Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1891 — BOOK THE SECOND. [ARTICLE]

BOOK THE SECOND.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER. CHAPTER VI. EDWARD LINNE. It was New Year’s eve, twenty years after. Instead of snow heavy rain was falling, and the wind whiswild requiems for the dead. “An eerie night,” muttered old ! Sampson Gardner, the landlord of ; the Rob Roy Inn, on the outskirts of j the tojwn of Linne, as he sat beside j his kitchen fire, smoking his pipe and I listening to the pattering of the rain j and the weary whistling of the wind, i "Wearifu’ weather brings wearifu’ ’ times, and ilka year that slips pasdoesna mend matters. Lord save us! | the time has been when I hae seen the snow half a yard deep on the Linne road and heard these old walls ring with the clink o’ glasses and the laughter o’ merrymaking folk; but noo scarce a traveler oomes to the Rob Roy, and the old walls are i full of chinks for thind to creep in; : and instead of snow we get theawsomc greeting o’ the rain.

As he spoke, he rubbed his knees, and gazed with dimly blinking eyes in tod he fire. The wind whistled down the chimney, and blew the blaze upon the hearth. A stream of rain was Creeping in beneath the door, and soiling the silvery whiteness oi the fine seasand which was strewu upon the ffesh-scrubbeddjoards. “Mysie, woman!" called Sampson, slowly turning round and gazing at the shinning plates upon which the firelight played, as if in mockery at the dreary sounds from without, “Mysie, woman, come doon! We shall lute nae travellers here the night; we ll sup together, you and 1. We ll try to imagine we’re young. Mysie, woman, and we 11 share a tumbler o’ toddy to mind us that ’tis New Year’s time.” As he spoke, he started, listened, I and smiled. The sound of wheels now rose above the whistling of the wind; then came three loud raps at-the door. Old Sampson put down his pipe ' upon the hob, shuffled across the ttoor, and drew back the bolts and bars. As the door flew open, admitted a blast of wind and a few heavy drops of haif-frozen rain, a traveller entered. “A wat night.sir!” cried old Sampson ; and he gazed out in the blackness as if expecting other figures to issue forth. But none cbme. The wheels crunched the gravel again as they moved away, and as they did so Sampson was recalled to himself by