CHAPTER XXVil—Continued. “You're out of date,” this from the dealer in ranches. “You know the story that was going around about his be- ing an escaped convict, or something of that sort? It gets its ‘local color’ this morning. There's a sheriff here from back East somewhere—came In on the early train; name's Macauley, and he’s got the requisition papers. But Smith's fooled him good and plenty.” . Again the chorus united In an eager query. “How?” “He died last night—a little past midnight. They say they're going to bury him out at the dam—on the job that he pulled through and stood on its feet, One of Williams’ quarrymen drifted in with the story just a little while ago. I'm here to bet you even money that the whole town goes to the funeral.” “Great gosh!" sald the man who was crunching the burnt bacon. “Say, that’s tough, Bixby! I don't care what he'd run away from back East; he was a man, right. Harding has been telling everybody how Smith wouldn't let the posse open fire on that gang of hold-ups last Friday night; how he chased across on the dam stagings alone and unarmed to try to serve the warrants on 'em and make 'em stop firing. It was glorious, but It wasn't war.” a hard word. “Dead” had taken snap judgment on him and married somebody else! That's the woman of it!” “Oh, hold on, Stryker,” the ranch broker protested. “Don’t you get too fierce about that. There are two stringg to that bow, and the longest and sorriest one runs out to Colonel Baldwin's place on Little creek, I'm thinking. The Richlander business was only an incident. Stanton told me that much.” As the event proved, the seller of ranch lands would have lost his bet on the funeral attendance. For some un- known reason the notice of Smith's death did not appear In the afternoon papers, and only a few people went out in autos to see the coffin lowered by she mesa behind the construction camp; a grave among others where the victims of an early industrial ac- cident at the dam had been buried. Those who went out from town came back rather scandalized. There had been a most hard-hearted lack of the common formalities, they said; a cheap coffin, no minister, no mourners, not even the poor fellow’s business associates in the company he had fought so hard to save from defeat and extinction. It was a shame! With this report passing from lip to to the effect that Starbuck and Stili- ings had gone East with the disap- pointed sheriff, “to clear Smith's mem- ory,” as the street-talk had it, called forth no little comment. In the Hophra House cafe on the evening of the funeral day Stryker, the mining spec- ulator, was loud in his criticisms of the High Line people. “Yes!” he ralled; “a couple of ‘em will go on a junketing trip East to ‘clear his memory,” after they've let their ‘wops’ at the dam bury him like a yellow dog! And this Richlander woman; they say she'd known him ever since he and she were school kids together; she went down and poor devil.” » * . » - * . Three weeks of the matchless Au- gust weather had slipped by without incident other than the Indictment by the grand jury of Crawford Stanton, Barney M'Graw, and a number of oth- ers on a charge of conspiracy; and Williams, unmolested since the night of the grand battle in which Sheriff Harding had figured as the master of the hunt, had completed the great ditch system and was installing the machinery in the lately finished power house, Over the hills from the northern mountain boundary of the Timanyoni a wandering prospector had come with a vague tale of a new strike in Sunrise Gulch, a placer district worked out and abandoned twenty years earlier in the height of the Red Butte excite ment. Questioned closely, the tale- bringer confessed that he had no proof positive of the strike ; but In the hills he had found a well-worn trall, lately used, leading to the old camp, and from one of the deserted cabing In the gulch he had seen smoke arising. As to the fact of the trail the wan- dering sale-bearer was not at faull. On the most perfect of the latein- August mornings a young woman, clad in serviceable khaki, and keeping her cowboy headgear and buff top-boots In good countenance by riding astride in a man's saddle, was pushing her mount up the trail toward Sunrise Gulch. From the top of a little rise the ahan- doned camp came Into view, its heaps of worked-over gravel sprouting thick- ly wih tie wild growth of twenty t years, and its crumbling shacks, only one of which seemed to have survived in habitable entirety, scattered among the firs of the gulch. At the top of the rise the horsewom- an drew rein and shaded her eyes with a gantleted hand. On a bench beside the door on the single tenanted cabin a man was sitting, and she saw him stand to answer her hand-wave. 4 few minutes later the man, a gaunt youtig fellow with one arm in a sling and the pallor of a long confinement whitening his face and hands, was try- ing to help the horsewoman to dis- mount in the cabin dooryard, but she pushed him aside and swung out of the saddle unaided, laughing at him out of the slate-gray eyes and saying: “How often have I got to tell you that you simply can't help a woman out of a man’s saddle?” . The man smiled at that. “It's automatic,” he returned. “I shall never get over wanting to help you, I guess, Have you come to tell me that I can go?” Flinging the bridle reins over the head of the wiry little cow-pony which was thus left free to crop the short, sweet grass of the creek valley, the young worian led the man to the house bench and made him sit down. “You are frightfully anxious to go and commit suicide, aren't you?" she teased, sitting beside him. “Every time I come it's always the same thing: You're mot well yet." “I'm well enough to do what I've got to do, Corona ; and until it's done. « + «+ Besides, there is Jibbey.” “Where is Mr. Jibbey this morning?” | “He has gone up the creek, fishing. | I made him go. If I didn't take a club | to him now and then he'd hang over me all the time. There never was another man like him, Corona. And | at home we used to call him ‘the black | sheep’ and ‘the fallure,’ and cross the | street to dodge him when he'd been | drinking too much!” “He says you've made a man of him; that you saved his life when you | had every reason not to. You never! told me that, John.” i “No; I didn't mean to tell anyone. 3ut to think of his coming out here! to nurse me, leaving Verda on the | night he married her! A brother of | my own blood svouldn't have done it.” The young woman was looking up with a shrewd little smile, “Maybe | the blood brother would do even that, if you had just made it possible for him to marry the girl he'd set his | heart on, John.” i “Pile!” growled the man. And then: “Hasn't the time come when | you can tell me a little hore about | what happened to me after the doctor put me to sleep that night at the! dam?” | ‘Yes. The only reason you haven't | you ta» worry; we wanted you to have | a chance to get well and strong again.” | The mon's eyes filled suddenly, and | he took ne shame, He was still shaky | enough in nerve and muscle to ex-| cuse It. “Nobody ever had suc h| friends, Corona,” he sald. “You all] knew I'd have to go back to Lawrence ville and fight 1¢ out, and you didn't want me to go hangjicapped and half- dead. But how did they come to let you take me away? Fve known Mac- auley ever since I was ia knickers. He is not the man to take say chances" The young woman's laugh was soundless, “Mr. Macauléy wasn't nsked., He thinks you are dead,” she “What I" “It's so. You were not the only one wounded In the fight at the dam.| There were two others—two of] M'Graw's men. Three days later, just! “How Often Mave | Got to Tell You?” as coloneldaddy and Billy Starbuck were getting ready to steal you awny, one of the others died. In some way the report got out that you were the one who died, and that made every. thing quite easy. The report has never been contradicted, and when Mr. Macauley reached Brewster the police people told him that he war top late.” “Good heavens! Does everybody In Brewster think I'm dead?” Nearly everybody. But you needn't look so horrified. You're not dead, you know; and there were no obltu- aries In the newspapers, or anything ilke that.” The man got upon his feet rather unsteadily. “That's the limit,” he sald defini- tively. “I'm a man now, Corona; too much of a man, I hope, to hide behind another man's grave. I'm golng back to Brewster, today!” The young woman made a quaint little grimace at him. “How are you going to get there?’ she asked, “It's twenty miles, and the walking 1s aw- fully bad—in spots.” “But I must go. Can't you see what everybody will say of me?—that I was too cowardly to face the music when my time came? Nobody will be- lieve that I wasn't a consenting party to this hide-away!” “Sit down,” she commanded calmly ; and when he obeyed: “From day to day, since I began coming out here, John, I've been trying to rediscover the man whom I met just once, one evening over a year ago, at Cousin Adda's house in Guthrieville: I can't find him—he's gone.” “Corona !" he sald, ognized me?” “Not at first. But after a while things began to come back; and what you told me-—about Miss Richlander, you know, and the hint you gave me of your trouble—did the rest” “Then you knew-—or you thought—— I was a criminal? She nodded, and her gaze was rest. ing upon the nearby gravel “Cousin Adda wrote me. But made no difference. I didn't whether you had done the, things they sald you had, or not. What I did “Then you rec- that ing to get free, you?" ion, free, Corona. It began that night In Guthrieville when I stole one of your gloves; It wasn't anything you said; and lived. And out herey I was sim- ply 8 raw savage when fou first saw me, I had tumbled headlong into the abyss of the new and the elemental, and if I am trying to scramble out now on the side of honor and clean manhood, it Is chiefly because you have shown me the way.” “When did I ever, John? —with an almost wistful. “Always, and with a wisdom that makes me almost afraid of you. For example, there was the night when I was fairly on the edge of letting Jib- They are there now, and the wire says that Watrous Dunham has been arrest- ed and that he has broken down and confessed. You are a free man, John; you" The grass-cropping pony had widened its efrcle hy a full yard, and the westward-pointing shadows of the firs were growing shorter and more clearly defined as the August sun swung higher over the summits of the eastern Timanyonis, For the two on the house bench, time, having all its in- terspaces filled with beatific silences, had no measure that was worth record- ing. tervals It was the man who sald: wonderful, Corona, We call them hap- “Go Back Like a Man and Fight” as we may by the laws of chance, Was that threw us together at your cousin's house In Guthrieville a year ago last June?” She laughed happily, was—though I'd lke “1 suppose |t to .be | : | he wanted to: you lashed me with the one word that made me save his life instead of taking it. How did you “How do we know anything? she inquired softly. its own Inspiration. It broke my heart to see what you could be, and to think that you might not be after all, What are you going to do when yon are able to leave Sunrise Gulch?” “The one straightforward thing there is for me to do. 1 shall go back cine.” “And after that? “That is for you to say, Corona, Would you marry a convict?” “You are not gullty.” “That is neither here nor there, They will probably send me to prison, just the same, and the stigma will be mine to wear for the remainder of my life. I can wear it now, thank God! But to pass it on to you—and to your chil- degn, Corona . . « If I could get my own consent to that, you couldn't get yours.” . “Yen, I could, John; I got it the first time colonel<daddy brought me out here and let me see you. You were out of your head, and you thought you were talking to Billy Starbuck—in the automobile on the night when you were going with him to the fight at the dam, It made me go down on my two knees, John, and kiss your poor, hot hands.” He slipped his one geod arm around her and drew her close, “Now I can go baek like 3 man and fight it through to the end,” ha exulted soberly. “Jibbey will take me; | know he Is wearing himself out irylug to make me belleve that he can walt, and that Verda understands, though he won't admit it. And when it is all over, when they have done thelr worst to me" With a quick little twist she broke away from the encircling arm, “John, dear,” she sald, and her voice was trembling between a laugh and a sob, “I'm the wickedest, wickedest woman that ever lived and breathed and the happiest! I knew what you would do, but I couldn't resist the temptation to make yeu say It. Lis ten: this morning colonel duidy gnt a night-letter from Billy Starbuck. Yon have been wondering why Billy never came out here to see you--it wnr be cause he and Mr. Stillings have been in Lawrenceville, trying to clear you. . Absolute Ego.” “And who is Mr. Debritt?” Inst evening In Lawrenceville, He had Joking me about my smugnesses-—good job, clothes, easy life, and all that, wound up by warning me to watch out for the Absolute Ego” “What is the Absolute asked dutifully, ' ego? ing yellow beard three weeks n steel-Jacketed bullet trying to encyst grinned exultantly. “Debritt I know now: it's the primitive man- sot]; the ‘T" that is able to refuse to tions! It's asleep In most of us; it wasn't asleep in me, up and rub its eyes for a minute of again, and there had to be an earthquake at the last to shake it alive, Do you know the first thing it did when it took hold again and began to drive?” “No.” “Here is where the law of chances falls to pieces, Corona. Without tell- ing me anything about it, this newly emancipated man-soul of mine made a beeline for the only Absolute Ego woman it had ever known. found her.” Again the young happily. woman tions of the absolute, he did. (THE END.) World's Biggest Fish Net. The largest fish net in the world will soon be in use in these waters says the Avalon Islander. It is 8400 feet long, 300 feet deep and has five purselike pockets made of a two-inch re-enforced mesh. Two S0-foot tugs and a fleet of small boats will accom pany the net. The equipment will cost almost $100000 to fish for three months, What chance for its life will any fish have with such a net combing the channel day and night? ——————————————————— Diet a Matter of Habit. Our dally food is to a large extent # matter of prejudice and habit. We thigk we must have certain things be cxuse we always have had them. Bu: the war has shown us that by the ex- ercise of intelligent planning we can get the necessary mitriment for less money than we have been accustomed to spend.~Kansas City Star, important Point She-—Would you marry a womans who had sued another man for breach of promise? He—Iow much did the court awary you? Le ——————————— STATE BANKS SHOW INCREASE Fourteen Institutions, Capital of $1,815,000, Formed Since Dec, 1. There Are 221 Banks of Discount, 318 Trust Companies, 13 Savings Insti- tutions and One Saving Fund Under This Jurisdiction, Harrisburg Harrisburg, 24 janks and trust theorporated in Pennsylvania since December 1, 1916, to September 15, this year, according lo a statement issued by State Bank ing Commissioner Daniel F. Lafean, started in business with a capital stock of $1,815,000. Fourteen porated during this period of less than monihs have a stock $1,140,000, and the four new trust com- that have begun business dur same period have a September companies banks incor- capital of the capital time there FTIR frie oy ry 318 trust o« npanies Al the present savings Institutions znd one fund under the De- inetd BAVINE Banking Prosperity of the time is the reason numerous new banks and trust the Banking Department ng companies a WE With deposits larger in the banking many communities room for one or more older find is still banks The new banks last December are Philadelphia CC in orporated since Banking Sheraden Pitts. Italy Bank jank of Beaver State Bank, Lock Pennsyivania Merchants’ Association, - Slavonic operative jank, the Sons of State burgh; Falls; the Cltizens’ Bank of Erie; Philadelphia; janking Hungaro - Russian Bank, Johnstown, the Citizens’ Bank of Palmerton; the Dormont Bank: Union Bank, South Fork: Deposit Bank, Tarentum: Bank of Commerce, Scran ton . Trust! Companies Commercial Trust Company of Harrisburg: Hol lidaysburg ympany; Miners’ Banking Trust Company, 8 Trust Co-operative Dep ait Safe Trust C ienandoah ; and Title Company, Erie Crop Losses. Erowers Revise Tobacco and estimates of the revised losses caus of Lancas big 1-ost two fields were bit. Packers have thei first ed to the tobacco growers the of weeks ago, when many gro a million scale th pointing out that ~ Thal +411 crops will 3 sre nls He Vers piace while p pack- by of the frosted ol +11 - half dollars, ers is down most materi ¥ tobacco than sold to scrap prices sound tobacco pr to due to the buying of vast quantities of tobac- by the agents of foreign govern- Idlers were paid or the boom caused ty the war Co ments for their last dealer: During ine Week sq offered Tap as high as 15 cents a damaged tobacvo, without get any, and since the ers have even for able to gros thel pound gound tobacco the freeze most of them asked 2 AKINE 2 suit the by buyers their firms 1 during the Tha prediction has ben made that if the packers let til after January 1 prices such an extent that the at a reasonable figure, one fair to packer and grower It is a significant fact that for some years past Lancaster County's tobacco has been bought on the field in in last week the growers un wiil break to tobacco can indeed has been bought. The growers year after year have express. the wish that the dealers would sell until gfter the crop was uiripped, their wish is likely to be Girl Refugee Farm Student. Miss Rose Brind, a young Russian Jewess, who was a refugee from Pal estine, came halfway round the world to study agriculture at the Pennsylva: nia State College. at the beginning of the first semester with the freshman class, Rather than submit to Turkish rule Miss Brind and her family fled from Jerusalem in December, 1814, and at States gunboat Tennessee. To Flan Bigger Crops. of Agriculture met here to discuss propositions for increasing the food. stuffs production in the State. Ar rfhgements also will he made for add- ing to the courses of lectures at farm- ers’ institutes and for soil investiga. tions and demonstrations, The Deparignent of Agriculture's bu- rean of markets appealed to persons able to supply cabbage in carioad lots to communicate with the bureau imme- diately, as many requests for cahbage in large Jots have come to the Capitol. . PEORERREORRE REIN RRR ROR EI IORI OY PENNSYLVANIA BRIEFS Great activity now centers about the yard of the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation at Bristol, where steam shovels have begun excavations for the slipways, and all men who apply for work are engaged Yeagerstown has filed a petition for incorporation, Bullt at a cost of $10,000, St, Mary's ally opened An $1.000, paid by Lebanon county, is the largest pay- on a sin to the State Treasury inheritance tax of ment e estate ever made Five Columbia county voters in vot- ing for county auditors man dead almost a Sharpless, of Catawissa. voted for a year—QGeorge H Permission to recruit in Pennsyiva- been granted Fifty Royal Highlanders of Canada and th band by Acting Adjutant General Beans Another severe frost throughout the northeastern the State, and late corn in is so badly tically ically nia has the prevailed part of the valleys nipped that it has prac- withered A marble tablet has been presented to the Blair County Historical Society Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker, to wy ion +h rid . the bridge at to Sp nizanh op be placed on Tyrone, mark the famous an Logan spring - sed al ¥ acquittal of the remain until the for November court him the slaying of Dr fs iy ri Kil edad : ro} 3 Bristol = snrollment i Bo roposed mili firemen at cured 26 lary company Bristol, but Twenty-five Jersey req wants Hol were and Edward E Gabriel at Morgantown at from $60 to $130 a head, and two springers, weigh ing 2,800 pounds, sold at $155 each A plant manufacture chemicals is being established in old Bean planning mill Charles E Farmers’ Durham 3 COWS sold by to the at Pawling Scott the gave cashier ~ ; a. Tha vs National Bank new half dollars t they boarded the Camp Meade A te was given at » ¥ 5 . + > Perkasie to Harry Neamana. in honor Ren von» £ 3 E ave-year-record as Grand Keep- er of Exchequer of the Golden cagles, Unable to get help, Iry tiem siin ROT 1ial banquet of his Grand Castle, of Pennsylvania in H Myers, of Fountainville, one of Bucks county's most successfo! breeders, sold out Albert Bilman, aged thirty-seven, a breaker machinist, is dead at Hazle- ton from injuries sustained when he was struck by a motgreyelist, who Jeft him dying on the public but whose number was taken fled with his headlight extinguished Mrs. J. Miles Derr , her daugh- ter, Martha, aged seven, and Miss Jen nie Lenker, forty, of Turbotville, were killed, and Mr. Derr and daughter, Ada, aged nineteen. fatally hurt when their automobile was struck farmers and cattle road he as fifty another by a Pennsylvania passenger train A grade cross near Milton Steel helmets for the American sol- being manufactur ed at the Berwick plant of the Ameri The at oe] at ng, diers in France are can Car and Foundry Company helmets are tested by hat on a ten feet distant, placing the head with a reguls the ‘dummy’s’ calibre repeating is fired upon Norton, thirteen-year-old of C. E. Fawber, proprietor of the Lafayette Hotel, Lancaster, was instantly killed and several persons were injured when Fawber's automobile skidded.and over turned on Chickies Hill, aesr Colum Dia Ex-Sheriff Layton, who conducted more sheriflf’s sales and foreclosures t other sheriff in Broadford dead at Towanda Mrs. Perry Fanning, of Glade, was fatally injured and Mrs. J. Hollister was seriously cut and bruised about the face and body when an automobile driven by Jacob Michaels overturned near Starbrick. Mrs. Fanning receiv ed injuries to her spine and was hurt internally and died at the Emergency Hospital in Warren. Raids on Gettysburg camp soldiers in other towns have resulted in turn- ing their trips to Carlisle, Bellefonte Academy has opened with a large enrollment, despite war conditions, Six thousand persons of the Hazle revolver, RON Maw ay aan ans county, is Bloomsburg and Berwick gave their The State Vicksburg Commission to make arrangements for the care of the Pennsyivania veterans who will gather there in October. Oniy 31 civil war veterans attend- Doylestown; but widows and wives of soldiers swelled the attendance 1» 52 persons, Catawissa had the distinction of far. nishing Columbia county's tallest draft Sellersville citizens have contribut- ed $102 toward the support of thelr recently-organized band. Radnor township, like its neighbor, Lower Merion townshk had a re markable and record. ing health report during the past month. Not a single case of contagion: or re portable disease could be found A demonstration took place at Ashland in honor of departing com scripts. A
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers