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Show "OMm Wt S Lucy the younger laughed merrily, while Mrs. Rccd locked distressed "Oh. no; it would never do; why. I don't know what fatlicr'd say,'' she- began, but her daughter interrupted her. "Mother's putting- on her old schoolniarm ways when she talks like that I've a great mind to take Mr the gentleman, out to the Lam, and see if he knows a cow's head from her tail" "Oh, Lucy, I declare 1" said the distressed mother, but Reuben laughed. " It's a bargain." he said, standing up and taking off his coat, which he tossed onto a chair. " 1 can't for the life of mc think what father and Reuh will say to mc for letting you do this," she remarked as a beginning. "I don't see how yon could have helped yourself; I wanted to milk, and when I want a thing 1 generally get it." "That's the way Reub talks; hut he's had to find out, poor fellow, that there's sonic things he can't ever get, no matter how much he wants 'cm." "Is Reub your brother?" "Yes; and he just set his heart on going to college, and we all buckled down and saved anil slaved and then, last fall, thini's went worse than usual with father, and Reuh's had to give up He's real courageous, and he don't say much to any one, but I can sec how he feels it," had no calls on him, had made this extra; so father was touchy abut it, and he took the money away from my mule and then he never saw or heard of him aR.-iin.'' - I should think he'd a-bcen glad to get rid of him," said Reuben grimly, beginning to milk again. "Oh, no. he wasn't; and mother, she felt awful; s,hc lved my uncle just like he'd been her own brother. Once they heard something; he sent by registered mail ten dollars old Mr. Carver had lent him to go to Boston with; but there was only a New York mark on the envelope, en-velope, and that was ail they ever heard." "Did vour father ever trj to find out about him?" " He did all he could; he advertised in a Doston paper, and after this money came in a New York one; but father's had dreadful hard times." "What's gone wrong with him?" ."Well, mother lost her health soon after they were married; Reub and I are the only ones out of six they've raised if you can call me raised," she added in a low voice of bitterness. Again that detested sense of pity crept into Renin's mind ; he banished it with an ahrupt question : " Wliat has all this to do with your brother's being spoiled?" he demanded. "Why, don't you sec?" she responded rather impatiently. impa-tiently. " It was because father'd been so harsh with his brother that he'd driven him to the bad, so he can't bear to cross Reub in a single thing for fear he'd run away too. Besides, losing all the rest of us has made father to-day with what I should have been if I'd stayed here and married Lucv, and had half a dozen children to bring up' No, sirce. I guess not!" lie .strode to the door and looked impatiently out into the dusk. He could hear the sound of voices, two or three together, to-gether, as he stood waiting for a moment; then he pk-ked up the milk-pails and went steadily out of the barn, taking his deliberate way across the yard The meeting with his brother was before him, and he looked forward to it with no pleasure, though he was far from the idea of shirking it. The voices ceased abruptly as his figure loomed through the twilight; and then he saw a tall, bent form moving toward him; a hand was held out, and he stopped, putting down the pails, and held out his in return. There was a grasp, tierce in its intensity, in-tensity, and then some one was it Dave? said brokenly: bro-kenly: "I'm real glad to see c back, Rcubc-n There's not much to share here nowadays, but ycu're welcome . to your part of it, anyhow." Reuben felt a queer, painful lump in his throat; he choked, and said not a word for a second; then, with a forced laugh, be exclaimed, slapping his brother on his bent shoulder, "Well, if you'll give me a share of your supper, it's all I'll ask for just now." The younger ones were standing motionless, watching this meeting, and they proved a welcome diversion to Reuben, who hated the emotion and agitation of the moment with a hearty, masculine hate. "Hello, is this THE slow train was jerking along over its single track toward its resting-place for the night. Nearly all the pa-seuers had disappeared, stepping to the station platforms in a melancholy, melan-choly, casual manr.cr which is characteristic of (he inhabitants of Cape Cod. The rear car was entirely empty, and in the forward car were an elderly woman surrounded by brown-paper parcels, and a brakeman eating an apple in a business-like way, only these two with the important exception of Reuben Reed. He sat in the middle of the car looking out fixedly at the landscape land-scape as it lazily crept into view, he had turned over the seat in front of him, and his feet rested on it, while his arms were spread over the back of his own seat. As the train crossed a bridge ocr a small river, Reuben Reu-ben sat up straichter. There was the pine grove where they used to have the Sunday-school picnics: there was the field where the huckleberries grew the thickest; there was old man Carver's barn looming high on a sloping hillside, Reuben remembered well how he had helped build that barn, earning his first ten dollars by the job. Just opposite the station was the tavern; Reuben thought it had shrunk since he last saw it, and felt reluctant re-luctant to trust himself to its hospitality ; but needs must in certain combinations in life, so he walked up to its forbidding door, found the landlady, and, having hav-ing made arrangements for the night, set out on foot along the sandy road that ran beside the track. It was early in May, and the air was biting as sunset drew near. The rare apple-trees in the scanty orchards were turned her quick, bird-like glances from her brother to Reuben, while her mother sat as if more wrapped in thoughts of another world than in those of this. The children felt instinctively the generosity in the atmosphere atmos-phere of their uncle's personality; th'cir parents had fought too long and too unsuccessfully to have any spring left. At last Dae spoke, and his voice was plaintive: "It ain't but what I'd do anything in God's world to give the boy what he's hankering after, but, Reuben, I haven't got the necessary money for it; so where's the use cf stirring him up just to disappoint him?" No one answered him; the moment had not come quite yet to tell all that Reuben had in his heart to. tell; he wanted to show his brother in figures how much he possessed, and how he had the right as well as the capacity to help in family matters. Mrs. Reed pushed back her chair, saying: "We might just as well go into the sitting-room; there's a fire there, and I want Lucy should keep warm. Her cough's troublesome," she added, her eyes full of dread as she spoke, "but it's only the leave over after an attack of grip; it's nothing serious." Her voice Almost 6eemcd to defy an answer. " I know what s going to cure that coujh," said Reu-Itcn. Reu-Itcn. He laid his hand on his niece's shoulder as he spoke. They had let the others leave the room before them, and no one could overhear Lucy's low reply: ' "There's nothing but a complete change of air can cure if, Uncle Reuben," she said bravely, "and I might just as well cry for the moon as that. I've seen the doctor about it, but I mean to keep them from knowing till it can't be helped any longer." " It's going to be helped, and that before you and I arc a week older, and don't you forget it," said Reuben emphatically. Then he pushed her across the entry before she could do more than turn wide, grateful eyes upon him. Dave was standing in the sitting-room at the bookcase book-case between the windows; he had unlocked its doors, and taken out the old family Bible that Reuben remembered remem-bered well; the one bright spot on Sunday evenings had been to look at the engravings, and. one of his rare, agreeable associations came to him. Before he could speak, Dave beckoned to him to draw rear, and laid his gnarled, veined hand on the yellow leather cover. " Reuben, I hate to go back to unpleasantnesses in this hour of reunion and happy feelings, but I must make one allusion to the past; then I promise you never to mention it again; it's too full of shame and bitterness for my own blindness for me to want to." " Let's not sav anything to-night," urged Reuben un-com un-com fortably; - I'll come up the first thing in the morning, morn-ing, and it'll be easier to talk it out in the sunlight." " No, Reuben ; what I have to do now bas waited twenty years to be done, and that's a good deal too long" for mc to put off an hour more. Ever since you left I've kept that fifty-dollar bill between the leaves of this Bible, ready for you when you should come back. My wife, can tell you of more than one night I've laid awake -tossing'and turning, thinking that maybe you was in cruel want, and that money idle here. Now, I want you should take it, the same I unjustly wrenched from you twenty ears ago." Reuben took the bill held out by his brother, and smoothed it on the palm of his hand; this was the bit of paper that had changed all his life; if he had been allowed to use it, what would he have been to-day? A moderately successful farmer, perhaps, nd he would never have known that Grace was in the world, waiting for him, for him alone, the one woman made for him. He almost caressed the bank-note; gratitude was in his heart as he pondered on his lot. "I guess I'll keep it and sho.w it to Grace some day; I shall tell her it marks the turning-point in my life, Dave. If you'd let mc hold on to this, I'd never a-been the successful man I am" "I didn't know that, Reuben," said his brother solemnly: sol-emnly: "God is my witness, I never took that fifty dollars dol-lars for my own profit; but I was full of pride, and thought I knew better than you; and I was too stiff-necked stiff-necked to try and explain matters like an older brother should have done. So I turned to my fists, and your going has taken the sweet out of every joy I'e ever had, and added bitterness to all my sorrows." " Now. Dave, look here ; and you, too, Lucy you, I mean," he said, giving his sister-in-law a gentle little shake that made a quick, rare smile brighten up her faded face, and called back an echo of the pretty schoolmistress. school-mistress. " As for those two kids there, I don't care a cent whether they attend to their old uncle or not; Reub frobably thinks he knows it all a big sight better than do, and Lucy's already planning how many gowns I mean to give her to take out to Colorado with her." " Reuben ! Reuben 1" gasped the mother, shaken out nf h-r annthv. . ; . . : . ' .- :' - . :' . ' ...s.-,.';;-''" fi 'y'-' '"$ " ' '' v. ' ' ''-'. .-V ' . . :M 0vA r ' ' : -' .- - V - :'rv?Jtxiv?-7.v,-,4''i'?.-' M-"-?Kv. :7aV.? . . .. ' ' , ; ' ' r, ::: . y-t L J. i c 'Vri.-Vtv. ;ln: ' w-- -.,. i-.ri 'w.' ';yA ', 0.vv a , JV; -y.X ;'- x-ykJ ?V-' V:1 i not yet in bloom, but there was a pink glow through the branches telling of the sap that already swelled each bud. The steady Cape wind blew in hi; face, bending easily the long, thin grasses that pushed through the sand on the sides of the road. Reuben walked with a swing that soon took him out of the village, and in fic minutes more he had gained the- schoolhouse, where it stood as far as possible from the center of civilization so as to be within easier reach of the outly.ing farm It was a dismal, square wooden building with two doors, one for the girls, the other for the boys. Reuben tried to open the right-hand door, but it was locked. He sat down on the steps and looked at the small playground, bare and grim, trodden hard by many hobnailed boots. Some child had dropped a little bunch of sassafras flowers on the step, and he took them up, holding them thoughtfully in his hand. Here he was, on the threshold of a design planned by him twenty years before, and. till within eighteen months, the moving spring of his existence. He sat in the very place where he hadsworn to be revenged on those who had wronged him, a la J of nineteen. All his boyhood had been hard and unlovely, but never had he known the pangs of injustice and disloyalty till that last week at home. I lis expression was lcs lowering and more energetic as he started off in the direction of the old home with a swinging step. It was not long before he reached the boundary line of the north acre lot the place where their farm began; and then a feeling, ignored till then, leapt into consciousness the love of land. If Dave had children, they would be the fifth generation of Reeds to live there. It was more than a hundred years since his great-grandfather had bought the place and put up a little two-roomed cabin; he had prospered, and his son had built the large, square rooms where Reuben's father had been born, as well as himbclf and Dave. Every fibre of his heart responded to the eloquent cry sent forth by the trees along the stone walls, by the grim rocks pushing push-ing up their old heads through the short grass, and by the red brick chimneys of the house itself, which now came into sight. This was his as much as Dac's; he would turn out the others and coinc here with Grace to make their summer sum-mer home, where his ancestors had toiled and struggled with the obstinate soil; he would buy out Dave, after he had received back his fifty dollars with twenty years' interest at five per ccnL The brute was predominant in his face as he noisily pushed back the garden gate, scow ling to notice that one of the hinges was broken, and crunched up the gravel path to the front door. He pulled the glass bell-handle, but it came out in his hand, and he was forced to rap smartly with his cane. He heard a person moving hastily within, but he did not see a face pressed against the window of the room on the riRht of the door, as if some one were trying to sec who knocked so imperatively. In a inoment a bolt was drawn, and a thin, elderly woman, whose faded face was set in anxious lines, stood before Reuben. " I've come to see Mr. Reed, Mr. David Reed," said Reuben in his authoritative manner. Most people succumbed suc-cumbed at once to this manner of his, and it was one of Grace's charms that she only laughed when he domineered dom-ineered But the woman before him was more than ordinarily impressed ; her eyes, of a dim blue, looked like those of a kitten who seeks shelter beneath a bed, and her voice quavered ns she replied: "He's not in "Now, don't interrupt I've made a good bit of money, and my wife's not poor, so there's plenty to do what" I want to with. And there are four things I want to do bad, and, what's more, I mean to do tbem. First, I want little Lucy to get away from here as quick as she can, and you can settle between you who's going with her.- There'll be plenty of cash to take the whola lot if you all care to go. Second, Reub is to enter college col-lege in the fall; I'll talk about details with him to-morrow. Third, I assume the mortgage on the farm " Dave winced- "How did you find out there was one? he asked in his old, harsh voice. " I let it out, Dave ; it was my fault I was so frightened fright-ened seeing a stranger," faltered bis wife. Dave growled a little, but Reuben went on without noticing him. "And fourth, I'm darned if I don't try my hand with the cranberry bog I" he ended. "You can't do a thing with it," said Dave, leaning forward ; " I've heard my father tell more than fifty times how he bet in to work it, and how it was just a dead loss." "Well, I'm not going to be talked by other folks failures," returned Reuben with increasing warmth. " I've got the plans for getting all the cranberries we could bell out of that bit of land, and I'm going to try it" Dave twisted his lips sullenly; for a moment the brothers glared at each other as they used to do in the bvgone days. Then Reuben's face bghled up. ''I've not done talking yet," he said; "I love to hear my own voice, and I've got a confession on my side to make. No joking, I came here with about as bad feelings feel-ings in my heart as a man can have, I meant to wring that fifty dollars out of you, Dave, with twenty years interest. I wanted my revenge; I had wtnted it every second all this time I've toiled and moiled to make a fortune. I never thought of any pleasure to be got out of my money till 1 met my Grace; she first gave me a glimmer that possession wasn't everything, but that the power to enjoy was more. Still, I held on to my idea of revenge like a dog does to a bone, till I actually actu-ally came right here and talked with little Lucy out in the barn. Then the thought struck mc that, perhaps, there had been a design underlying our past; that you, Dave, were carrying out some project .wo couldn t understand un-derstand when you took this bill from roc 1 d worked and slaved to get I didn't forgive you. even then; l onlv excused you. But since you ve shown fie how you'd kept this fifty dollars and I thought of all tlie times it would have' helped you like thunder to use it-and it-and I began to see from hearing young Reub here talk, how one ape alwavs thinks the next pretty near tools whv, somehow, my idea of revenge has melted awJ). an J all I want is to help along the way I should Av done five years ago." " ) V v .- ' ' "His name's Reuben, .is it? That's rather an odd name." " It's rather a family name with us," explained Lucy with a little touch of family pri Je. " My great-grandfather was named Reuben, and so was father's brother, and it's after him they called my brother." "Is he dead, your father's brother?" asked Reuben, letting his hands rest for a moment while he wailed for her answer. " We don't know." said Lucy. " It's been an awful grief to father to have it all so uncertain about my uncle ; it's for that he sort of spoiled Reub," she added, incoiiseqtii ntly as it seemed to her listener. " I don't see your reasoning there ; why should your father spoil his son because he felt bid about his brotlu r ? " "Well, I'll tell you, though it docs seem kind of mixed when you trv to put it into words." S3id Lucy, draw ing closer, while Reuben turned sideways to listen, forvctling his ta?k. " You see," she began, " w hen my grandfather died he told my full er to be a father to Reuben, who was a good deal oii!iccr, and father promised, end set about keeping his word the best he knew how. But his idea of a father was of some one real harsh, who would be obliged to be hard nd disagreeable, else he'd never get any authority ovtr the other; and he got into the way ot speaking quick and masterful, and he forgot his brother was nearly a grown man when the trouble came." "So there was trouble, was there?" "Oh, se, awful trouble, and fatlu-r has told mother over and over ayain that it was his fault; he never speaks of this to ny one but mother, ind she tol-1 me, because I fretted aluit Reuh's being S'J spoiled, and she wanted to kind of excuse father to inc. It seems that my uncle had worked or; the sly. and had made a big sum of money nearly a hundred dollars, I puess and he wanted to put all this into -i im tiling that father krew was no ,z- r": it v :s sonitthi.ii: that I don't know .-ibv.-t myself, but fat'.:er bad luard bis father tay ll.rt he had dropped a h.; .,f nviny doing the same thine; b"it fatin r. iv-tead of t- r,t.v.i:ip" tl.is gcrtlv to his brother, j-,,; rrn! ii-.d hold of' tV hil's a::d said they shouldn't t,. ,f(j f, r ,,,-,,.,,. jj,. was dd, to". that he. who wor::cd so h.-.r.i mm--lf, h:-d never been able Jo pi t ,- tr,. c- o's; ill he nni'- hr-d to go into housekeeping. house-keeping. .m, eh :'ks for his brother nr.d their sten-motner sten-motner a;id injure and fodder; a, id his brother, who and mother fearful and anxious. Mother will burst out crying times when everything seems all right, thinking how she refused some little tccnty thing to one of the babies, or something like that." Reuben rose and shifted his scat to the second cow, which had been impatiently turning her head for the last live minutes. The barn had grown dark, and when Lucy's voice ceased, the call of the tree-toads in the marsh farther down the road could be plainly heard. Lucy turned and gazed into the gathering gray of the twilight as it folded itself like a clinging garment over rock and tree and field. Reuben milked mechanically, and thought. Lucy's words had shifted past events into different relations to each other, and as yet he was unable to sec them clearly in this sudden readjustment. He could not picture Dave as an indulgent father or a loving brother, although Grace had told iu'm that his business success was greatly due to his imagination. " You arc almost Oriental." she had said to him once, half in earnest, half teasing him. lint now Reuben felt that his mind had not taken in all he had heard, but that the brown dusk of the barn was muffling it. lie longed to feel a keen edge once more to his thinking faculties, and see definitely where he was. Swish, swish,' spurted the jets of milk into the pail, and slowly, cogged " and hindered, worked Reuben's . thoughts. Suddenly Lucy spoke. "I hear wheels, and I guers it's them," she remarked. Then Reuben knew that ideas had come and gone, been rejected or accented by some subconscious but authoritative ego, for lie was saying to himself very positively: "Thai's the blessing of having gained a woman like Grace; she wouldn't allow me to shirk doing for them, even if we do have to gie up some of the things we'd planned for ourselves." "That's about all the milk I can Ret for you this., evening," he said, rising and stretching himself. 'Would you mind running along and telling your father that ' our uncle Reuben's got back from the bad and that he's waiting here till somebody asks him into the hous?" "I guessed il ! I guessed it!" cried Lucy tri-umphantly. tri-umphantly. "The minute I s-w you pick up the milking- Mo-,1 ft(t s,,re jt was you!" Shr tnched into the ploom before Reuben could say, I;y Ceorc.e ! worsen do Jl,mP at tilings like grasshoppers, grass-hoppers, fnrtv lines their own length." "Thry inner krew it. Dave and Lucy didn't, but they really ;avc mc '-11 I've got. Would I change what I am COPYK1GHT. ia my namesake?" he called out in his most boisterous manner, going on without waiting for an answer: "Lucy and I are friends already; there's no need of an introduction intro-duction between us " "Does she does your mother know?" asked Dave Suddenly t "No; I haven't seen her since I guessed out in the barn ; she hasn't any notion at alL" There was ihc same absence of outward feeling when Dave broke the news to his wife as there had been in bis own case; care and sorrow had made them both old before their time, and self-centred. "Nothing surprises mc now." she said querulously; "I've been afflicted so sorely that I guess I'm about prepared for anything that may come, except joy; and this is joy, but it don't seem to have much power to stir mc. Still, you are welcome, wel-come, Reuben, as welcome as Lazarus was to his sisters, for you are like one raised from the dead." Reuben the younger was the only one who saved the situation, with" his uncle's help; for, after the first em- barras-mcnt had passed, their natural spirits rose with a natural reaction. It was Reub who drew out from his uncle the tale of his wanderings as they sat round the hastily supplemented supper-table, and as the returned traveller found that he was listened to with profound interest, he warmed to his task, giving a rapid and vivid sketch of his bfc during the past twenty years. All his struggles, from the day when old Mr. Carver had lent him the ten dollars, and introduced him to the boss of a shoe factory at Brockton, who happened to be going bv the same "train, and who engaged the quick-witted boy before half their journey was accomplished, to the crowning triumph of his life when he had made money enough to give him the right to ask "the sweetest woman in the world" to be his wife, were related to his attentive audience. " There, that's what I call life ! exclaimed Reub, his eves sparkling with excitement "By jingo, that's what I'd hke to do." "Well, that's what you sha'nt do, if I can help it." said his uncle wkh sudden vehemence. " You are not govg to have the fight I did ; it's a toss-up whether a fellow comes out made or marred from that sort of thing. You arc going to start into the fight with your pun. all loaded, and the right kind of a gun for a chap like vou is found in coIIcrc training." There was a pause round the table; Reub leaned forward for-ward breathing hard, looking his uncle straight in the eye; Dave shook his head mournfully; Lucy the younger just now, sir; out u you a ne gooa cnougu to wan She paused, the upward inflection of her voice turning her timid suggestion into a question. "Certainly, I'll wait. I've not travelled from New York for nothing," Reuben returned grimly. " Would you mind, sir, stepping into the sitting-room? The weather's stall cold, and there's no fire in the best parlor" "Will Mr. Reed be long away?" asked Reuben after be had seated himself. " I think he'll be back in less than an hour now; my husband's hard to move these days, and he's always for getting home as soon's he can " Her husband! Was this Lucy? Lucy, wdiose fresh image he had carried with bim all these years? He looked hard at her as she took up her work, a stocking she was mending, and tried to find a trace of one who had been so living to hii mind. Little by little he found memories of the young school-mistress, but they were as faded as the sassafras flowers he had picked up on the schoolhouse steps. "There's a gentleman come to see father. Lucy," said Her mother with a mild reproof in her voice, glancing oward the corner where Reub.-n bad seated hunself. The girl started. "Oh, it wtms real dark in here after coming in from the sunset," she said apologetically ; I didn't sec you at first." " Dn't mention it." said Rmben, looking keenly at ,;'-' the child of Lucy and Dave. She was pretty, . fragile prcttincrs that hoKls a world of pathos for thoie who can read the meaning of the ovcr-brilbant eye. and the exquisite wild-rose pink in the cheeks. Reuben did not understand these sifens; he only saw that she was as lovely as an applc-blosjom and had a I taking bttlc manner. "Hut up your work, mother," she went on: "it's too dark in here for you to strain your eyes. This is the 'July time in the day when we have the right to rest for i a monu-nt, and I gues 1 11 make ti c niot of it." "I've no ricbt to rest any time," said Mrs. Reed querulously; I suppose y ouph'. to try to do the milk-lne. milk-lne. since you can't. It goc uraiust me to think of tiiu-c poor cows having to w'ait till Re'ib gets back, for , il mav be more'n :n hour yet." "Well, yon .lia'n't, and I can't." said the younger Lucy, I'ai'.y; "I'm sorry for 'em. too. but I don't see why we fVnild o'lfer any more iba-i cows." j " I used to milk every day when I w.is a 1k) ," '.aid Reuben suddenly; "why won't von Vt me try my hand i 1 now while I'm waili.i- for your father?" t |
