Part 46 (1/2)
Low-cut, blushi+n' shoes and straw hats I can stand for, likewise collars--they go hand-in-hand with pay-streaks; but a necktie ain't neither wore for warmth nor protection; it's a pomp and a vanity, and I'm a plain man without conceit Now, let's proceed with the obsequies”
It was a very si, low house of logs, and yet it was a wonderful thing to the dark, shy led out--the clean-cutresponse in a voice that had neither fear nor weakness in it
When they had done he turned and took her reverently in his arms and kissed her before them all; then she went and stood beside Gale and the red as no wife, and said, simply:
”I am very happy”
The old man stooped, and for the first time in her ht, where he ht be alone with himself and the memory of that other Merridy, the woman who, to him, was more than all the woht, came to him, and hom he had kept faith The burden she had laid upon hily; and noas very glad, for he had kept his covenant
The first word of the wedding was borne by Father Barnuirl's father lay, entering with trepidation; for, in spite of the pleas of justice and huhts which he ood priest feared for the peace of his little charge, and approached the strickentime alone with Stark, and when he returned to Gale's house he would answer no questions
”He is a strange e man: unrepentant and wicked; but I can't tell you what he said Have a little patience and you will soon know”
The mail boat, which had arrived an hour after the Mission boat, was ready to continue its run when, just as it blearning blast, down the street of the cae for this land thatthemselves It was a blanketed man upon a stretcher, carried by a doctor and a priest The face was muffled so that the idlers could not make it out; and when they inquired, they received no answer from the carriers, who pursued their course iang-plank to the deck When the boat had gone, and the last faint cough of its towering stacks had died away, Father Barnuone away, not for a day, but for all tis he said I could not understand At first I feared greatly, for when I told hie--he becaht he would burst open his wounds and die fro tiradually I came to know so himself to face defeat in the eyes of ; therefore, he fled He told me that he would be a hunted ani would travel ahead of hie of hi in his eyes--so big that he wept He said the only decent thing he could or would do was to leave the daughter he had never known to that happiness he had never experienced, and wished me to tell her that she was very much like her mother, as the best woman in the world”
CHAPTER XIX
THE CALL OF THE OREADS
There wasand lamentation in the household of John Gale this afternoon Molly and Johnny were in the throes of an overwhelht be heard fro of tears as a rule, but when they did give way to woe they published it abroad, yelling with utter abandon, their black eyes puckered up, their mouths distended into squares, from which came such a measure of sound as to rack the ears and burden the air heavily with sadness Poleon was going away! Their own particular Poleon! Soeneral sche, and they rief so loudly that Burrell, who knew nothing of Doret's intention, sought them out and tried to ascertain the cause of it They had found the French-Canadian at the river with their father, loading his canoe, and they had asked hi of his words struck home they looked at each other in dismay, then, bred as they were to ed silently back up the bank with filling eyes and chins a-quiver until they gained the rear of the house Here they sat down all forlorn, and began to weep bitterly and in an ascending crescendo
”What's the matter with you tikes, anyhow?” inquired the Lieutenant He had always filled them with a speechless awe, and at his unexpected appearance they began the slow and painful process of sing their grief He was a nice o, and very splendid to the eye, but he was nothing like Poleon, as one of theer
”Come, now! Tellhappened to the three-legged puppy?”
Molly denied the occurrence of any such catastrophe
”Then you've lost the little shi+ny rifle that shoots with air?” But Johnny dispelled this horrible suspicion by drawing the forrass behind hih to cause all this outlay of anguish Can't I help you out?”
”Poleon!” they wailed, in unison
”Exactly! What about hioin' away!” echoed Molly
”Now, that's too bad, of course,” the youngyou when he comes back”
”He ain't comin' back!” announced the heir, with the tone that conveys a sorrow unspeakable
”He ain't co a woain to her weakness, unashamed
Burrell tried to extract a more detailed explanation, but this was as far as their knowledge ran So he sought out the Canadian, and found him with Gale in the store, a scanty pile of food and ammunition on the counter between the away?”