Bellefonte, Pa., September 23, 1921.
SE ————
BEACH MUSINGS.
The sands are crowded with little ones,
And they run and work and play,
They dig trenches deep with loopholes for
guns,
Build castles rugged and gray;
There are pictures and drawings, queer
and strange,
And walls that stand tall and thin,
A baseball field, and a rifle range,
And then—the tide comes in.
mss
Do they weep or grieve at the ruin deep
Which they find when they come next
day?
No; each girl and boy has a shout of joy
At the sand, swept clean for play.
Our lives are crowded with little cares,
And we worry, awake or asleep;
We are always climbing up endless stairs,
Or digging in darkest deep.
There are and
awakes
As mighty tasks we begin,
great ambitions, hope
There are burdens and troubles and sad | farm. Hettie managed the field work | Turley told herself.
mistakes,
And then—our God steps in.
Should we fail to speak, or let faith grow
weak
Because our plans have gone wrong ?
No; we claim the clean page for a herit-
age,
And begin the new day with a song.
—H, H, Spooner.
«© — _—
“TWO WOMEN AT A MILL.”
Old Hettie Featherly tramped down
the steep path to her spring-house, a
bucket of milk in her hands. An up-
standing, hewn frame of a woman,
stubborn of sinew, with a face like 2
storm under hair not yet gray in spite
of her fifty years, Hettie marched
dominantly when she moved, like an
army with banners.
The spring-house was old and built
of mossy stone, and creepers had made
it beautiful. Pennyroyal and spear
mint, lush with the crowding growth |
of spring, made green cushions along
lence maddened old Hettie more than
insults would have done.
For two years Hettie Featherly and
Turley had lived alone in the old
. Featherly house, hating each other as
‘only two women who have loved the
, same man can hate; abiding in sullen
- silence for days, broken only by the
' rending of quarrels, sharp and
| as lightning.
| By the will of Hume Featherly the
! farm belonged to Turley, his widow.
! But his mother’s dower right gave her
| a leasehold over it until her death.
| Neither would leave, neither give way
| to the other. Turley, frail as a feath-
er, with a perpetual, bewildered fright
in her young eyes, clung to the farm
with a dumb, steely stubbornness
which resisted the acrid venom of her
mother-in-law’s tongue. Friendless
and shy, it is likely that Turley’s fear
of the great, grinding, unknown world
was stronger than her dislike for Het-
tie Featherly. 3
Hettie, who had come to the place a
bride, daily announced her intention
of remaining until she was carried
away in mortuary pomp.
By an unspoken agreement, the
feud between the two women was not
i allowed to hinder the work on the
| and the stock. Turley kept the house,
| working doggedly in spite of her weak
. body; gardened and managed the poul-
try. If anything was sold, they divid-
| ed the money scrupulously, penny for
penny. Hettie kept her high oak bed-
stead by the sitting-room stove. Tur-
ley climbed the stairs to the icy cham-
ber where the sun came in but seldom
in winter and spring. They ate in si-
lence, sitting opposite each other at
the kitchen table,
ed front, proud and repellant. Their
mutual antipathy was their own affair,
and if a field hand or an obliging
neighbor suspected their animosity,
they wisely kept silence. The fame of
old Hettie’s wrath had gone abroad,
and though there were people who
vaguely pitied Turley, there was none
bold enough to say so.
Hettie bounced the churn dasher
with a sulky thud. “I reckon,” she
sald sourly, “that Strong Bailey’s got
a reason for ridin’ that boundary
lane!”
the little stream. A song-sparrow,
tremulous upon a hackberry bush,
spun himself out in a thread of music
hike opals strung on silver. But Het-
tie Featherly halted neither to listen
nor to see. .
She crushed the passionate mint un-
der her broad shoes as she stalked
across the little plank bridge and flung
open the spring-house door. The poé)
hid in the heart of the dark little
house, shimmering like a moss agate,
beaded like absinthe, was to her a util-
itarian thing only, good to keep the
milk cool and hatefully certain to roil
muddily in rainy weather.
Poetry of soul, even of that instinct-
ive, inarticulate kind which thrills
mutely when dogwoods set white hai-
lequin balloons afloat in the solemn
cathedral woods, was as foreign to
Hettie Featherly as the occult. Beau-
ty, in her stern creed, was married to
vanity, and vanity was conceived of
sin. Pennyroyal was good for fevers,
but birds—a vagabond set refusing to
eat potato bugs and gorging instead
on the berry rows of the widows and
fatherless—were good for nothing!
Stooping, her gaunt bulk filling the
little, chill room, Hettie strained the
milk and began to skim the crocks :
which stood knee-deep in the cold wa- !
ter. Her movements were brisk, mas- |
culine, resentful. Hettie Featherly
was always savage in the springtime.
Spring was a thing of youth, and
youth reminded her of Turley Feath-
erly, her daughter-in-law, whom she
hated. Spring reminder her, too, of
Hume, her one son, husband of Tur-
ley. Hume had been killed in the
spring, two years ago now. Shot like
a mad dog in his own field, and left to
die with the curling crest of a new-
turned furrow under his head.
Strong Bailey had done that!
Youngest, boldest, handsomest of all
the handsome devil’s-breed of Bai-
leys, Strong had shot Hume Featherly
in a dispute over a cattle pond. Het-
tie plunged the skimmer into the
cream vindictively, as though the ivo-
ry breast of it had been the throat of
her enemy. Strong Bailey had come
clear in the courts. They had found
a knife in the fingers of Hume—who
had carried a knife since he could
open the blade!
But Hettie, abiding by no jury ver-
dict, hung Strong vengefully in her
heart every day. And in the spring,
when remembrance was bitter upon
her, she hung beside him upon her
tragic gibbet the frail, wistful body
of her daughter-in-law, Turley.
Turley had been the core of it, Het-
tie told herself for the thousandth
time. There had been quarrels before
Hume drained the cattle pond—hot
words, recriminations, threats. The
Baileys were a dark, passionate race
of men, fearing nothing. Strong Bai-
ley had cursed on the day that Turley
married Hume Featherly. There
were people who had heard him. Tur-
ley, with her eyes like blue glass and
her yellow hair, was to blame! :
And now Strong Bailey, magnifi-
cent in his youthful insolence, was rid-
ing, the boundary lane again. Hettie
had seen him that morning as she
came to the spring-house.
With the crock of cream balanced
upon her hip, she marched up the
gravelly rise to the farmhouse. A red
cow, almost as gaunt and tragic of
countenance as Hettie herself, thrust
her head over the gate and bawled a
maternal reproach, but Hettie did not
raise her eyes. She strode into the
kitchen and thumped the churn down
on the floor.
“I seen that feller again this morn-
ing,” she announced with sinister ac-
cent.
Turley Featherly, young and wispy,
with skin a trifle too white and chest
a bit sunken, sat by the window cut-
ting the eyes out of sprouting pota-
toes. Hettie flung her searchin look,
tightened her mouth sternly, and jerk-
ing the churn dasher down from the
shelf, scalded 4it briefly with a fling of
boiling water and dropped it into the
cream. Then she began to churn with
quick upliftings of her wrists, brown
and fleshless as the forelegs of a colt.
Turley gouged juicy circles from the
potatoes, her small thumbs muddy.
Her face was expressionless. Her si-
Turley trimmed a potato elaborate-
ly. There was a faint twitching at the
corners of her lips, but her face kept
its contrelled look of utter apathy.
Hettie grew dark with fury, goaded
by the girl's indifference. “if Strong
Bailey wasn’t encouraged by some-
body, he wouldn't dast to ride my
boundaries!”
Turley fook up the one challenge
which never failed to rouse her. “This
farm belongs to me. Anybody can!
ride by it that wants to. I ain't got
any objections.”
Hettie’s gaunt countenance grew
deadly.
“No,” she cried, “you ain’t got no
objections. If it wasn’t for me, I
itter | d
To outsiders they presented a unit- :
very dim, with only a feather of smoke
to mark it, and Turley, looking at it,
felt something strong and reckless stir
in her heart. Something that was
drugged by day until this hour and
which was prone to wake at twilight
and whisper folly as drugged things
0.
The whispering recklessness was
her own hidden discontent, and the
voice of it grew every day a iittle
bolder. The distant town wore a
glamour of mystery; the appeal of it
was the lure of a thing unknown,
wonderful and fearful and, Turley sur-
mised, slightly wicked. It was her
pride which fought with this amazing
temptation, the pride that held her
ing hate of her mother-in-law.
The youth in her smothered and
browbeaten and weary, longed to run
fast and far, to close the door of the
stormy Featherly house with one
forceful, final slam. But the metal in
her would not yield. Her weariness
of old Hettie and of their eternal
bickering was keener than her hate
and more corrosive, but neither could
bend her obstinate pride.
“If 1 go, she’ll say she run me off!”
“She’ll glory in
I ain’t going to run off—
lit forever.
| yet!”
| She sat by the window until the '
| brief day was beginning to pale and
i the sun to be quenched. She heard the
| cOWs come in, bumping their bony
hips against the stalls. It was milk-
ing time, yet she was loath to leave
her place of peace. Somehow she
dreaded to move, dreaded the renew-
' al of the everlasting nag and tension,
| dreaded the pettiness of the tasks she
must do.
She was tired now,
Her skin felt hot and d
rose up, there was a strange sense of
lightness about her, and she drew a
deep, steadying breath, he: hands
i clenched. Then the breath hissed over
her teeth suddenly.
Strong Bailey was riding the bound-
ary lane. Like the King of Darkness,
imperious, handsome in a dark, inso-
lent fashion, he rode his chestunt mare
slowly. His wide hat was tilted back
over his dark hair. His eyes roved
over the muddy Featherly fields. Tur-
ley’s small fingernails bit into her
palms. Strong was magnificent to
look at—a glowing, virile animal.
But she was not looking at him. She
was looking at the kitchen door, It
stood open a little way, and in the nar-
row shadow of it she saw the black
bonnet of Hettie Featherly and the
blue of her apron. And she knew that
Hettie’s grim hands were clenched
about the cold barrel of Hume's heavy
shotgun.
Fleetly, as a frightened yellow kit-
ten might run, Turley flew across the
mow. She dropped down the ladder
with one spring. A gaunt red cow
barred her way in the back door, but
she shoved her away roughly and sped
ry. When she
reckon Strong Bailey could tie his
horse to the block and cross my |
threshold! You—that ain’t got no re- |
spect for the dead in their graves! It :
was you with your doll face and your
pretty, triflin’ ways that put my son
in his casket and made my house des-
olate! Now you sit there so meek—
cuttin’ your eye out the winder to see
him ride up the hill—the murderer!” i
Turley’s small chin went up a trifle. |
There was something grim about her,
something that gave her the air of a |
thing made of resilient metal and i
painted with pale-pink paint. She |
hated Strong Bailey as thoroughly as |
Hettie did, but the baiting of her |
mother-in-law was the only thrill in
her drab, dreary life. It gave her a |
sense of power, and because there was |
nothing better or nobler in her life |
she enjoyed this power. Turley had ;
never been very happy, and she had
never quite forgiven Hume Featherly
for being so much like his mother. |
“I ain’t wantin’ to look at men,” she
declared coldly. “But if I did, you ;
couldn’t stop me!” |
“No,” said Hettie tragically, “I;
couldn’t—nor nobody else. You'd!
brazen it out—just like you're doin’
now! What does Strong Bailey come !
ridin’ up my lane for—and settin’ on ;
his horse lookin’ over my land like he i
was the King of Darkness? What's |
he lookin’ for?” |
Turley shrugged silently. She rose i
up, brushed the dust from her apron,
and going to the sink, washed her |
hands and wrung a-wet cloth to lay
over the cut potatoes.
Hettie gave the churn a gathering |
swish. “I just got this to say,” she
cried angrily, tilting her black sun- |
bonnet with a bony hand, her eyes |
glowing in the shadow of it. “If
“All right,” returned Turley dully
picking up the two buckets. “Go o
and shoot him. I expect the gun is
loaded!”
She opened the door and went out,
closing it listlessly behind her.
tie halted her churning to listen. She
the stairs to the cellar, heard the
thump of the buckets on the floor.
Then Turley came up again and cross-
ed the yard. Standing well back from
the window, old Hettie watched the
girl enter the barn.
“Goin’ up in the mow where she can
see out the winder,” she muttered to
herself. “Pity them Bailey’s ain’t got
her instead of Hume.” She said this
every day like an office, and every day
she said it with more bitterness.
“There she is—up in the mow. I can
see her apron. Watchin’ the Bailey
place. Watchin’ to see him come rid-
in’ out like the King of Darkness!”
She gave the churn a savage twist,
and a wash of buttermilk slapped over
her wrist. She wiped it off mechan-
ically with her apron. The apron was
clean, but for once she did not care for
that.
In the mow, where the dusty stale-
ness of winter was gilded with the
slanting gold of the April sun, Turley
Featherly sat on a sack of corn and
looked across the brown, stubbled
fields and the orchards, still black and
misty.
She was not looking at the Bailey
farm where a white house sprawled
dominantly among barns of new red.
She scarcely thought of the Baileys,
least of all of Strong, the younger,
who looked at her so
looking far beyond, where the hills
crowded against the sky and the light
“HEA
: on her face and the
| that made Turley burn
Strong Bailey sets a foot on my land, i comin’, She’s crazy!
I'll shoot him like he was a varmint!” | gun!
nl ac
Het- |
ST. |
across the miry barnyard to the orch-
ard. Once behind the fence among
the trees and old Hettie could not sea
her from the house.
“There’s been enough killin’,” gasp-
ed Turley to herself as she ran,
“There’s. been enough blood o= this
ground!” r
She was sated with tragedy, worn
with horror and misery. She told
Lerselt that she could not stand any
more. She could not endure the sight
of another man writhing horribly in
a welter of blood and earth. She was
too tired, too spent, too curiously
buoyant and dazed. And she had seen
Hettie Featherly once bring down a
hawk in the orchard, cleanly, without
a falling feather! She had to get to
the boundary fence first!
1
The orchard was muddy, and the
mud clung to her broken shoes and
made her slip. She could see old Het-
tie now, marching militantly dowh the
lane, her head very high, the tremor
of her madness setting her gaunt old
body a-quiver,
“She’s crazy!” declared Turley to
herself. “She’s crazy wild. There
ain’t goin’ to be no more killin’ on this
place!”
She reached the fence and crashed
weakly against it. Her head felt
light and strangely detached from her
shaking body. Her voice sounded hol-
low and alien as she shouted warning
to Strong Bailey, who rode slowly a
dozen yards away. He heard her and
wheeling, kicked his horse and trotted
nearer. He looked at her, at the flush
glitter in her eyes,
ate, arrogant smile
with resenting
and smiled an intim
fury.
“Get away!” she shrieked at him.
“She’s a-comin’. Mis’ Featherly’s
She’s got a
You get out of our lane.”
Strong turned slowly and looked
ross the field toward the weather-
beaten Featherly house where the
lurching figure of the old woman was
silhouetted grimly against the twilight
$y. Then he laughed aloud, and the
au
: Featherly had cursed and dared him.
! He had laughed like that when Hume
{ had fallen, horribly!
| “You get away!” shrilled Turley
' desperately. “You get back on your
: own land—and don’t you ride up here
‘no more!”
! But Strong Bailey swung down
from the saddle audaciously and came
+ on foot to the fence, the mare follow-
ing. “You're a pretty thing,” he said
I as he laid his arms on top of the rail.
| “You sure are pretty when you're
“mad!”
| Turley leaped back tensely. “Leave
| me alone!” she cried. “I hate you. I
could—kill you—myself!”
The man smiled. It was a slow
| smile, like a caress. “Could you?” he
'asked carelessly. “Look here.” He
(drew a blue, slender gun from his
pocket and handed it across the fence.
| “Go ahead and do it, then. Hold it
! steady!”
| fingers recoiled from the pistol as
pulse seized her, and she snatched it
swiftly, and turning, flung it far into
She oreliard where it thudded into the
mud.
“I ain’t going to have any more kill-
ing!” she announced, in a strange, dry
voice.
Before the man could move, she had
, climbed the fence swiftly and was run-
ning down the lane. She ran uncer-
|
lay longest. There was a town there,
stubbornly unmoved before the scorn-
always tired.
gh turned Turley cold as ice. He :
heard Turley’s footsteps going down | had laughed like that when Hume
|
| The girl drew back horrified. Her
though it had been flame. Then an im- !
old Hettie in a plunging collision
which sent the older woman reeling
backward. Turley snatched at the
shotgun, and the two struggled for it,
stumbling about in the mud, breathing
in sobbing, furious gasps, twisting,
clinging, each trying to wrest the
black barrel from the other.
Suddenly Turley’s small teeth bit
into Hettie’s sinewy wrist. With 2
cry the other woman jerked back, and
swift as a flash the girl wrenched the
gun away and swung it viciously
above a boulder by the fence. It came
down with a crash, the stock splinter-
ed, the barrel bent.
“I ain’t going to have no more kill-
ing,” repeated Turley monotonously.
“Hussy!” shrilled old Hettie fur-
‘iously as the girl threw the ruined
gun over the fence. “Brazen hussy!”
But Turley did not hear. Without
a backward look she turned doggedly
toward the house. She was tired,
achingly tired. Her head felt strange
and fevered. She ached to lie down
and never get up any mor- She won-
dered dazedly if she might rest for a
little in the shelter of the trampled
i strawstack. The house was so far—
so far! She staggered blindly and
twice she fell, striking her palms in
the mud. Somehow she reached her
i clean, cold bed and fell across it.
Old Hettie, having fumed away her
wrath overnight, found Turley in the
morning. The girl lay inert, her mud-
dy heels on the spotless counterpane,
her little,
the cold room. Hettie, who had sulk-
red all night in futile solitude, rolled
the girl over and regarded the glazed
strangeness of her eyes with no trace
‘of relenting. )
“If you've caught the chills with
your tantrums, it serves you right,”
she said grimly. “Get your clothes off
like 2 Christian! I'll make yer some
hoarhound tea when I git the miikin’
done!”
When the milk was strained in the
spring-house, and every crock meticu-
lously skimmed, and the calves fed,
oid Hettie found Turley still across
her bed, her drabbled gingham skirt
rumpled under her. Hettie looked at
her, baffled. The Featherlys had nev- |
er been sick. Hume’s father had drop-
ped dead, turning a cider press. Het-
tie had no instinct for nursing. In her
mind illness was linked with shiftless-
ness and other vices. She pulled off
the girl’s shoes and unfastened her
i clothes. :
“Pore as a snake!” she snapped as
hest and
' she noted Turley’s sunken c
bulging collar bones.
! It was raining outside, and a raw,
‘friendless chill stole in around the
windows and made the old woman’s
hands clumsy. Awkwardly she dress- |
ed the fevered, muttering girl in a
starched cotton nightgown and rolled
her between icy sheets. Then she
marched down stairs to the warm
kitchen, a stern and virtuous tightness
about her mouth. It was all of a piece |
for Hume's wife to take the chills now |
with planting time coming and |
to tend to! Shameless piece—talking
! over the fence to Strong Bailey as
, bold as brass!
i
i
ambs
idea so insidious, so arresting, that she
let the hoarhound mixture boil over
on the immaculate stove. She thrust
it out of her mind swiftly, startled. '
Hettie Featherly was hard with the
narrow, beaten hardness which grows
out of solitude and the relentlessness
of an iron code of duty, but she was
not a wicked woman. Yet the thought
came seeping back persistently, and a
certain perverse niche in her brain
harbored it.
Sick people died! Ignorant as Het-
tie was, she knew Turley was desper-
ately sick.
Dutifully, as though her pious soul
sought to do battle with the evil sug-
gestion, she strained the hoarhound
tea and rendered it palatable with su-
‘gar. Then she carried it up to the
cold room and forced spoonfulls of it
between the girl’s hot, twitching lips.
Turley was babbling now, and com-
plaining about a pain. So Hettie con-
cocted a hot poultice of bran and on-
ions and put it on the sick girl’s chest.
Then she tramped out to feed, but the
sly, sinister thought went with her.
It troubled her peace, so that when a
pitchfork elattered down in the mow,
she trembled as though an accusation
had been hurled at her.
That night Hettie could not sleep,
though she ached with weariness. Tur.
ley’s breathing had grown stertorious,
and the rasp of it drifted down the
stairs. The cat, forgotten, mewed re-
proachfully on the cellar door, and
two calves, accustomed to Turley’s
wheedling ways, had upset their buck-
"ets of feed and bawled hungrily. The
house was still with the hollow, wait-
ing stillness that made Hettie lie stiff
and chilled in her bed, listening in
spite of herself for sounds from up-
stairs—for the monotonous breathing
or a faint, delirious chatter.
Sick people died! By midnight Het-
tie was drawn with a taut fear which
had in it the sickening heaviness of
guilt. She told herself angrily that it
was not her fault that Hume's wife lay
gasping above. But the fear persist- |
8 and here Sogness orease tl, os | the boundary lane that separated the |
kets and lighted a lamp. A gaunt
shaking old specter in white, with a
plaid shawl over her shoulders, she
stirred the coals in the stove and put
on more wood. - Then she climbed the
stairs.
Turley lay low in the bed, lips part-
‘ed, eyes sunken. The chill of the
room made Hettie’s teeth rattle. Rain,
the searching, icy deluge of early
' spring, swished cheerlessly against the
ma clapboards and battered on the
roof.
Hettie looked at the sick girl spec-
ulatively. Turley was light—pitiful-
ly light. She slipped a brown, stringy
arm under the frail shoulders and lift-
ed Turley as though she had been a
child. Breathlessly she staggered with
, with her down the steep stairs. The
room below was warm, and she laid
the girl in her own bed. The wispy
body sank gratefully into the warmth
, of the feathers. Dressing herself, Het-
| tie sat down grimly in the high-back-
ed rocker, her black sunbonnet nod-
ding as she dezed.
For three nights Hettie Featherly
sat in that rocker, keeping her stern
vigil, while Turley battled for breath
transparent fingers stained '
with earth and burning like flames in
A thought occurred to Hettie—an '
ees teeeeee— | ]
tainly, as one bewildered, and she met ' and moaned with pain. Her emaciat-
led body grew hourly more ethereal as
| the fever consumed it. By day Het-
tie tramped, tramped back and forth
| down the gravelly slope to the spring-
‘house where the stream was roiled
{ with the rains and the butter floated
unheeded, out to the lot, where the be-
i wildered cows paced half-tended, and
| then back to the house to wait tense-
ily at the door for the sound of that
| anguished breath. Each rasp of it
| sounded in Hettie’s tormented old ears
‘like a reprieve for her own soul. It
' was as if her treacherous thought had
!inveigled death into the house and she
| was made a reluctant conspirator with
! grim terror.
| She grew haggard and her militant
body sagged. A nagging cough tr.u-
i bled her, and she brewed pennyroyal
[tea for that. There were doctors in
| the town, but Hettie dreaded and dis-
| trusted them. She made poultices
| doggedly, and kept fires at night, and
briefly dis
| offered help.
! From him, however, she gathered a
drop of comfort. There was a sight
'of sickness around, he told her. Peo-
'ple were dying like fiies—there had
been nine buryings in Bethel grave-
vard that week. Hettie distilled 2a
ba
| her smarting conscience.
not help it if people died.
not help it if Turley died.
“You wanted her to die!” accused a
voice within her. “You wanted
farm—alone!”
Alone! A house so hollowly still
She could
She could
that the footsteps of a prowling cat ble ery.
missed the field hand who |
Im from this with which to salve
,at him as he straig
the then he heard a voice
’
of his own pistol was still indented in
the mud in spite of the rains, past the
boulders of the fence where Hume
Featherly’s shotgun lay, broken and
rusted, until he gainad the miry yard
and the trampled stac
Here he waited, but there was no
challenge, no shrill voice evicting him
furiously. A calf penned in a shed
bleated in dreary woe, and he could
hear horses tramping, but there was
no sign of the two women. :
Strong leaped down and tethered
the mare to the barn door. Then he
saw Hettie Featherly. With the bri-
dle across her body, she lay in the
shadow between the wheels of the
. wagon. Her black bonnet had fallen
off, and her haggard face was upturn-
ed in the straw with the cleansed pal-
lor of peace upon it. Her mouth was
softened with a smile of absolved con-
tent. She was dead. Her hands,
Juicing the bridle, were already
chill.
Strong Bailey, who had slain a man
iand laughed, stood up a bit white
about his lips, and took off his hat.
Hettie had been a woman hewn of
iron, but so worn was she that the
man lifted her easily. He carried her
into the kitchen, treading softly in the
oppressive silence, and laid her on a
lounge in the corner. The house was
cold and still. A cat, curled on the
quilt for warmth, leaped up and spit
htened Hettie’s
cramped hands across her breast. And
e calling through
| the hollow house.
, thundered through the rooms! A '
house so empty that the dust swam
giddily in wide spaces, possessing it as ' A
| dust possesses a place forsaken! No
footsteps moving lightly in the kitch-
en. No door closed softly. No sound
of quarreling, no disputes, no more
the monotonous satisfaction of elabo-
rating her own angry harangue! Only
stillness and that labored breath—and
when it ceased—
“No! No!” screamed old Hettie
' Featherly aloud in panic. She turn-
ed and fled from the house, haunted
“Mother!” It was a hoarse and fee-
“Mother!”
Strong tiptoed into the other room,
The air was icy, and the stove cold.
night and a dragging day had pass-
ed since Hettie Featherly had stag-
gered out of the house, herself al-
ready smitten to death. Sunk in the
wide bed, her face so transparent and
wasted that her eyes looked out of it
like cornfiowers blooming in a skull,
Turley Featherly lay and stared at
him. Strong saw that she had been
, by that accusing voice cut to the mow |
where the spring sun came in warmly
and where the window looked out upon
brown fields and orchards black and
| misty—and upon far hills, where the
i light lay long and where a feather of
{ smoke plumed to the sky. There Het-
| tie leaned against a rafter and looked
; off into the kindling sky as though ab-
i solution burned like a holy candle in ,
, that sanctuary of gold and amethyst
and dying rose.
. She felt old, suddenly old and deso-
| late. The white house sprawling dom-
inantly among the Bailey barns seem-
‘ed very far away, and in between lay
the width of appalling loneliness. The
belligerent, self-sufficiency which had
{upheld her for fifty years seemed
{crumbling into a whimpering weak-
| ness. She was afraid—afraid of be-
ing alone—afraid of her own warped
and bittered soul!
She crept back into the house end
‘halted at the door to listen. Turley
was still breathing hoarsely. Hettie
; prodded the fire into life and boiled
: water fiercely. Until midnight she
i worked without. slackening, fighting
that failing breath, fairly dragging
each labored, ragged respiration from
the girl’s sunken chest. Then Turley
began to writhe with pain, and Hettie
sank dispiritedly into her chair. She
did not know that her frantic efforts
were opening seared, choked cells in
and that the battle was agony.
i “She’s a-goin’,” whispered Hettie to
herself. “It ain’t no use—she’s a dy-
in.”
She slumped exhaustedly, a piteous
i brown huddle topped by a shuddering
black bonnet. Her head throbbed dul-
‘ly. She had been so many nights
; without sleep. And though the spring
i night was warm and the stove glow-
! ed, she quaked in every muscle with a
| biting, clammy cold. “She was old—
| old and lonely and worn with the war-
iring of a storm soul. She was tired
: with such weariness that her very
limbs cried out in protest, and yet her
i tortured conscience goaded her on.
I “I've got to get a doctor,” sh
[Te got to fetch—somebody!”
| lantern. The kitchen fire was nearl
| out, but she did
lit. Groping, she reached the barn and
y
the girl's lungs, that healing oxygen
. was fighting the devouring of disease,
i
1
e said. K
not wait to replenish !
‘fought back the heavy sliding doors. |
The high old buggy, seldom used in
winter, stood behind a farm wagon,
ithe shafts fastened to the beams
above. She climbed up weakly and
struggled with the fastenings.
i teeth were chattering, and her hands
shook.
laprobe and sat in the buggy, the bri-
dle across her knees, waiting for the
chill to pass. Her head fell backward
with a jar, but she jerked upright,
fighting a smothering desire to sleep.
A pain like a tightening band was
girdling her body, shortening her
breath. She gripped the bridle and
slid stiffly out of the buggy.
She would ride the black
would be warmer riding. S
! cold—so cold—
Strong Bailey, riding defiantly up
| Featherly orchard from the grazing
lands. of the Baileys, looked across the
Featherly lands, his brow furrowed.
Under the melting April sun the
place wore a deathly stillness. The
barn doors were open, but the stock
had not been turned out, though it was
i late afternoon.
beaten cabin in the bottoms, where the
hired hand lived, was bleakly still.
Strong knew that Thad Burnet, who
farmed the Featherly land, had died
that morning.
So was the Featherly house still.
There was no smoke, no stir, no open-
ed door, no blue apron flirted briefly
at the pump, no black bonnet moving
like a shadow toward the spring-
house. Strong Bailey sat still, his hat
tipped back, his dark, handsome face
troubled. Then with a sudden, plung-
ing movement he drove his chestnut
mare over the low rail fence into the
Featherly orchard, where little green
plants were spreading like tender
stars over the brown mud.
He rode slowly past the spot where
two years before Hume Featherly had
cursed him and called him a name in-
tolerable to the fighting Baileys. Past
.the limber-twig tree where the mark
She wrapped herself in the
|
mare. It we
he was so Straighten that
The little, weather-
very near to death and that her life
still flickered like a tiny flame in a
spent heap of white ashes.
“I want mother,” she said huskily.
Strong Bailey came of a dark, pas-
sionate race of strong men, fearless,
unscrupulous, but the piteous tragedy
of Hettie Featherly lay over his young
spirit like a blight. It showed in his
face. The girl, too weak to lift her
head, read it in his eyes, and her lips
parted in a weak, childish cry, that
made Strong Bailey’s throat swell and
choke.
“I want mother,” wailed Turley.
And something in the cry sweeten-
ed the bleak house of its sour and
stormy loneliness, crept on the relent-
ing April air through rooms made
squalid with quarrels, pumged away
the bitterness and the memory of bit-
terness. Love was in it, love which
levels dead, decaying hates so that
little sunny flowers may grow above
the stubble.
Strong Bailey, groping out of the
room because his eyes were dim, his
boyish insolence gone, his only
thought how quickest to fetch his
mother, saw that the quaver of Tur-
ley’s waking cry had reached the dull-
ed, dead ears of stern old Hettie
Featherly.
Very still and cold she lay. But on
her face was a smile—a mother smile!
—By Helen Topping Miller, in Centu-
ry Magazine.
eer EL
Marriage Licenses.
Charles R. Korman, Howard and
Myra C. Gummo, Port Matilda.
Charles F. Vonada, Zion, and Ethel
J. Kellerman, State College.
Thomas H. Hartswick and Sarah E.
Heckman, State College.
Charles G. Rimmey, Boalsburg, and
Esther R. Bitner, Centre Hall.
Earl R. Snavely, Clearfield, and
Frances Lucille Davis, Altoona.
Jay A. Smith and Doris A. Bryan,
Bellefonte.
John H. McCulle
an, Bellefonte.
Harry S. Spearly and Ethel
Brennan, Bellefonte.
Joseph H. Owens and Carrie R.
auffman, Zion.
Lawrence Jones and Eva Joyce
y and Ruth I. Bry-
M.
She staggered up and lighted the Gato Bellefonte.
STORMSTOWN.
George Loner, of Altoona, a veteran
of the Civil war, visited his son, Wil-
liam Loner, last week.
Mrs. William Baer and son Maurice,
Her of Philadelphia, are visiting Mrs.
Baer’s sister, Mrs. Alice Mong.
Miss Kate Walker and her aged
aunt, Miss Henrietta Hartswick, of
Williamsport, spent two weeks at
their old home here. On Saturday Dr.
Charles Walker and wife drove from
Williamsport and were accompanied
home by his aunt and sister.
MEDICAL.
Bent Back
No need to suffer from that tired,
dead ache in your back, that lameness,
those distressing urinary disorders.
Bellefonte people have found how to
get relief. Follow this Bellefonte res-
ident’s example.
Mrs. J. C. Johnson, 356 E. Bishop
St., Bellefonte, says: “I was a great
sufferer from kidney trouble. I could
hardly straighten up or get around
the house. I had dizzy spells and
nearly fell over. My kidneys acted
very irregularly. On the advice of a
“member of the family I got a box of
me, of kidney trouble.”
Doan’s Kidney Pills from the Green
Pharmacy Co. They did me more
good than anything I ever used and I
am now enjoying good health. Doan’s
cured me.”
Eleven years later, Mrs. Johnson
d “I am very glad to confirm
my former endorsement. No one
knows better than I what wonderful
benefit Doan’s have been. They cured
60c, at all dealers. Don't
simply ask for a kidney remedy—get
Doan’s Kidney Pills—the same that
Mrs. Johnson had. Foster-Milburn
Co., Mfrs., Buffalo, N. Y. 66-37