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“You're out of date,” this from the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