The Columbian

Select Story.
HER WAITING.

Clarence and Caryl! both paused at the
sight of her, making the fairest picture
they had seen since they started on their
sketching tour, a month before.

It was midsummer now—mild July,
a fervent, sunny day; and they had lounged
along the country road leisurely,
until the ardent heat and weariness, and
perhaps just a little laziness, induced
them to get off the regular road, in
among the great wooded slopes on the
hillside, where a little rivulet of clear
water foamed and lashed itself down from
some icy mountain spring away up in
the solemn fastness among the clouds.

And in among the flickering shadows,
standing in the crystal brook, holding her
blue calico skirt up in her little sunburnt
hands, so that the lovely contour of her
ankles were so innocently displayed,
the little, battered hat of grass and daisy-
wreathed straw hanging on her bare
arm—her dark, lustrous hair gently
blowing in the breeze—her great, wondering,
dark eyes shyly watching the approaching
travelers, who had halted so
suddenly—it certainly was as charming
a pastoral as imagination could have
invented, with all the accessories of
flickering sunshine and solemn shadow,
purling water and sighing wind.

"What a picture!" Clarence said almost
reverently. "What a face! See
those eyes, Caryl!"

Caryl laughed.

"Very pretty—very pretty indeed.
But, as long as she has discovered us, we
may as well go forward. It's glorious
cool and refreshing here, but I dare say
we've a five mile tramp ahead of us yet
before we catch up with the rest of
'em."

They continued until they came up to
the little brook, that effectually cut off
their progress.

Then Clarence lifted his hat, and smiled
his own gracious smile that had set so
many foolish woman hearts to thinking
of him.

"Tell us, please, if this is Maumee
creek: and is there any way of getting
over?"

Her little scarlet mouth suddenly parted,
in a bright, sunny smile.

"It is Maumee creek, sir, and there are
two ways of crossing it, if you don't
mind a little trouble."

She looked down at their booted feet,
then up again at Clarence's admiring
face.

"I don't believe we would object to
following any advice you would give."

That same sweet caressing tone in his
voice that Edith Sartoris thought the
sweetest music in all the world—that
even at that very minute she was thinking
of and yearning to hear, as, sitting in
her room at a seaside hotel, she was
reading his letter to "his own little darling!"

And Gordon Caryl saw the same look
brighten in the little rustic maiden's eyes,
the same half delicious, half shy flush
delicately tint in her clear brunette face,
that he had seen in so many other women's
faces.

"You can either wade across, sir, or
jump over it isn't more than six or seven
feet wide."

A roguish little look rose in her eyes
as she suggested both plans.

Clarence turned to Caryl, who had
stood all the while quiet and grave: but
then Caryl usually was quiet and grave
for all he was considered the "best fellow
of the lot."

"Shall we draw lots for a decision?"
he asked.

And for an answer, Caryl sprang forward
and cleared the little shallow, rushing
stream with a bound.

Clarence assumed an expression of injured
pain.

"I wouldn't have believed it of you,
Caryl! I never was an acrobat, but I can
assure you I have no intention of being
left out in the cold this way."

And, with his matchless grace and
coolness, he sat comfortably down on a moss
rock and removed his low, handsome
shoes, and gray, crimsoned clocked
stockings, displayed shapely feet, white as
a woman's.

And then he stepped into the stream,
and when beside the young girl, paused
and bowed.

"Will you let me escort you to the
bank in safety."

"It would have been impossible not to
have been amused by his mock, elaborate
courtesy: and she smiled shaking her
head:

"Thank you! It is not at all necessary."

And then they all stood on the opposite
shore, where Clarence donned silken
hose and Oxford ties again.

Not till then did Caryl take any part
in the conversation.

"We are on our way to Red Rock
Lake," he said, courteously. "We are not
positively sure we are on the shortest
road. or how much further we have to
travel. If you could only tell us, Miss—"

A grave little smile supplied the interrogative
in his question.

"My name is Estelle, and I can tell
you what you wish to know; but you are
on the wrong road, if you mean to join
the camping out party on the lake, up in
the mountains. By this road you will
have fifteen miles to go."

Clarence gave a dismal exclamation.

"Fifteen miles! and high noon already!
That is appalling news, Miss Estelle: but
of course you cannot know our knap-
sacks are empty, and I am expiring of
starvation."

She watched his debonair, handsome
face so earnestly, yet so modestly, while
he spoke; then she turned proudly to-
ward Caryl.

"If you will be willing to stop at our
cottage, a half mile up yonder," and she
pointed away up among almost impassable
wooded slopes, "I will be glad to give
you your dinners. Grandma and Uncle
Thuel will be pleased to see you, and it
is directly on the right road to the camp.
I can show you the tents from our house
—the lake is just below, on the other
side of the mountain."

Her ready, fluent speech, refined and
gently spoken, her sweet half-reserved,
wholly dignified manner, were most
charming and girlish, and Caryl accepted
her invitation readily.

"We will be only too glad and grateful.
Come, Clarence. you're equal to
climbing the mountain, I hope?"

Clarence sent a glance to Estelle's
eyes.

"With such a guide I'd follow the
world over."

Then, when a swift frown of displeasure
darkened on Caryl's face, the meaning
of which he well knew, he purposely
dropped behind him, and walked side by
side with the silent, lovely young creature.

"Estelle! it just fits you, that soft, sweet
melodious name."

She flushed a little

"I am glad you like it I never did, I
shall now," she added in a curious,
solemn little undertone.

And their eyes met—only one brief
look: but after that Estelle scarcely
spoke a word on their toilsome up hill
journey.

But the arrival! Tired, heated, hungry
though they were, they paused in rapturous
extasy at the magnificent sight
spread below them—the glorious expanse
of lake, and forest, lower hills and winding
river, distant town and nestling
villages

"And you live here
Caryl looked at her as though she were
a saint.

She
laughed—her
happy
girlish
laugh.

"I have always lived here, and I love
the place dearly."

With charming delicacy she left them
alone with the silent, solemn scene that
entranced them so; and then, a few
minutes afterward, returned, accompanied
by a middle aged man, with a bronzed,
pleasant face.

"These are the gentlemen. Uncle Thuel,"
she said. and then flitted away again, to
leave the men to become better acquainted.

Then they had dinner, at which a sweet
faced, white haired old lady presided with
homely, hearty grace.

Hours afterward when, for the first
time in all her life Estelle stole off by
herself purposely to think of a man's
handsome face, and sweet, caressing
voice, she tried to realize how it all came
about that Mr. Algernon Clarence—she
knew his name well enough by this time
—how he had managed, after dinner
while his friend was talking with Uncle
Thuel about the hunting and fishing
thereabouts, to find her out among the
trees, and have a pleasant, long talk with
her: when he told her kindly friendly
things, and how he hoped to be allowed
to come again often, when the camping
out party remained at the lake.

And then he told her that every night
when dark came, he should look up to
the cottage perched on the mountain
side, and if he saw always a light in the
highest front window—the little window
away up in the peak of the roof—he
would know she was thinking of him.
Would she do it if he would agree to
hang a little white flag out every day.
It was something so new to her, so
romantic, so strangely, inexpressibly
sweet, and, with her young girl's heart
thrilled to its very centre, Estelle shyly
promised: and—now they were gone.

To-morrow would he remember or forget
the little flag—the sign that he
thought of her?

And the first thing her eager eyes saw,
when she looked down through the clearing
mists in the valley, next sunrise, was
the pure white flag, blowing exultantly
in the crisp westerly breeze!

And at night, as handsome Clarence
lay stretched on his hammock, ready to
go to sleep, the last object his lazy, blue
eyes saw was a tiny spot of light like
some near-by star, away up on the dark
silent mountain side!

The bright summer day passed away.
and many and many a time Clarence
idled away many a delicious hour with
the girl, who had learned to watch for
his coming, as flowers crave the glad
sunshine.
always bringing a happy smile to Estelle's
face, ever receiving a glad welcome: for
—was he not his friend?

And so the summer days passed away.
and the gay little party that had camped
out on Red Rock Lake broke up, each
going his way: and the last night that
the steady little light, so like a star.
shone down upon them from the hill
side cottage, Caryl was there without
Clarence—for an imperious message
from fair Edith that day, had sent him
speedily on his way to her, eager to see
her and take her in his arms again:
while the light burned in the upper window
for him!

He had not gone to tell Estelle good
by. He was a little cowardly about it,
for he knew he could not promise to see
her ever again, and he dared not tell her
about Edith Sartoris,

Caryl had spoken sharply to him about
it—more sharply than he ever had spoken
before—but Clarence had laughed it
off.

And gone—out of Estelle's life.

That night the light gleamed steadily
all the hour until the usual hour for its
extinguishment, shining not for the
lover Estelle loved, but for the man who
had loved her with all his soul—Gordon
Caryl, whom she liked because he was
his friend.

That next day he went to say farewell
and there was nothing for him to do but
to tell her just how it was, and then to
witness her anguish, her proud silent
agony, that refused itself plaint or cry.

"If you could but forget him, Estelle!
Can you not forget him, and let me love
you? Oh, child! if you but only knew
how I had loved you from the very first!
If you but only knew, to what rest, and
comfort, and happiness, I would take
you!"

Her quiet, white face awed him, as
the face of the dead silences one.

"That could never be." she answered.
simply. "I could never learn to unlove
him." And besides," and then a strange,
wondering. far away look came to her
eyes that terrified him, because he saw
that the awful sorrow was stealing her
reason—"besides, I am very sure he will
come back again."

It has been fifty years since then, and
Clarence and his frivolous wife have led
a cat and dog's life, until their grandchildren
have learned to hold them in
contempt; while away among the solemn
and silent mountains there lives a silver-
haired old woman, with a sad, silent
face, the one chief business of whose life
has been, for half a century, to keep
ready for its nightly burning a little, old-
fashioned lamp.

And not a night has it ever been missing,
shining like a star from the window
of the little cottage, where Gordon Caryl
and his sister had lived years and years.
the true, honest friends of the gentle,
patient, pitiful old woman, who waits.
and waits, and waits!