Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 150, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1904 — Old Blazer’s Hero [ARTICLE]

Old Blazer’s Hero

By DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY.

CHAPTER XVl.—(Continued.) “XNeil?” he said almost sullenly, withMt turning to look at her. The hand which had touched him very gently and appealingly at first, tightened upon his sleeve and began to tremble Strongly. At this he looked over his ■boulder and met Hepzibah’s beseeching gaze. There were tears in her eyes, and be noticed a curious little throbbing in Sier throat, as if a pianoforte hammer were tapping from within. “Don’t break your heart, Edward,” she besought him, speaking with great iifflculty. "Don’t go to the bad for her! There’s nobody as is worth that, my darlSng. What goodcan that do?” —“Don’t worry about me, .Hepzibah,” he said miserably; “it isn't worth while!” “What else have I got to worry - iof if it ain’t the child I nursed when I was • child myself?” said Hepzibah, holding to him with both hands. “And, oh, as I should ever ha' lived to have to ask you •nch a thing! But, oh, my darling, do, 4o come home ” She paused, mid Ned filled up the broken sentence “Sober. I suppose,” he said. “Oh, do, dear, do!” she begged him, clinging to him. “Very well,” he said, with a gloomy laugh— two Httle spasmodic sounds, as far from merriment as light from darkaess — "you shall have our way for •nee. You pretty generally get it here.” He stooped and kissed the hard-fea-tured face, and Hepzibah, dropping her head upon his shoulder, clung to him and •hook with silent tears and internal sobbings. "I’ve got your word, dear?” she asked when she could trust herself to speak. “Yes,” he answered. “Good night, Hepzibah.” He set out on his seven-mile walk, and having posted Iris letter in the town, turned back. A certain halfway house tugged at him as if it had a cord about his heart, but he broke past it with a ■age of resolution, and walked straight home, and at once went up to his own bedroom. Hepzibah heard the assured and steady footstep, anti was thankful lor the news it brought her. though* the feet went like lead, and had not even a Memory of their old lightness. Next morning Ned Blane’s criminal pretense was delivered into Mary Hackett’s hands, and she felt her heart altogether cheerful and strengthened by it •he wondered still at tlie personal silence her husband kept, but at least here was proof positive that he was not the creature she had found herself beginning to believe him. He had not found it in his heart to forsake her and ■o east her back upon her parents. And she herself could face the world again. He had really gone away on business of tome sort; and though she was still inguieted about him, sire had no longer the •hame of being forced to believe that ■he affairs he had spoken of were no ■lore t!*.in an abominable pretext. But now came a consequence of the letter which the forger bad not anticipated. Before the welcome banknote wa» »o much as bnoken for the purchase ♦f household necessaries, Mary sat down and wrote a letter to that imaginary John Hargreaves who lived in the imaginary Reston Square:

“Sir —I should be greatly obliged if you would furnish me with my husband’s present address. I am afraid that retent letters may have miscarried.” If this little blind was something less ■Shan absolutely truthful, she posted it all the same, and salved her conscience with the hope that it might be true. Two •r three days later her inquiry came bnck again, directed and redirected in half a dozen different hands, itnd at last officially marked “Misdirected; no Kesfrou Square in Brocton.” This amazed her and awoke new anxieties. Obviously Will is moving in crooked ways and was 9u hiding from her. It was easily possible that he might be concealing himself, and. inspired by some feeble hopo »f meeting him, she took the bus into town day after day and walked wearily ip and down the principal thoroughlares, thinking that perchance she might ratch sight of him.

She had never known it until now, >ut she. was a little short-sighted, and ■ thousand times her heart leaped with--3n her in the crowded street as she imagined that at lust the errant husband *u in sight, and she would advance, flattering from head to foot, to meet an absolute stranger. No habitude of failue lessened the shock of hope and fear •nd disappointment, and she would go loiue at night too tired to care for anything. Her whole life seemed to have grown into one constant dull and empty •che. ’ It seemed a strange and ghostly sort -ft life to lead, for she was altogether ■lone now, and hardly ever exchanged • word, except upon matters of mere necessity, with n fellow creature. She ••lied upon nobody, and nobody called ■pon her. Those people of the little township who bad at first been indignant •gainst John Howarth and his wife for their neglect of their daughter supposed smt, naturally enough, since Mary went *■ living in her husband's house, that -the bulkier supplied the necessary funds, tad so forgot their indignation.

CHAPTER XVII. A» ff Mary had not had trouble enough apoa her shoulders already, a new oua Aeacended upbn her, and afie began .to he certain that the house, night after was being watched, nnd became •aaaured that the watcher was always the mw* person. The flint suspicion whielj occurred to her came whoa, on n moonSight night about the middle of July, she An* open her bedroom window nad hated out upon the deserted road and *e tranquil widespread fields. Kite had ■a light, and the house and ita neighbor •sew their joint shadow on the road be •re her and on to the hedge which faced •eir doors. Beyond the distinctly mark

ed line of shade upon the field the moonlight lay in a broad, vapory whiteness, in which objects, though easily discernible, took strange and fantastic shapes. She had sat at the open window for a good five minutes, drawing in a sad tranquillity from the moonlight and the silence, when a dry stick cracked behind the hedge and drew her startled gaze to the spot whence the sound proceeded. Following this came complete silence. She listened till the wide air made a singing in her cars like the lingering echo of the waves which children find in seashells. Hearing no repetition of the sound, but suspecting rather than discerning an added bulk of darkness somewhere in the shadows, she closed the window, drew down the blind and watched throught the merest crevice between the bars. That something darker that the shadows began to move, and the cracking sound, heard more faintly through the closed window than before, again reached her ears. The moving object stole under the hedge for twenty or thirty yards, growing distinct’from the other shadows whilst it moved, and melting back into them again whenever it stood still; and then, passing over a stile, appeared in the moonlight of the road,-at that distance and in that light recognizable only as a man.

Mary never sat at her open window again after this, but she was often tempted to watch, and the watch was almost invariably rewarded by the earlier or later detection of the figure. “Who the man was and why he was there she could not guess. But one night, as she sat in the darkness in the lower room before the hour of moonrise, she was aware of the shadowy watcher pacing dimly up and down, trusting solely in the darkness, and taking no advantage this time of the shelter of the hedge. Vaguely as she had made out his aspect, she knew him for the same, and she watched his, goings to and fro the door of the neighboring house was suddenly thrown open, and a broad ray of light darting from it fell full upon the mysterious prowler's face. The face was, of course, Ned Blane’s. Mary was in a permanent mood now to be easily indignant, and she rose up in wrath against this intrusion upon her privacy. WJiat right had he, or any man, to hang about in that way, watching her and spying upon her? Some sense of the unobtrusive and of the watcher touched her here, and brought her down from the heights of nnger. And yet the proceeding was intolerable, and sooner or later was sure to be discovered, to bring about new whisperings of scandal and new unmerited sorrow.

Blane had recoiled at the sudden ray of light, and had disappeared before these varying thoughts and emotions had well had time to course through her heart and mind. But now he was back again, pacing up and down in the darkness. She could see the pale blur of his fape turned steadfastly toward the house. She determined to ignore him, and withdrew hefself from the wisdow. She would not even know of his being there, but that was difficult. Even when she had gon* to her bedroom, and having prepared for her night’s rest blew out the light, she peeped again through an‘interstice in the blind and saw the dim figure still going up and down. The morning after this discovery Mary rechived a second letter from the mygierioiis Hargreaves, enclosing a second remittance, with the same formula as before. At first she did not notice any difference of address, but by and by her eye lighted upon the first line of the Communication, and she saw thnt-it was nated, not from Keston, but from Kirton Square. The forger had relied upon his memory, and his memory had played him false. ' She set out at once fpr the great town, determined, if possible, to unravel the mystery, and at least to discover if Kirton stood in as airy a situation as his forerunner. There was no Kirton Square to be found or heard of, and she came back troubled.

That night the watcher came again. A painful fascination impelled her by this time to keep as regular a watch for him as lie evidently kept upon the house, and as he came in sight a suspicion burst upon her mind witli so vivid nnd sudden a light that it looked like certainty. She lit a candle hastily, ran upstairs, and emptied the contents of a drawer upon’ ttfe bed. and from the tumbled lieap of papers before her, after a search of a moment or two, took a letter from Ned Blane to her husband, and setting this pnd the communication from John Hargreaves side by side, came, in spite of 4he stiff disguise of the legal-looking caligraphy, to the swift conclusion that they were written by the same hand. It was bitter enough in all conscience to have been deserted by* her husband, even though she confessed to herself that she had never loved him; it was heartbreaking to be deserted by the people of her owp flesh an! blood; but to be insulted by the cheating charity of a rejected lover Seemed tenfold Worse than all. She descended to the dining room, nnd taking the bank note from the table on which it lay, crumpled it wrnthfully in her hand nnd walked swiftly from the room into the hall, nnd from the hall into the roadway. The furtive wntcher was nwny at n.round pnee in nn instant, but she followed nnd called upon him by iinm**. —«- —— "Mr. Blane! I will not lie avoided. I order you to listen to me.”

.'<* CHAPTER-XVHI. JN®d Blane stood stock still in the dark nnd said nothing. “How dare you insult me by your charity?” Mary asked him. She panted with haste nnd excitement, nnd her limbs were trembling. Ned, with his hands in his jacket pockets, his shoulders rounded, and Ills head drooping a little, made no movement and

answered never a word. In the act of walking away from her he had paused at her call of command, and his back was still half turned toward her. Mary, who had not yet begun to cool from the impulse of indignant attack which had Inspired her to rush after h-im, took a further step or two and stood before him. “How dare you insult mo by your charity?” she asked again, clenching the crumpled note in her hand. Still he said nothing. His figure, dimly outlined in the dark as it wat, had a look ofniogged impassivity about it which ■was discouraging. “This came from you,” she said, holding out the crumpled bank note. “You must take it back again?’

She held out the note almost timidly, and her eyes searched in vainTbFTiny sign of change, or relenting in the dogged figure before her. His immobility was exasperating, but it was not easy to see what ought to be done in face of it. She was more than half inclined for a moment to drop the note and go, but that would hardly have been courteous. It was difficult to be courteous to a man so obstinate. Possibly he might be amenable to reason. The reason of the position was certainly wholly on her side, and he could not be so stupid as to be blind to it. She began to reason with him.

“Surely, Mr. Blane, you .must see how wrong you are in sending this to me.” Mr. Blane was apparently decided to see pothing. Any movement in. the obdurate figure, any shuffle of the foot, for a sign of yielding or uneasiness, any silent negative to urge her to an argument, would have been welcome. “I can’t accept this,” she went on desperately. “It was cruel <ta trap the into taking the other. What wchild you think of anybody, Mr. Blane, who laid such a trap to humiliate you and catch your selfrespect? How dare you pretend that this came fromrn y husband? What right have you to send me money? What did I ever give you for treating me so?”

To all this the detected benefactor answered nothing. “Take it!” she said imperiously, for "by~tbis time her own speech had warmed her anew into anger. He made no response, and when she had waited for a full half minute, with the note extended in her hand, she moved away. “I shall send this to you by post,” she said frigidly, "and I will ask you not to write to me or speak to me again.” She walked from him indignantly, and when she had gone but a step or two turned her head to look at him. He kept his posture —head ‘drooping, shoulders rounded, the obstinate hands rammed into the side pockets. But somehow it did not look as if obstinacy alone were expressed in the posture of the figure. Now that she was but a little distance away from it, it began to seem solitary, bitterly solitary. A sense of pity touched her. The thought of her own loneliness and unhappiness brought tears to her eyes. She could scarcely leave him in that ungrateful and ungarcious way, impracticable and obstinate as he was. She turned and spoke again, and the teara

sounded in her voice. “You must not* fliink I don’t feel that you meant to be kind. I know you meant to act delicately and like a friend. But you must see how impossible it is. Will, you take this, Mr. Blane? I would much rather you took it from me. Pray take it." His continued silence drove her away in a new anger; and she did not turn again until she reached the gate. Then she could dimly see his figure in the roadway. A break in the hedge beyond where he stood allowed the drooping head to be seen in more defined outline against the sky. She entered the house and left him there, apd all night long the fancy of the silent and solitary figure standing there oppressed her. She was often angered by it, and as often pitiful over it; but the gust of anger was strong and long, and the pity was a mere lull in the wind.

Ned heard the retiring footsteps, the retreating rustle of the dress, the clank of the gate latch, the fatal sound of th* closing door. He stood still for a long time. It was not worth while to move. There was nothing to do, nothing to hop? for, nowhere to go. Nothing mattered very much. Nothing seemed able very much to hurt him. By and by he heard laughing voices coming down the lane. They were vulgar and discordant and the laughter was out of tune with everything. He walked on, taking little if any note of whither his footsteps led him, and at last, in something very like a waking dream, walked past his own house. (To be continued.)