Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1914 — Page 7

The Hollow Qf Her Hand

By GEORGE BARR MCCUTCHEON

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H Illustrations by Ellsworth Young |§ alOlfIlllllllllltl!lll||illli!lllil!IIIHI||l!lllllllli|||||!lll!ll|||||jjl|i||||||||ni|||||||^ Coprrieht. 1912, by George Birr McCutcheon _ Copyright. 1912. by Dodd. Mead 4 Company CHAPTER XVII. Once More at Burton'* Inn. Again Sara Wrandall found hereelf In that never-to-be-forgotten room at Burton’s inn. On that grim night in March she had entered without fear or trembling because she knew what was there. Now she quaked with a mighty chill of terror, for she knew not what was there in the quiet, now sequestered room. Burton had told them on their arrival after a long ■drive across country that patrons pf the Inn invariably asked which room it was that had been the scene of ■the tragedy, and, on finding out, refused point-blank to occupy it. In

Her Eyes Were Moody, Her Voice Rather Lifeless,

consequence he had been obliged to transform it into a sort of store and baggage room. Sara stood in the middle of the murky room, for the shutters had long been closed to the light of day, and looked about her in awe at the heterogeneous mass of boxes, trunks, bundles and rubbish, scattered over the floor without care or system. She had closed the door behind her and was quite alone. Light sneaked in through the cracks in the shutters, but so meagerly that it only served to increase; the gloom. A dismantled bedstead stood heaped up in the corner. She did not have to be told what bed it was. The mattress was there too, rolled up and tied with a thick garden rope. She knew there were dull, ugly blood stains upon it. Why the thrifty Burton had persevered in keeping this useless article of furniture, she could only surmise. Perhaps it was held as an inducement to the morbidly curious who alWay6 seek out the gruesome and gloat even as they shudder. For a long time she stood immovable just inside the door, recalling the horrid picture of another day. She tried to imagine the scene that had been enacted there with gentle, lovable Hetty Glynn and her whilom husband as the principal characters. The girl had told the whole story of that ugly night. Sara tried to see it as it actually had transpired. For months this present enterprise had been in her mind: the desire to see the place again, to go there with old impressions which she could leave behind when ready to emerge in a new frame of mind, it was true that she meant to shake off the shackles of a horrid dream, to purge herself of the last vestige of bitterness, to cleanse her mind of certain thoughts and memories. Downstairs Booth waited for her. He heard the story of the tragedy from the innkeeper, who crossly maintained that his business had been ruined. Booth was vaguely impressed, he knew not why, by Burton’s description of the missing woman. ‘‘l’d say she was about the size of Mrs. Wrandall herself, and much the same figger,” he said, as he had said a thousand times “My wife noticed it the minute she saw Mrs. Wrandall. Same height and everything.” A bell rang sharply and Burton glanced over his shoulder at the indicator on the wall behind the desk. He gave a great start and his jaw sagged. “Great Scott!” he gasped. A curious grayne6s stole over his face. "It’s —it’s the bell in that very room. My soul, what can—” “Mrs. Wrandall is up there, isn’t she?” demanded Booth. “It ain’t rung since the night~he pushed the button so Oh, gee! You’re right She is up there. My, what a scare it gave me.” He wiped his brow. Turning to a boy, he commanded him to answer the bell. The boy went slowly, and as he went he ,removed his hande from his pockets. He came back an instant later, more swiftly than he went, with the word that “the lady up there” wanted Mr. Booth to come upstairs.

She was waiting for him in the open doorway. A shaft of bright wnnHght from a window at the end of the ban fell upon her. Her face was colorless, (haggard. He paused for an instant to contrast her as she etdod there in the pitiless light with the vivid creature Tie had put upon canvas so recently.

She beckoned to him and turned back into the room. He followed. “This is the room, Brandon, where my husband met the death he deserved/’ she said quietly. “Deserved? Good heavens, Sara, •re you—” “I uufl you to look about you and try to picture how this place looked on the night of the murder. You have a vivid imagination. None of this rubbish was here. Just a bed, a table and two chairs. There was a carpet on the floor. There were two people here, a man and a woman. The woman had trusted the man. Shp trusted him until the hour in which he died. Then she found him out. She had come” to this place, believing it was to be her wedding night She found no minister here. The man laughed at her and scoffed. Then she knew. In horror, shame, desperation she tried to break away from him. He was strong. She was a good' woman; a virtuous, honorable woman. She saved herself.” He was staring at her with dilated eyes. Slowly the truth was being borne in upon him. “The woman was—Hetty?” came hoarsely from his stiffening lips. “My God, Sara!”

She came close to him and spoke in a half-whieper. “Now you know the secret. Is it safe with you?” He opened his lips to speak, but no words came forth. Paralysis seemed to have gripped not only his throat but his senses. He reeled. She grasped hie arm in a tense, fierce way, and whispered: Be careful! No one must hear what we are saying.” - She shot a glance down the deserted hall. “No one is near. I made sure of that. Don’t speak! Think first—think well, Brandon Booth. It is what you have been seeking for months—the truth. You share the secret with us now. Again 1 ask, is it safe with you?” “My God!" he muttered again, and passed, his hand over his eyes. His brow was wet. He looked at his fingers dumbly as if expecting to find them covered with blood. “Is it safe with you?” for the third time.

“Safe? Safe?” he whispered, following her example without knowing that he did so. “I—l can’t believe you, Sara. It can’t be true.” “It is true.” “You have known —all this time?” From that night when I stood where we are standing now.” “And —and—she ?” “I had never seen her until that bight. I saved her.” He dropped suddenly upon the trunk that stood behind him, and buried his face in his hands. For a long time she stood over him, her interest divided between him and the hall, wherein lay their present peril. “Come,” she said at last. “Pull yourself together. We must leave this place. If you are not careful they will suspect something downstairs.” He looked up with haggard eyes, studying her face with curious intentness. * ‘What manner of woman are you, Sara?” he questioned, slowly, wonderingly. -

“I have just discovered that I am very much like other women, after all, ’ she said. “For awhile I thought I was different, that I was stronger than my sex. But I am just as weak, just as much to be pitied, just as much to be scorned as any one of my sisters. I have spoiled a great act by Stooping to do a mean one. God will bear witness that my thoughts were noble at the outeet; my heart was soft. But come! There is much more to tell that cannot be told here, lou shall know everything.” They went downstairs and out into the crisp autumn air. She gave directions to her chauffeur. They were to traverse for some distance the same road she had taken on that ill-fated night a year and a half before. In course of ’time the motor approached a well-remembered railway crossing.

“Slow down, Cole,” she said. “This is a mean place—a very mean place.” Turning to Booth, who had been sitting grim and silent beside her for miles, she said, lowering her voice: “I remember that crossing yonder. There is a sharp curve beyond. This is the place. Midway between the two crossings, I should say. Please remember this part of the road, Brandon, when I come to the telling of that night’s ride to town. Try to picture this spot—this smooth, straight road as it might be on a dark, freezing night in the very thick of a screaming blizzard, with all’ the world abed save —two women.”

In his mind he began to draw the picture, apd to place the two women in the center of it, without knowing the circumstances. There was something fascinating in the study he was making, something gruesome and full of sinister possibilities for the hand of a virile painter. He wondered how near his imagination was to placing the central figures in the picture as they actually appeared on that secret night. * * * * * * * At sunset they went together to the little pavilion at the end of the pier which extended far out into the sound. Here they were safe from the ears of eavesdroppers. The boats had been stowed away for the winter. The wind that blew through the open pavilion, now shorn of all its comforts and luxuries, was cold, raw and repelling. Ncbtme would disturb them here. WlthJiexLf&SLq. set toward the sinking

east, she leaned against one of the thick posts, and in a dull, emotionless voice, laid bare the whole story of that dreadful night and the days that followed. Shq spared no details, she spared not herself in the narration. He did not once interrupt her. All the time she was speaking he was studying the profile of her face as if fascinated by its strange immobility. For the matter of a full half-hour he sat on the rail, hie back against a. poet, his arms folded across the breast of the thick ulster he wore, staring at her, drinking in every word of the story she told. A look of surprise crept into his face when she came to the point where the thought of marrying Hetty to the brother of her victim first began to manifest itself in her designs. For a time the look of incredulity remained, to be succeeded by utter scorn as she went on with the recital. Her reasons, her excuses, her explanations for this master stroke in the way of compensation for all that she had endured at the hande of the scornful Wrandalls, all of whom were hateful to her without exception, stirred him deeply, die began to understand the forces that compelled her to resort to this Machiavellian plan for revenge on them. She admitted everything: her readiness to blight Hetty’s life forever; her utter callousness in laying down these ugly plans; her surpassing vindictiveness; her reflections on the triumph she was to enjoy when her alms were fully attained. She confessed to a genuine pity for Hetty Castleton from the beginning, but it was outweighed by that thing she could only describe as an obsession! . . . How she hated the Wrandalls! . . Then came the real awakening: when the truth came to her as a revelation from God. Hetty had not been to blame. The girl was innocent of the one sin that called for vengeance so far as she was concerned. The slaying of Challis Wrandall was justified! All these months she had been harboring a woman she believed to have been his mistress as well as his murderess. It was not so tnuch the murderess that she would have foisted upon the Wrandalls as a daughter, but the mistress! She loved the girl, she had loved her from that first night. Back of it all, therefore, lay the stern, unsuspected truth: from the very beginning she instinctively had known this girl to be innocent of guile. . Her house ot cards fell down. There was nothing left of the plans on which it had been constructed. It had all been swept away, even as 6he strove to protect it against destruction, and the ground was strewn with the ashes of fires burnt out. .... She was shocked to find that she had even built upon the evil spot! ... Almost word for word she repeated Hetty’s own story of her meeting with Chailis Wrandall, and how she went, step by step and blindly, to the last scene in the tragedy, when his vileness, his true nature was revealed to Iter. The girl had told her everything. She had thought herself to be in love with Wrandall. She was carried away by his protestations. She was infatuated. (Sara smiled to herself as she spoke of this. She knew Challis Wrandall’s charm!) The girl believetKin him implicitly. When he took her to Burton’s inn it was to make her his wife, as she supposed. He had arranged everything. Then came the truth,. She defended herself. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

BROOKLYN TABERNACLE

BIBLES STUDY* OR “LET NO ONE TAKE THY CROWN." Revelation 3:ll—Sept. 27. "I come quickly: hold faxt that which thou hunt, that no one take thy crown.”—Revelation S: 11. CODAY’S Study is a prophecy by Jesus Himself. Picturing the seven stages of Ilis Church, the Master used these words in addressing one of them. There is, nevertheless, an appropriateness in the Lord’s counsels at any tithe. So we now, as well as those who were particularly addressed, may find instruction in our text. It teaches, in harmony with the entire Bible, that there can be no remedy for the reign of Sin and Death, except that which God has provided, to be applied at the Second Coming of our Redeemer, when lie will set up His Kingdom. Meantime, God’s Plan

is working, and will ull iin a tel y bring a blessing to the whole world, the blessing which God has promised since Abraham’s day—the blessing of all the families of the earth. From the beginning God has foreseen how the six great Days of the reign of Sin and

Death 'could be wisely permitted. In view of the power to be exercised by Messiah’s Kingdom. Backed by Power Divine, Messiah will be quite competent to cope with sin, sorrow, pain, death—everything that now troubles humanity. The time appointed of the Father, a thousand years, will be abundantly long. When the Church will have been selected from the world, as the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife and Joint-heir In the Kingdom, everything will be ready for the blessed work of bringing all the willing and obedient back to the image and likeness of the Creator, lost through Adam’s and gained by Christ’s death. Encouragement to the Church. Our text addresses, not the world, not the nominal Church,' but the true Church. These, having turned from sin, having accepted Christ, Jiavihg

A Crown of Glory.

Siren their hearts to God. through Christ having been accepted of the Pa t6qr and begotten of the Holy Spirit ap» children of God; and. atf the Aims tie says, “If children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. ’ (Romans 8:171. A crown of glory Is eet apart for each son thus received or the Father, and the name of each is recorded in the Lamb’* Book of IJfe $o far as God" ia concerned, the mat ter is settled. Bat it still remains for the Church to fulfil their Covenant Hiring presented their bodies a living aggrifice. they are to continue in that •fittode— daily presenting their bodies gladly, willing to endure, to suffer, tft be anything and everything that God would be pleased to have them tie All who do tills continue to grow in grace, knowledge and ness to the Lord Jesus, and will there by make their calling and election sure. But should any neglect this Covenant of Sacrifice, and through fear of death be subject to bondage either to sin or to sectarian errors, they would there by fail to maintain their election and to make it sure. After a time of test ing they would be relegated to a sec ondary place; they would no longer be counted of the Royal Priesthood, even though they might still maintain theft standing as Invites, servants of the Priests. The thought of our text is; "Be of good courage. It will not he loug uu til 1 will come to receive you to Myself. Let the thought of the Kingdom cheer, strengthen, comfort you. anti eu I able you to do God’s will faithfully, i nobly, courageously, loyally. Do not let slip from you the blessed relationship which 1 established for you when

WKyf/l J Honors—in the home H jPP 1" 1 Likewise—the cares. I I Father earns the money —but Mother must I I spend it carefully. Yes, we both agree to that. ■ I All right—then don’t handicap Mother with poor I lor useless tools —a cheaply built range, for instance. I I Half your living expense is in fuel and foods. I I Waste the fuel by allowing the gases to escape un- I I burned or by forcing the fire in order to obtain the 1 I right oven heat as is done in most ranges; spoil ex- B I pensive food materials by burning or improperly cook- I I ing them —and Mother makes a poor showing as a I I home-maker. Hardly fair —is it? I I The family range is a mighty important factor and I I Mother is entitled to the best Get her a I U Hot Blast I I The Automatic Oven I I Ventilator that distributes the heat evenly to all parts I I of the oven—it insures perfect baking and roasting. 1 | Both top of Range and oven arfc heated just right by the steady | ; burning fire, an even temperature being maintained for both the top I ■ and the oven as long as desired. Even, steady heat means no spoiling of expen- I ij sive food stuffs —no money lost. Any fuel will do —soft coal, hard coal or wood. I I It is the perfected output of the greatest range builders in the U. S. —the Cole I 1 Mfg. Co. —and is a daily joy and satisfaction in the household. I I See the name u Cole’s” on each Range. 1 I Warner Bros.l '

I made yon acdefftabTe on ISb basis of your Covenant to be dead with Me, to suffer with Me, to strive daily for the great prize of joint-heirship In My Kingdom. “The crown is yours now, by virtue of the arrangement which I have made with you as your Advocate and of the Covenant of Sacrifice which you have made with Me. Do not allow your crown to paau to another! If any one of you la unfaithful. God will not permit him to have a share lu the* Kingdom, but will apportion another! name, instead of His.” The Number of the Elect. This Scripture, with others, shows us definitely that the Chnreb is to he

The Typical High Priest.

particular” (1 Corinthians 12:27). According to the Mosaic Law no one could serve as high priest unless he had the full number of fingers, toes, etc.; and no one could serve who had a superfluous member (Leviticus 21: 17 21). Thus the Lord indicated the completeness of the antitypieal Priesthood. The Christ. Those who, after haying been test-

composed of n fixed number—not one more or less. This is illustrated in the Law pertaining to the Jew ish high priest The priest’s head represented Jesus; his body, the Church, As the Apostle says, “Now are ye the Body of Christ, and members in

ed as to their loyalty, prove to be not sufficiently loyal to be of the Bride class, will constitute a Great Compeay. whose number no man knows.

Beware of Ointments for Catarrh That Contains Mercury as mercury will surely destroy the sense of smell and completely derange the whole system when entering it through the mucous surfaces. Such articles should never he used except on prescriptions from reputable physicians, as the damage they .■will do is ten fold to the good you can possibly derive from them. Hall's Catarrh Cure, manufactured by F. J. Cheney & Co., Toledo. 0.. contains no mercury, and is taken internally, acting directly upon the blood and mucous surfaces of the system. In buying Hall’s Catarrh Cure be sure you get the genuine. It is taken internally and made in Toledo, Ohio, by F. J. Cheney & 00. Testimonials free. Sold by druggists. Price 75c per bottle. Take Hall’s Family Pills for constipation.

Real Estate Transfers.

Vincent Eisle et uac to Fred A Hicks, Aug. 31, s % It 12, bl 12. Remington, SI,OOO. George F Meyers et ux to Joseph S Nelson et ux, March 2, nw aw, 18-31-5. n % sw nw, 18-31-5, 64.41 acres. Walker. $2,275. Fred Yaggie et ux to John P Ryan, Sept. 16, w %ne se, 10-30-5, 20 acres. Giil&m, SBOO. Charles E Kersey et ux to Albert Baillen et ux. Sept. 15, pt sw sw, 30-32-0, 238 acres, Wheatfield, $32,130.