Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1904 — Old Blazer's Hero. [ARTICLE]

Old Blazer's Hero.

By DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY.

CHAPTER XX.—(Continued.) “Hit you!" he answered with q feign •<l contempt. “Who's going to hit you? What's set you on this tack?" "As If or.e of yon wasn't enough?" cried Hepzibah, struggling with a new burst of tears. "There’s Shtniraeh must take to it. It’s all your fault, ami I’ll tell you the truth, if yon killed nt? the next minute. The poor silly ereetur's tied to me. and you break my heart, and it breaks hisn to see it, and he’s took your mad ways out of trouble.’’ "Has die?" said Ned roughly, and flung into the garden, where he paced gloomily up and down. Hepzibah came to hint a few minutes Infer with an apologetic and tender manMer. and laid him that tea was .ready "Never mind the tea, dear." Ned answered. He had not given her a word of affection for months, and the phrase half frightened her. she cotihi guess so little what it meant. He walked about the garden for an hour, and at last entering the kitchen stood tiiere irresolutely for a while, and then, as if with a sudden impulse, made for the liall nnd seized his lint. Hepzi- __ bah ran after him. "Don't be afraid," he said, turning round upon her. , "1 am going to put an •nd to this.” "No. no. Ned," she besought him, clinging to him. "Don't be afraid,” he said again. “1 shall be back when I’ve found Shadraeh and seen him home. I'm going to have a word with him. Let me go.” He was very grave and solemn, and there was a look on his face which she bad never seen before. She released him. nnd stood in the doorway looking after him as he valked toward the Miners' Rest. He disappeared in the gathering dusk, and Hepzibah went within, wondering and fearing. There was a side room nt the Miners’ Rest which gave upon a by-sireet, and this chamber was frequented by the rougher sort. Ned walked into it. flinging the door aside and gazing about him. Shadraeh was there, with the shining hat brushed the wrong way in half a score of places, and tipped over one eye. He was clinging to the counter with one band, and gently and rhythmically waving the other, whilst lie smiling spouted some specially, prized verses of his which Ito mail listened to. . Ned laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Shadraeh, come with me.” "That you. Ned?" said Shadraeh. “Yd' pitched into me once because I'd niver stood a drink after y<>' saved my life. This is Mr. Blane. lads, the gentleman as saved my life in th' Old Blazer. Old Blazer’s Hero, this is. He's the best gentleman i' the wide world, let the next come from wheer he wool.” Blane took the glass from Shadraeh's hand and poured its contents on the floor. "Come witli me.” he said. "You don't teem to know when you've had as much as is good for you. You'll drink again when you see me drink again, and that, my lad, shall be never. And .mark me, Shadraeh. if you drink before I do, I'll break every bone in your body.” And the two men kept this strangely made agreement. Never again was either of them under the influence of liquor. CHAPTER XXL There was a horrible, frowsy portion • f the town into which people of the respectable classes rarely ventured Probably the doctor and the rent collector were the only men who with any approach to frequency carried a decent coat into (hat squalid quarter. The spot was vile enough to scare away anybody untoughened by custom for the endurance •f its horrors'. Festering pools of weedy water lay at the very doors of the ramshackle. aged-blackeued houses. The buildings themselves had sunk bodily into the slime of their foundations, until the ground without was a foot higher than the floor within, and in sinking they had canted helplessly over to be propped up on either side by slanting beams of timber. The supporting baulks were rotten with ago and moisture, and Blight be carved with the thumb nail. Vile as the place was. it was highly '■"JrizeiT by Mr. Horatio Lowther and by Mr. John Howarth, who between them owned the whole abominable plot of land and all tjie tumble-down bricks ami mortar on it. Both were keen hands nt a bargain, and lioth were dearly fond of a good investment. Holly Row had proved n noble investment for each of them. The wretched tenements were let out in KK>m». and brought in a far higher rent than wholesome houses of the same class, let in the ordinary fashion, would have done. There was a Board of Commissioner* in the town, whose obvious duty U was to see that this rookery was cleared: but it was not held fair or neighborly fqr the l>oard to go poking its nose too closely into people's private busiMcsa. Mr. Lowther was not only n private citizen of repute, but a personage •enow ned in religious circles, and so good a man was safely to Im* left to his own way Of business; Howarth was known |o be warm, and vyns naturally respected knew

he that is down may have a fall in fear. He had been slack in payment always, being of a feeble and sickly constitution, and now the payments stopped altogfllr er. Howarth was not the man to str.id this sort of nonsense, and having never been slothful in business, went in person to superintend the non-paying tenant's eviction. The non-paying tenant lay on a dirty mattress on the floor, and though the day sweltering hot, and hotter in that damp and breathless shelter than in most places, he was shivering under a foul and- ragged blanket. Mr. Howarth disgustedly remarked within himself that there was fio stlt-k of furniture about the place which could have realized a six--pouoo. -He fiftgerM-hi*-seirfs-mrd -stroked his chin between his thumb and forefinger, and looked extremely large and important. "About that there rent. Millard? Eh? Come now. About that there rent?" "I ain't got as much as a single penny.” said the defaulting tenant. "Oh!" said Howarth. “That bein' the case, you'll have to'get out o’ this.” "Why,” returned the defaulting creditor, shivering, and staring at him with uninterested eyes, "I can’t move a foot, nor yet hardly a finger." “You’ll have to move foot and finger,” said the landlord, magisterially. “Out you go.” He had no idea he was brutal. It never entered into his mind to ask himself whether he were acting well in the matter or not. The room in -which the defaulting tenant lay was John Howarth's property. If-the tenant could not find the weekly rent he had no right to stay tiiere. Nothing could be . more obvious, and the advancement of any consideration outside the plain facts of the case would have looked like an alisurdity. "1 ought to ha’ gone to the workus,” said the shivering creature on the floor; “but the new one ain't finished building yet. an’ the old tin's full.” "Well,” returned Howarth, "that's no affair o’ mine.- Out you go.” "Wheer?” asked the tenant. Howarth looked at him in a little genuine surprise. “Why, what affair is that o’ mine?” The man rolled , over as if the discussion bored., him, as perhaps it did, and drew the tattered blanket a little higher. Howarth stooped and pulled it off him—not violently, but businesslike, as if therb had been nothing at all there but the blanket. ■'t !omo along!” ■ , lir "Mister,” said the tenant, shivering rather more violently than before, "I can't set one foot afore another.” The landlord rolled up the blanket into an untidy bundle and threw it downstairs. ’ "Come along!” he said again. He was not violent or harsh in manner, but simply and purely businesslike. He was looking after his own interests, and that is a thing which every man has an undoubted right to do. He got his arms around the man. and being himself stiffly built and sturdy, lifted the skeleton frame easily enough to its feet. Then he helped him, neither kindly nor unkindly, but as if he were deporting a crate or "an armchair, out of the room and down the stairs and set him outside the house, where he sat on the ground with his back against the wall, shivering in the hot sunlight. “Now,” said Howarth, mopping at his forehead, "I'll speak a word to the relieving officer as 1 chance to be passin’ this afternoon. I've got two applications for that room, and one on ’em ’ll be in this afternoon.”

“Gi’ me my blanket; I’ve got the shivers deadly.” Howarth gave the man his blanket and marched in the next house. A dozen slatternly women stood with hands under llieir aprons, or tying up wisps of disordered hair, while they looked on at such part of this scene as was enacted in the open air, but tio one of them said anything, or seemed to think anything, and Howarth himself, having with his own hands secured his own rights, went from house to house, and chamber to chamber, looking bigger ami more magisterial than common. It reached his ears casually, a day or two later, that there were two or three cases of typhoid in Holly How, and one of two in the workhouse infirmary, and he was aware, without associating the facts together, that he himself was feeling very strange and queer. He thought he would go home and have a cup of tea and go to bed. His wife was a little alarmed for him, but not much. She herself was Buffering from the same symptoms, though apparent in a slighter degree. and was satisfied to attribute them to the unusual heat of the weather. But next day neither of them was able to rise, and the doctor being called in had looked grave and shook his head. Typhoid fercr. Both cases very bad. He took the news to Mary, who received it ns if it ba<l been a punishment for her own hardness to her parents. She hardly knew of what to accuse herself, and yet an inward voice of accusation seemed to spenk. She might have been more yielding, more submissive, less bitter in her thoughts. And now her father Mssl mother were dangerously ill, rihl< be dying, mid though, had they in liealth, the feud could hardly Me known any healing, nature spoke BgH mid would have way. How desolate lonely life would seeni if this unfather mid luimotlierly mother and left her alone in the world! very living, even though they were p from her and she from them. a something after nil. Bhe the school mid hastened home. tier mother, recognizing

when delufi.rti came the memory of late days seemed blotted out of it, and their daughter’s yoice nnd hand could soothe them when every other sound and touch seemed to wound bruised brain and suffering body. They were blinded merciTully front their own anger, and remembered her only by a kindly instinct. The fever ran much the same-course with Howarth and his wife, and so .since it b.ad touched him earlier he came out of the delirium and found himself upon the. fatal plain of calm the sooner. The room was dim and cool, and Mary was moving noiselessly about the place. A hollow voice—the mere specter of a voice —-addressed her. "That you, Polly?”

She to the bedside. and smoothed the clothes nnd pillows with a hand that trembled. It neared his cheek and be nestled upon it, rolling his head over to one side and holding the cool hand prisoner there like a child, She let it stay. It was the first caress he had offered her for many nnd many a day which had not seemed purely mechanical. A tear started at either eye and dropped heavily upon his fate. Ho looked up at her with eyes like a bird’s —so large and bright. "Art a good wench,” he said.

He nestled down updn the hand again, and seemed to fall asleep. She watched him long, while in tlie unnatural attitude in which she stood cramps began to rack and twist her. but she would not move whilst there seemed any danger of dis--hwbi-Hfr-W+m- A t -length,--Httlw-byHtttie, she withdrew and left him in unchanged attitude. Then creeping to her own room she let Iter heart haVe vent in natural tears. Love was back again. There was something left to live for. but it seemed for a time as if the pain of it wore greater than the joy. And John Howarth slept with his fathers. and for an hour or two no one discovered that ife was gone.

Then little more than a day later hia wife followed him without knowing of it, and the girl was alone again. Everything they had owned came to their daughter, ami for a while Mary left the places ami then coming back resumed her school, though she no longer lin'd need of it, except for heart's food. She must have somebody to care for. so she cared for her children, nnd but for their society led a life very solitary and quiet. She bought Mr. Lowther's share of Holly Row. and pulled the old place down, and took advice about draining the hind and building decent cottages there. Winter was coming by this time, nnd the weather was unseasonable for the sprt of operations which were contemplated, but site walked one evening with a contractor who had in -early days been in partnership with her father to look nt the place, and to hear his proposals. His business carried him farther, and when .he had his talk out he bade her good-by. and left her. She stood ‘a while in the midst of the ruins which as yet were but half removed, and then set out to walk through the wintry twilight homo. The gas-lit town glimmered before her, and the. keen frosty air .made motion a pleasure. She was in a State-oLunusual hopefulness and brightness. Duty done and being done, and all the little cares and tender interests of daily life were drawing her baek to the interest in life which is natural to youth. She thought of these things, and surrendered herself to the new influences half gladly and half regretfully. She reached her own door ami rang there. The rosy maid was taken into service again, and opened the door to her. Mary was passing upstairs with a cheerful "Thank you” when the maid touched her tremblingly. “What is it?” Mary asked her. “If you please, ma’am,” said the maid, "Mr. Hackett's here. He's asleep ma'am." ' • (To be continued.)