, eying her as a critic eyes a doubtful painting fetching the glass she enabled Lucetta to survey herself in it, which Lucetta anxiously did. "I wonder if I wear well, as times go," she observed after awhile. "How many years more do you think I shall last before I get hopelessly plain?"

There was something curious in the way in which Elizabeth, though the younger, had come to plav the part of experienced sage in these discussions. "It may be five years," she said judicially. "Or, with a quiet life, as many as ten. With no love you might calculate on ten."

Lucetta seemed to reflect on this as on an unalterable, impartial verdict. She told Elizabeth Jane no more of the past attachment she had adumbrated as the experience of a third person and Elizabeth, who in spite of her philosophy was very tender hearted, wept that night in bed at the thought that her pretty, rich Lucetta did not treat her to the full confidence of names and dates in her confession. For by the "she" of Lucetta's story Elizabeth had not been beguiled.

CHAPTER XXV.

The ne't phase of the suppression of Henchard in Lucetta's heart was an experiment in calling on her performed by Farfrae with some apparent. trepidation. Conventionally speaking, he conversed with both Miss Templeman and her companion but in fact it was rather that Elizabeth sat invisible in the room. Donald .appeared not to see her at all, and answered her wise, homely little remarks with curtly indifferent monosyllables, his looks and faculties hanging on the woman who could boast of a more Protean variety in her phases, moods, opinions, and also principles than could Elizabeth. Lucetta had peristed in dragging her into the circle but she had remained like an awkward third poict which that circle would not touch.

Susan Henchard's daughter bore up against the frosty ache of this treatment, as she had borne up under worse things, and contrived as soon as possible to get out of the inharmonious room without being missed. The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her, and walked with her. 1n a dedicate acrobatic balance between love and friendship—that period in the history of a love when alone it can be said to be unalloyed with pain.

She stoically looked from her bedroom window, and contemplated her fate as if it were written on the top of the church tower hard by. "Yes," she said, at last, bringing down her palm upon the sill with a pat, "he is the second man of that story she told me."

All this time, Henchard's smoldering sentiments toward Lucetta had been fanned into higher and higher inflammation by the circumstances of the case. *He was discovering that the young woman, for whom he once felt a pitying warmth of gratitude, which had been almost chilled out of him by reflection, was, when now qualified with a slight inaccessibility and a mora matured beauty, the very being to make him satisfied with life. Day after day proved to him, by her silence, that it was of no use to think of bringing her round by holding aloof so he gave in, and called upon her again, Elizabeth Jane being absent.

He crossed the room to her, with a heavy tread of some awkwardness, his strong, warm gaze upon her— like the sun beside the moon, in comparison with Farfrae's modest look— and with something of a hale-fellow bearing, as, indeed, was not unnatural. But she seemed so transubstantiated by her change of position, and held out her hand to him in such cool friendship, that he became deferential, and sat down with a per-, ceptible loss of power.^

He understood but little of fashiou in dress, yet enough to feel himself inadequate in appearance beside her whom he had hitherto been dreaming of as almost his property. She said something very polite about his being good enough to call. This caused him to recover balance. He looked her oddly in the face, losing his awe.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

California prison commissioner* have decided to go into the

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"A man she liked better—that's bad!" "Yes," said Lucetta, looking pained at a boy v*ho was swinging the town pump handle. "It is bad! Though you must remember that she was forced into an equivocal position with the first by an accident— that he was not so well educated or refined as the second, and that she had discovered some qualities in the first that rendered him less desirable as a husband than she had at first thought him to be." "I cannot answer," said Elizabeth Jane, thoughtfully. 'It is so difficult. It wants a Pope to settle that." "You prefer not to, perhaps?" Lucetta showed in her appealing tone how much she leaned on Elizabeth's judgment. "Yes." admitted Elizabeth. "I would rather not say."

SIOCK

raising business and use the con victs of the penitentiary as herders Hogs will be the particular kind o! stock to which attention will bt pi an

SCIENTIFIC SPARKS/ 7

Diamonds Becoming Cheap

•'GeomaRPetiflier."

the recent meeting of the chemical section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the artificial diamonds that have been made

VI, Moissans. of Paris, were exhib.ted and awakened much interest, these, as yet, are hardly of suffiient size to be marketable, but there ippears to be no longer doubt that /his and the cost are only questions technical detail, and that another lecade at most will suffice to reduce iiamonds to the level of the ame'ivst or the Rhinestone. brother Paulin, one of the brotho- the Christian School near La

France, has devised and exrnented with a system which he ,.iis "geomagnetics," which has .esulted in some surprising results agriculture. What he calls the 'geomagnetifier" is a resinous pole, 'rom forty to sixty feet high, planted the middle of a field, supporting through insulators a galvanized iron *od with five terminal branches of joppcr. This collector of the electricity in the atmosphere is connected with a system of underground wires, deep enough to be out of the reach of ordinary cultivation, and placed six feet apart. This system, tried in a potato field, under the supervision of the Mont.hrison Society )f Agriculture, resulted in the fol.owiag fact:, as «set forth iu their report: "A geomagnetirier about twenty-eight feet in height made its influence felt over superficies of

TIIE OEOMAGN'ETIFIER.

[Dotted lines show underground wires.] sixty-five feet radius. The stalks were measuerd and were found (September 23) to reach a hight of five feet and a diameter of threefourths inches. One hundred and four square feet of the influenced portion furnished 186 pounds of tubers: 104 feet of the non-influ-enced portion furnished 138pounds." So, also, have grapes, spinach, celery, radishes and turnips shown an increased productiveness under this utilization of atmospheric electricity equal to that obtained from the use of expensive chemical fertilizers.

Professor Bailey, of Owens College, England, has recently written of"the steady increase of what is known as "black fogs" in England. From statistics it is known that these menacing collections of the mineral impurities in the atmosphere are now about eight or ten times as prevalent as thev were a century ago. He says "In the earlier part of this century Manchester, with a population at that time of about one hundred and twenty thousand, had on an average about four or five dense fogs during the winter, whilst at the •. present day (with a population of 500,000) we have dense fogs, lasting the whole day, on twenty days or more, and fogs of less density are experienced on forty or fifty davs.

EUGENE MURRAY AARON, Ph. D.

Joaquin and the Tramps. Argonaut. The venerable Joaquin Miller used to have a warm spot in his heart for tramps. He went so far as to build a house on his California farm for the accommodation of tramps and furnished it with plain but substantial comforts, free use of which was given any tramp who came that way. The outcome he relates in aa article in a California magazine: "Results? In less than a year the last sheet, pillowslip, bedspread, frying-pan and coffee pot were gone. Not only that, but the windows were broken and the sashes burned. Too worthless to go out and carry wood, on« crowd broke up and burned my tables and chairs, and when I put in head to protest they threatened to 'cremate the old crank in his own fireplace.'"

Should Have Sworn OIT Husband—Here's a new wrinkle, ladies' silk stockings have snakes on 'em.

Wife—Yes, I know. I have jusl bought a pair of that kind of hose. "What, with snakes on "em?" "Yes." "Then we are all right. I can drink as much as I please now." ''What do you mean?" "Well, you see, if you have snalces on your stockirigs you can't find fault wig) me if I should happen to have few in my boots."

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