Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1917 — Then I'll Come Back to you [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Then I'll Come Back to you

By Larry Evans

AUTHOR OF itONCE TO EVERY MAhT

SYNOPSIS Caleb Hunter and his sister Sarah welcome to their home Stephen O’Mara, a homeless and friendless boy, starting from the wilderness to see the city. Stephen O’Mara catches a glimpse of Barbara Allison. The girl is rich. ... The O'Mara boy falls in love with her. She la ten, he fourteen. • The boy and girl are in a party mat gt? to town. The old people watch with concern the youth’s growing attachment for the girl. ■ Caleb is much impressed with the boy’s ideas on the moving of timber. He predicts a great future for the lad. CHAPTER V. Then I’ll Come Back to You. f the drive home Wednesday I Kj I Caleb rehearsed a half score kffljrffln of speeches with which he IffffHfilJ might apprise his sister Sarah of the step he had taken, but -when the time came for him to employ one of them he forgot the entire lot and had to resort to a bald and stam mered statement of the facts, which sounded more like a confession of guilt than anything else. It had grown colder with the storm, and directly after a hastily swallowed supper, with many indignant glances for her brother, Sarah had bundled the boy off upstairs to bed, for he had come in out of tbe rain as sleekly wet as a water rat and blue fingered and blue lipped from the cold: So it happened that they were all alone bef<ye the fireplace when Caleb made known his decision. v “I*ve never done much of anything for anybody but myself, you know, Sarah,” Caleb hesitatingly tried to account for his conduct. “And this seems to me to be as big an opportunity as I’ll ever have. You —you like the boy, don’t you, so far as you have become acquainted with him?’’ “Yes, I like him,” she assented, after awhile. “Of course it—it comes as a surprise to you,” he murmured. “It is pretty sudden, but I don’t think that either of us will ever regret it.” And then Sarah faced round toward her brother. Her eyes were unaccountably wet, but there was laughter on her lips. “A surprise—a—a somewhat sudden!” she faltered. “Why, I knew you were going to do it that first day w hen you came sidling up to the veranda behind him. I was certain of it even then. And if you hadn’t decided why, I’d made qp my mind that I’d do it myself if you ever came back from that endless fishing trip!” “I’ve been rummaging through some of the old chests upstairs,” she added. “Today I explored for hours and found some of the things you used to wear which look as though they hadn’t been Worn at all. I laid some of them out for him to put on when he gets up in the morning. And, Cal, who’d ever believe now that a plump behemoth like you ever could have worn such —such dainty and cunning things!” The inferred description should have prepared Caleb, but at the moment he failed to remeber that it was some forty years since the garb she mentioned had been in vogue. Instead, he blushed uncomfortably at the gurgle in her throat And so the next morning, when a little figure in velvet jacket and pantaloone—velvet of the same jet hue in which Barbara Allison had first appeared to the boy a day or two before—stopped at the head of the long stairway the moment was robbed of not one whit of its sensationalism. There was something in Sarah’s fluttering delight over the boy’s changed appearance that morning which awoke an almost hysterical impulse in her brother. ’ When Caleb came back an hour later, with Allison at jps heels, he searched the house through without finding the boy. In his perplexity he appealed to Sarah, who followed him to the front door. “Where’s Stephen?” he asked. Sarah nodded to Allison. “Why, I waited a half hour. Cal,” she said, “and then, when I thought you wouldn’t be back for awhile. 1 sent him downtown—l sgnt him to the village”— ,-X Caleb seemed fairly to shrink. - “You sent him down to the village?” be echoed “Did he—did he change his clothes?” , . ’ “For some eggs,” Sarah rounded out the sentence. “And of course he didn’t.” Suddenly her brother’s face alarmed her. “Cal,” she excjgiimed, “I haven't done anything I shouldn’t have done, have I?” Caleb turned a wry face toward Allison. “In—that—outfit!” he groaned. ‘Sown to the village, and it’s a lumber town! He’s gone, and if he doesn’t have to fight his way back them!”— Sarah’s alarm changed to fear instantly. She stepped out upon the porch. They sat and waited, and, in due course of time the boy returned. As he appeared at the gate Sarah, with a strange choking sound in her throat, half rose and then dropped, weakly

back into hep, chair. And even to Allison, who had fondly looked forward to the worst, the little suit with the pretty ruffed cuffs was an unbelievable., wreck. coat had been ripped from hem to collar and dangled loose upon either side as the boy advanced toward them, the knees of the trousers were split till the bare skin showed through beneath, and those portions of the fabric which were not incrusted with dirt were liberally o’erspread with egg. After one stricken glance at the spectacle Sarah tottered to her feet and retreated none too steadily into the house. “Just what does this mean?” Caleb faltered. “Where have you been?” He hardly recognized the boy’s voice. “I been daown to the city," Steve slurred the words. “I been daown to git Miss Sarah a dozen eggs, and I run into trouble daown there a-gittin' 'em." “You’d better go upstairs and get into your old clothes,” Caleb advised him then. “And I’ll get you something less —less dangerous to wear before night.” But the boy stood rigid stilt “Will you.” he asked, “will you give me another quarter now?” »> “A quarter,” echoed Caleb slowly, even while he reached into his pocket and handed the coin to the boy. “Now. what do you— Here, where are you going now?” * ■ “Why, I’m goin’ back daown to the city,” he grated out. “I’m goin’ back after Miss Sarah’s eggs!” And he went, and when he returned the creases in the paper bag which held his purchase were as fresh as when it had left the grocer’s counter. “Well, I’m—l’m hanged!” Allison murmured, after the boy had entered the house. “I’m hanged! You'll have to bring that youngster over, Cal, and introduce him to the children.” Acting upon Dexter's suggestion, the man took Steve the very next day and presented him to the children who were guests in the big stucco and timber house: Little, shy, transparent skinned Mary Graves and Garret Devereau and Archibald Wickersham —the Right Honorable Archie. But from the very first Steve’s lack of enthusiasm for their company impressed itself upon Caleb. As a matter of fact, the boy did cross over and join in their games the first day or two, but it was only after Caleb himself had suggested it And more often than not he would l>e back again before an hour had passed, to sit silent and moody. But it needed no word of Caleb’s to keep Steve at home. Without some suggestion to urge him, the latter showed no inclination to leave his own yard, and yet he would sit, too, for hours upon the top step of the veranda, staring in the direction of the stucco lodge and listening to the voices behind the high hedge. More and more often Garry Devereau came over and joined him instead, and together the pair made almost daily trips down to the mills. A quick intimacy had grown up between the two boys, an intimacy .which seemed all the stranger to Caleb because of the contrast between them. From the beginning Steve had evinced an insatiable appetite for books; he started in to devour everything upon which he could lay his hands, and the Hunter library was lined with well stocked cases. But it was the history volumes that drew him most. With a fat tome upon his knees he would sit for hours in a corner upon the floor, his eyes glued to the pages. And one day, two weeks after the occurrence of the eggs, he came to Sarah with a shy question, a book in one hand. After she had caught the drift of his query Sarah took the volume and found that he had been reading of the fabulous deeds of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Steve went back to his reading after she had finished, but ever and again that morning his eyes, blank with preoccupation, wandered from the type; ever and again his ears seemed to be straining to catch the echo of childish trebles from the yard beyond the hedge. And after dinner Caleb was astonished when the boy explained, a little awkwardly, that he was gqing over to Allison’s grounds for awhile. Allison himself passed Steve in the hedge gap and, with a word of greeting, stopped to shake hands with him gravely. So it came about that they were sitting together, Dexter and Caleb, smoking in silence, when Barbara Allison’s first scream came shrilling to their ears. They waited, staring at each other until the riotous clamor which rose set them to running across tbe lawn. But the scene which met Caleb’s eyes when he burst through tbe shrubbery froze him into immobilItv. (To be continued.)