THE YOUNG MAN FROM WYOMING AT EAGLES MERE. A SULLIVAN COUNTY NOVELETTE. BY THOMAS J. INGHAM. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. "The second year of my residence there I began to per ceive the rapid growth of the city, and noticed especially how quickly the suburbs were being turned into city lots. I then began to interest myself in the price of lots. I often inquired the prices and noticed the sales. "To enable me to get long walks in the suburbs, I rose at break of day in summer, and had the long mornings for them. I could do this easily, "for I was in the habit of retiring about the time other young men were commencing the amusements of the evening. Near the end of the second year I found I had saved three hundred dollars, and determined to invest it in city hits. 1 found some newly laid out lots on the Boston Road, and selected one which could be purchased for three hundred dollars. My Wyoming experience had made me ap preciate the importance of good titles, and before 1 paid the money 1 required an abstract of the title and had it examined by a lawyer. "In the spring following this transaction General Wash ington was inaugurated President. 1 stood in the crowd on Wall Street and saw him take the oath of office. While an event of such far-reaching national importance was taking place, I ought to have confined my thoughts, perhaps, to the good of my country; but when I saw Washington standing there in quiet dignity, with such power and goodness in his eyes, I said. 'Now we shall have a good government.' Then I remember that old Dalton had said, 'lf we ever get a good government them certificates will be paid,' and I thought, 'The good time is coming when I shall get the money for my certificates.' "1 have no doubt the confidence inspired by the inaugura tion of Washington affected others as it affected me; for in the following month trade was brisk and real estate in New York took a sudden rise. Some parties who had purchased lots adjoining mine on both sides determined to put tip a block of buildings, and wanted my lot. When 1 told them my price was one thousand dollars they expressed great surprise, and reminded me that I bought it for three hundred only six months before. 1 replied that 1 did not buy to sell at the same price, and would not sell for less than the sum named. They finally accepted my terms, and 1 got the money. "Among the first measures considered by Washington's administration were those relating to finances, and I observed the very question in which I was so much interested was be ing discussed. Hamilton recommended, and almost all the members of Congress agreed, that the certificates evidencing the taking of property ought to be paid in full; but some con tended that they should be paid to the original owners and not to the assignees of the certificates. If this view had pre vailed it would have robbed me of my farm. I was much pleased when it appeared that Hamilton's proposition to pay the actual holder of the paper had been adopted. It appeared by the act of Congress that interest at 6 per cent, would be , paid on two-thirds of the amount of these certificates imme diately, and on the balance interest at 6 per cent, after the year 1800, with 3 per cent, interest in the arrears of unpaid interest up to that date. As soon as this act passed there was a great demand for certificates, and speculators got large amounts from ignorant people for a trifle. "It was the same summer that yellow fever broke out in New York, and the spring which had opened so auspiciously was followed by a summer of panic and death. All who could leave the city left it. Business for awhile almost came to a standstill. All the salesmen in Mr. Golding's store got leave of absence except myself, and for two months Mr. Golding and I were able to do all the business alone. Over two thousand persons died out of a population of less than twenty-nine thou sand. It was a gloomy time; for people not only felt the im mediate evils, but feared greater evils in the future. It was talked that yellow fever would now visit them every year, and as the seat of government was likely to be removed. New York would decrease in population. This talk depressed real estate. The 'bulls' in the city lot business had it their own way in the spring, but the 'bears' had the lots under their feet in the fall. I was still firm in my opinion that the city would continue to grow. Shrewd business men 1 talked with said that suitable quarantine regulations would keep the yellow fever out of the city, and the removal of the seat of government would not re move our harbor or check our foreign commerce. I knew myself that the Hudson River was a great highway of inter national commerce, and would command the trade of the lake country, which was then being peopled. I seized the oppor tunity to invest my thousand dollars still farther out on the Boston Road. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. "In the following June I was walking one day beyond the north-westerly limits of the city. I crossed a deep hollow and walked around a large swamp. Beyond the swamp I came to a small farm-house, in quite a retired place. The house was of stone, and being very old, seemed almost ready to fall down. The land was in parts very rocky, and the cul tivated fields had been 'run down' by poor farming. A short man, rather thick set, with a face of many wrinkles, and a farmer-like appearance, stood in a field near the road. I said. 'Good morning, sir,' and touched my hat in a respectful manner. Good mornin',' he replied, ' 'Asta coined from the city sa early this mornin'?' " 'Yes,' I answered, 'just taking a walk.' Asta bean oot 'ere before?' he inquired. ' 'Oh, yes,' I replied, 'more than once.' ' \\ hat dost tha think o' the land I got 'ere?' " 'lt lays well,' said I, 'but I think I have seen better land for farming.' CALEB CONOVER RAILROADER - Wlho O, ™rA STGRY '<*/> LOVE,POLITICS,INTRIGUER A RICH &r POWERFUL BOSS ( - AND AN INTREPID YOUNG] ' REFORME:R% BY ALBERT PAYSON TERhONE'v - COPYHISMT 1907 BV AU66BT PAVaow.TH<HUwfl Then, according to the letter, a cha teau on the north shore had been rented for the autumn months. Here the bride and groom had dwelt In Claude Melnotte fashion for barely a week when another woman ap peared. The newcomer was a singer former ly employed at the Scala, but now Just returned from a prolonged South American tour. Her voice had given out, and,'faced by poverty, she had prudently unearthed certain proofs to the effect that, twelve years earlier, she had secretly married Prince Ama deo d'Antri, then a youth of twenty two. Thus equipped, she had descended on the happy pair, and a most painful scene had ensued. D'Antri, con fronted with the documents, had made no denial, but had tearfully assured Blanche that he had supposed the wo man dead. Be this as it might, the first wife had been so adamantine as to refuse with scorn the rich allow ance d'Antri offered her, and carried the matter to the Italian courts. There it was promptly decided that, as Amadeo'B princely title was chiefly honorary, and carried no royal pre rogatives of morganatic unions, the first marriage held. "So I am without a home and with out a name," laboriously translated Letty, punctuating her daughter's written sentences with snuffle and moan. "What am I to do? Poor Ama deo is disconsolate, it would break your heart to witness his grief. But he cannot help me. Most of our ready money has gone Into the houses we have bought and other necessaries. The bulk of my dot is, of course, deeded to Aniaedo, according to conti nental custom, and it seems the poor fellow's ignorance of finance has led him to invest it in such a way that for the present it Is all tied up. I am without money, without friends. Helas! I —" "In other words," Interpolated Ca leb, "he's got her cash nailed down, and now he's kicking her out dead broke, while ho and the other wo man—" "I start to-morrow for Paris," con tinued the letter. "I have Just about money enough to get me there, and I shall stay with the Pages until you can send for me. Oh, Mother, please make It all right with Father If you can. Don't let him blame poor Ama deo. You know how Father always —" j "Well, goon!" commanded the Railroader grimly. "That's about all," faltered Letty. "The rest Is Just —" "A eulogy on the old man, eh? Let It go at that. Now —" "Oh, what are we to do?" driveled the poor woman, sopping her eyes. "And all the —" "All the splurge we made, and the 1 way our dutiful girl was going to j boost us Into the Four Hundred?" fin- I lshed Caleb. "Thank the Lord, it ' comes too late for a campaign docu- j ment! But I guess It about wrecks ! my last sneaking hope of landing on the social hay-pile. Never mind that part of it now. We'll have all the rest of our lives to kick ourselves over the way we've been sold. And I'll give myself the treat, as soon as I can get away, of running over to Yurrup and having Friend d'Antri sent to Jail for bigamy and treated real gentle and loving while he's there, if a mil lion-dollar tip to the right politicians In Italy will do It. And I guess it will. But 1 can't get away till after this election business is all cleared up. And Blanche's got to be brought hom« right off. Jerry!" His son's momentary interest in the I family crisis had already lapsed. He was sitting, stupid, glazed of eye, star- ! ing at the floor. At his father's call he glanced up. "You'll have togo to Paris for her," went on Conover, "and bring her back. Take the next steamer. There's boats • •oiilnc on most of the lines Wednes " 'Wheer's that?' he asked. " 'ln Wyoming Valley,' said I. A ered o' tliot,' he answered, 'but 'a got brothers in the lake coontry on better lond. 'A be a-goin' tn goa there when a can sell this 'ere farm.' ' \\ by do you wish to sell your farm?' I asked. " 'Look at the waaste land,' said he, 'an' look at the kind o' soil. It will raise nowt.' . "Without repeating more of his dialect, I will add that he informed me his grandfather had got the farm when the English took New York from the Dutch, and the old house was standing then. That his grandfather had lived there many years, and when he died had devised it to his eldest son for life, with remainder to his eldest grandson, who was the present owner, lie said he had been brought up 011 a farm in England, and could not make anything farming such land as he had here. His brothers had gone to the lake country and got good land, and were making money while he remained poor; besides, lie said that swamp made his family sick, and he expected they would all die of the yellow fever if they stayed another year. I asked him if lie did not think the city would spread out as far as his farm in a few years, and make it valuable. 'Naw, not in my toime,' he answered; 'd'ya moind the city 'a bean growin' moor'n a hundrred years to git auf 'ere. and 'nil take a hundred years moor to git 'ere.' (To be continued V | days. Let's see, this Is Monday. Gc : to Ballston, as you were going to i to-morrow morning. Get that pack 1 from Lanier, and send it to mt from there "by registered mail. Be sure to have it registered. Then catct the afternoon train to New York. Tha' ought to get you in by five-thirty 01 Hlx. I'll telegraph'Wendell to-night tc find out what's the fastest steamei Bailing next morning, and tell him tc ; take passage for you. Hunt him ui ! as soon as you reach town. And sleet jon board the boat. That'll cut out ! any chance of your missing It. Bring 1 Blanche back here to us by the earll est steamer from France or England that you can get. And while you're In Paris, if you can hire some on the Quiet to drop over into Italy and put d'Antrl into the accident ward ol ' some dago hospital for a month 01 two, I don't mind paying five thousand for the Job. Come up to my study and I'll fix you up financially for the trip, and give you that note to Bruce Lanier." Gerald heard and nodded assent tc the rapped-out series of directions with as little emotion as though com manded to transmit some campaign message to Billy Shevlin. His fa ther, noting the quiet attention and response, was pleased therewith. And the latent fondness and trust which were slowly placing his recent con tejnpt for his only and once adored son, perceptibly increased. As the two men left the room, Mrs. Conover looked lovingly after Gerald through her tears. "Poor dear boy!" she soliloquized. "He's getting to be quite his old bright self again. When Caleb men tioned his going to New York his eyes lighted up Just the way they used to when he was little." All unaware that she had detected something which even the Railroader's vigilance had overlooked, the good woman once more abandoned herself to the Joys of a new and delightfully unrestrained fit of weeping. When at last she and her husband were together, alone, that night, Mrs. Conover had some thought of com menting upon that fleeting expression Bhe had caught on Gerald's face. But Caleb was so immersed in his own unpleasant thoughts she lacked the courage to Intrude upon his reflec tions. Which is rather a pity, for had she done so, the Inefficient little woman might have changed the history of the Mountain State. CHAPTER XX. Election Day. HAIN, which Caleb Conover had so eagerly desired as a check on fair weather reformers' Election Day zeal, began ■oon after midnight, and with it a gale that is still remembered as the "Big November Wind." The wind whips lashed the many-windowed Mausoleum, and the roar and swirl of dashing water echoed from roof and veranda-cover. A belated equinoctial was sweeping the Mountain State, driven on the breath of a tornado such as not one year in twenty can re cord, east of the Mississippi. Yet-none of the three members of the Conover family, sheltered within the Mausoleum, were awakened by the bellow of the cyclone, for none were asleep. Gerald, despite the early start he must make In the morning, was still dressed, and was slouching back and forth In his suite of apartments, mut tering occasionally to himself, and at other times pausing to gaze lifelessly ahead of him. He shambled into an Inner chamber, unlocked and opened a drawer In his chiffonier, fumbled for a moment or two with something he took therefrom, then closed and looked the drawer and returned to the light. In a few moments the nervous neaa had died out of his face and bear- lrig, and with a return of his habitual, listless air he had resumed his walk. Caleb Conover, stretched on a camp bed in the corner of his study, smiled j contentedly as the rain beat in tor ; rents on the panes. But when the gale waxed fiercer and the rain at last ceased, he frowned. "Going to blow off clear and cold after all!" he grumbled, turning over. "And the Weather Bureau's the only one that can't be 'fixed.' " But even the shriek of the storm could not long hold his attention. The Railroader was vaguely troubled as to himself. Heretofore, like Napol eon's, his steel will had been able to dictate to Nature as imperiously as :to his fellow-man. Now he had ac quired an unpleasant habit of lying awake for hours in that big lonely study of his, of seeking in vain to re cover his old-time power of perfect self-mastery. He thought of Blanche? Yes, there was a nice sort of complication, wasn't it? Another international mar riage and the usual ending thereof. "These foreigners can give us poor Yankee Jays cards and spades at the bunco game!" he mused, lialf-admir ingly. "They beat our 'con' men hands down, for they don't even need to pay out cash in manufacturing green goods and gold bricks, and they don't get Jugged when they're found out. When'll American girls get sense? When their parents do, I pre sume." Even the .very patent fiasco attend ant on his one conspicuous effort to use this relationship as a master key to the portals of society had not wholly discouraged him. Later, when, practically by acclamation, he should have won the Governorship, and when the Princess d'Antri's European tri umphs should be noised abroad in Granite, surely then But now there was no question of acclamation. If ho should win it would be by bare margin. He knew that. And, as for Blanche —well, if he could keep the worst of the scandal out of the American papers and make people think his daughter had come home merely because her husband abused her, or because she was tired of her surroundings—if he could achieve this much it would be the best he could expect. Gerald, too; he had hoped so much from the boy's glittering New York connections. Now that illusion was forever gone. Though his son's more recent behavior had in a slight meas ure softened the hurt to paternal pride and hope, yet the hurt itself, Caleb knew, must always remain. And that particular pride and hope were forever dead. In a quaint twist of thought over the Biblical story of Job that he had heard on one of his rare visits to church Conover, as he lay staring up Into the dark and listening to the noisy rage of the storm, fell to fitting the story to his own case. "The first message 1 got," he re flected, becoming grimly entertained In his own analogy, "knocked over my plans for Jerry. Then the second stole from me the only square woman I ever knew and all my chances of a campaign walkover. The third smashed my ideas for Blanche, and for making a hit in society. The fourth —well, I guess the fourth ain't showed up yet. Will it clean me out when it does come, I wonder, like it did the feller in the Bible? Let's see, he had a whiny fool for a wife, too, if I remember it straight. Yes, there's a whole lot of points in common be tween me and him. I wonder if ho ever run for any office. How was it all those messages of his wound up? 'And—and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.' That was it." After which plunge Into the theolog ical exegesis—the first and last where of he ever was guilty- Caleb Conover turned his thoughts to the morrow's election, and thus communed with himself till dawn caught him open eyed and unsleepy, his splendid strength and energy in nowise dimin ished by forty-eight hours of wake fulness. It was a tattered, desolate world that met the Railroader's eyes as he gazed down from his window across the broad grounds and over the city that lay at their foot. The wind hnd fallen, and a pink-gray light was fill ing the clean-swept sky. Nature seemed ashamed to look on the results of her own violence, for the dawnllght crept timidly over the sleeping houses. And, with the first glimmers in the east, the people of city and State were afoot, for history was to be made. Election Day had begun. CHAPTER XXI. The Fourth Messenger of Job. aIDNIGIIT had again come around. The election was long since over, yet the city did not ring with the uproar incident on such affairs. For the re sult was not yet known. The storm of the previous night had cut off tele graph and telephone communication in twenty parts of the Mountain State Qranlte itself was isolated. Hundreds of mechanics were at work repairing the various lines of broken wire and replacing overthrown poles. But the work had not yet sufficiently pro gressed to allow the full transmission of election returns from the up-State counties. Train service remained unimpaired, save for an occasional broken trestle one or two of the minor branches of the C. O. & X. And since nightfall some of the returns had been brought to Granite by rail, but these merely proved the closeness of the conflict, and gave no true hint as to the actual outcome. The Granite vote was all In, hours ago. From the slums and the dark places of the city's under- World the long-trained servant* of Uie " y Machine nan swarmed to the polls, overwhelming all opposition from the smaller and more respectable element, and had carried Granite tumultuously " for Conover. ) t \ The Railroader, with a dozen or more men, sat about the big centre table. The Railroader, with a dozen or more men—district leaders, ward cap tains and picked adherents of his own —sat about the big centre table of his study, an Arthur, somewhat changed In the modernizing and surrounded by news, "Conover 7,910, Standish 5,- 495." "Why don't we hear from Grafton?" asked Staatz. "They're patching up the connec tion now," answered the operator. "It's the farthest city on the line. You've got all the rest of the returns from its county." "That place is a regular nest of re formers, from the mayor down," com mented Bourke. "And besides, Stan dish won a lot of votes by his grand stand scrap in the op'ra house there last month. It looks bad." "Most reform places do after they've tried a dose of their own medicine for awhile," answered Caleb. "But. we've spent enough 'good dough there to square the whole noble army of martyrs. I guess Grafton's O. K." "Boss," said Billy Shevlin, "you're the only man in this whole shootin' match what ain't all hectic over this fight. An' you're the one man who's IT or out in th' woolly white snow ac cordin' to th' way that genial beast of prey th' free independent an' other wise bought-up voters jumps. Ain't you worried none?" "What good'd that do? Xo use pay ing twice, if there's anything to worry about. And if there ain't, what's the use of wasting a lot of good anxiety?" Again the footman came in. This time not with coffee, but with a card. "I thought I told Gaines I wasn't to be broke in on this evening," began Conover, glowering at the intruder. "Say I can't see anyone. I'm busy, and —" But he changed his mind. He had taken the card as he spoke. Now, as he read it.he said: "I'll be back in a few minutes, boys. My New York lawyer wants me for something." He left the study and hurried down stairs to where, in the hall, a man stood nwaiting him. "Come in here, Wendell," directed the Railroader, shaking hands with his new guest, nnd leading the way to the library. "What're you doing in this part of the country? Glad'to see you." "I bring you bad news—very bad news, I ani afraid," began the lawyer as Conover closed the library door be hind them. "I know that," snapped Caleb. "I knew It as soon as I saw your face, but I didn't want you shouting it out in the hall where my butler could hear you. That's why I —well, what is it? Tell me. can't you?" "Your son—" "Yes, Jerry, of course. I know that, too. But what's he done this time?" "This Is, as I said, a very serious—" "Good Lord, man! I didn't suppose you'd took a four-hour train ride from New York a night like this to tell me he'd won a ping pong prize or joined the Y. M. C. A. The chap that's got to have news broke to him has a head too thick for truth to be let into it any other way. Don't stand there like a lump of putty. What's up?" , The lawyer, flushing at the coarse Invective, spared the father no longer. He spoke, and to the point. r "Your son," he said, "is in the police station on a charge of murder." _ (To Be Continued.)
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers