The Breckenridge News

Remove Corns, Warts & Bunions with
certain corn cure.
25cts. a bottle.
SOLD AND WARRANTED BY
G. W. SHORT

'Take me!' said Samuel Dale, and
testified his readiness by actions instead
of words.
"Sho! sho! Sammy," said the farmer.
"that'll do. There! don't smother the
girl. Now, Parson Bates, we'll be obliged
to you to tie that knot."

VI.

For many weeks Nancy Tyler lay ill at
Farmer Barclay's house, and in her fever
and delirium the wild fancies of the sick
woman's brain were all more or less connected with her ill fated journey and the
relic she had brought.
In answer to her pathetic appeals the
stone was placed in her chamber, and in
imagination she traversed again and
again in its company the weary distance
between Simsbury and the farm house
where she was lying. Now she was in
the stonecutter's shop, consulting about
the form and fashion of the monument,
and bargaining for its lowest price in
dollars and cents. She found comfort
for hours in repeating the inscription,
and the ill matched rhyme of the epi-
taph gained marvelous pathos when
uttered in those plaintive tones. But
sometimes she cried out that the stone
had fallen on her breast, and with its
weight her heart was quite broken. She
crept back to life at last, but her physical
vigor never returned, and her mind,
at its best estate none of the strongest
was weakened and diseased
They were very good to her at Farmer
Barclay's. Samuel Dale remembered
that he had gained his present happiness
by the blow that made this poor woman
doubly a widow, and the young wife was
grateful to her who by her timely coming rescued her from a fate she could not
contemplate without a shudder. Farmer
Barclay expressed his good feeling by
his favorite ejaculation, and more than
once turned from her bedside with a tear
in his honest eye.
"You take care of that poor creetur'
children, as long as she lives," he said.
"Don't you never send her back to Simsbury. Give her enough to do 'round the
house, Susie, to keep her mind easy, and
a warm place in your chimney corner.
She'll have a gloomy time of it, poor
soul! stumbling 'round among tombstones till she's at rest under one herself."
So the farmhouse became Nancy Tyler's
home, and she lived her quiet,
melancholy life, docile and harmless
never wild in her derangement; only, as
the country people called it "queer."
The stone remained in her chamber, for
it was a fancy of her bewildered brain
that it was still in her charge, and day
and night she was painfully responsible
for its safe keeping.
And spring and summer and winter
came and went again, and they were
very busy at the farm.
Nancy came to Mrs. Dale one evening
with a frightened face.
"If you please, marm, I can't skim the
milk to-night," she said.
"Why not, Nancy?"
"There's a man keeps looking at me
through the window, marm."
Susie took the candle from her trembling
hand and went into the pantry.
She pressed her face close to the glass—
then raised the window and peered out
into the darkness, but could see nothing.
She smiled at Nancy's foolish fears, finished
the relinquished task, and returned
to the kitchen
"I don't see anything of your man
Nancy," she said. "What did he look
like?"
"He looked like a robber, marm."
"Law, Nancy! we don't have robbers
at the farm. Such a thing was never
heard of. It was your fancy. And now
you may go to bed. You are tired, I
know, with your day's work."
Nancy hesitated. "Could the things
be moved back into my room, marm?"
she asked.
"Why, no, Nancy: I don't see how
they can. You can get along for one
night, can't you?—we expect to get along
'most anyhow in house cleaning time.'
"I don't mind anything about the rest,
Miss Dale, but it is outside."
"Oh, the stone! Well, Nancy, it is too
heavy for you or me to lift, but when
Samuel comes home I'll ask him to step
up and set it inside your door. Will
that do? Now go right to bed and to
sleep."
She lit her candle, and climbed the
stairs to her room over the kitchen. The
space at the top was crowded with tables
and chests and other articles belonging
to the upper regions of the house, for
Mrs. Dale was in the midst of a thorough
cleaning. Leaning against a bureau
close to the head of the stairs stood Nancy's
precious charge. She stopped to
pass her hand over its polished surface,
murmuring some half articulate words
in her broken voice—then passed into
her chamber.
Half an hour later, when Samuel Dale
returned from the postoffice, he had an
exciting story to tell. The depot at Lester's
Corners was robbed the night
before, and the thief had been tracked
half way to Barclay Farm.
"So look out for your silver spoons,
Susie," said her husband, "for the light
fingered gentry are among us."
Then she told of Nancy's fright, and
in her eagerness to see that every door
was fastened and the house made secure
for the night, quite forgot her promise
to the poor woman up stairs.
Nancy lay waiting a long time, and
when she slept at last it was a disturbed
and broken sleep, from which she was
suddenly wakened by the sound of a
stealthy step on the stairs. She felt
rather than heard it approaching slowly,
cautiously, well nigh noiselessly. She
rose in her bed, holding her breath to
listen. Was it Mr. Dale coming to fulfill
his wife's promise? Was it—oh horror—
could it be—the man whose face
had frightened her at the window? And
if he came to rob the house, what did it
contain half so valuable as the precious
charge to which she had that night for
the first time proved faithless?
It must have been some such train of
thought that passed through Nancy
Tyler's mind, and that caused the timid,
weak-headed woman, who under ordinary
circumstances would hardly have
ventured to face a mouse, to rush to the
rescue of her treasure. She sprang
from her bed and crossed the room at a
bound, and, throwing open her door,
stood face to face with a man holding a
dark lantern in his hand. In surprise
at her sudden appearance he made a
backward step, lost his footing and
caught at the nearest support. It was
the tombstone. It shook—it tottered—
it fell, and man and marble crashed
down the stairs together with a sound to
wake the dead. A moment's stillness
succeeded the uproar, followed by the
sound of voices and footsteps, and a
group of frightened faces appeared in
the doorway.
The stairs were strewn with fragments
of the broken stone, and at the bottom
lay the motionless body of a man. He
grasped in one hand Farmer Barclay's
well filled wallet, and Susie Dale's wedding
spoons protruded from his pocket.
There was blood everywhere. The
stairs, the walls and pieces of marble
were sprinkled with it, and where the
man's head lay was a pool that every instant
increased in size. He was quite
dead, and they saw by a ghastly wound
upon his head that a sharp corner of the
stone had cloven his skull
When Samuel Dale turned the dead
man's face to the light, he uttered an
exclamation of horror, for Thomas Tyler's
black eyes stared blindly in his
own, and his lips, parting, showed the
white teeth grinning in a ghastly smile.
They bore away the body, and left a
woman on the bloodstained stair groping
with feeble, moaning cries for the fragments
of Thomas Tyler's tombstone.

THE END.

Next week the "Forger's Bride." will appear, read it.