Iowa County Democrat

"I won't stay in this house a day longer than I can help," said Aunt Keturah Green, jerking her knitting needles emphatically into their sheath; "no, I won't!"

"What's the matter, Aunt Keturah?" questioned Laura Green, a little absently.

"Matter? Well, it's all matter—don't care if he is your father, Laura, and my own brother to boot, he's a penurious old sarpent, and the way he treats Mike Reilly's enough to make one's blood boil. Just because he owes him a little money, too! Not but what I like him well enough, Laura," added Keturah.

"Then, Aunt Keturah," interposed Laura, with an interesting glow of crimson on her cheek, "why did you use your influence with papa about Maurice Denvers?"

"Why did I? Because I thought I was doin' my duty by you, child. Maurice Denvers is an empty-headed, conceited young jackanapes, no way good enough for you, Laura Green, and it's your father's money he's arter, and just nothing else under the sun."

"How dare you speak so, Aunt Keturah?" exclaimed Laura, suddenly rising to her feet, with rosy lips half apart and cheeks deepening with every breath she drew.

"When—"

She stopped abruptly. The next moment Aunt Keturah was alone.

"There she's gone," soliloquized Miss Green, stretching her neck to watch the gleam of Laura's blue muslin dress through the hedge of lilac and syringa, "gone, and s'pose Maurice Denvers is there to meet her. 'Love laughs at locksmiths,' the old proverb says, and I am sure it does at old mauds and cross-grained fathers. I'm glad I warned Jonathan, though. I hain't no faith in that airy chap, with his big seal rings and his perfumed handkercher, and his black curls. That piece of good advice clean balances this 'ere business about Mike Reilly. It's all fair and square, and I'm quits with Jonathan Green for once in my life."

So soliloquizing the old maid went upstairs to pack her traveling accessories, and brush up the snuff-colored bombazine which was to be her robe du voyage.

Meanwhile the stray sunbeams peeking their gold-capped heads down through the dense trails of the wild honeysuckles that grew by the riverside, were mute witnesses to the stolen interview between Maurice Denvers and pretty Laura Green.

"You don't love me half so dearly as I do you, Laura," he said reproachfully, "or you would consent."

"Maurice!" she looked up into his face with eyes full of tender remonstrance. "You know that I love you, Maurice."

"Then, dearest, why will you not promise to be mine now?"

"Oh, Maurice! ought we not to wait a little? Papa may relent toward you."

"Yes;" he interrupted impatiently. "the skies may fall. One supposition is about as probable as the other. I tell you, Laura, this suspense is killing me."

For a young man undergoing the process of being killed Mr. Maurice Denvers certainly appeared remarkably hale and healthy, and most assuredly had trimmed his mustache and curled his hair very elaborately, but then Laura Green was too much in love herself to judge the matter very critically.

"Oh, Maurice!" she sobbed, "don't talk in that awful way."

"Then don't drive me to it, Laura. Consent at once, like the dear little angel that you are, to make me happy without any of these absurd delays. There is a little church at Brentford where we can be quietly married as early as we choose to-morrow morning. I will have a carriage under the window at 3 o'clock. It's only a pleasant drive before daylight, and when once you are mine your father can but relent."

Laura hesitated. The color came and went on her cheeks in painful flushes.

"Think, dearest," urged the importunate lover. "Remember that the happiness of both of our lives hangs in the balance. Once separated, who knows how many years of misery lie before us? Say yes, Laura."

And Laura, blushing and crying, did not withdraw the hand that lay in his, and whispered, almost inaudibly, "Yes."

"Well," said Aunt Keturah, solemnly. "your gal has acted like she was bewitched to-day, Jotham. Here she's put rock salt in the tea, and sot the carving knife alongside the butter-dish, and poured water into the padding, and done everything exactly knackerside foremost. It's my belief she's going to have a spell o' fever or suthin', Jotham Green."

"I guess not," said Squire Green, puffing away at his pipe, and pausing in his mental calculation of how much the wheat fields on the upland were likely to yield him this year.

"Where is she? Where is my little gal?" he demanded, turning suddenly around in his chair.

But Laura had disappeared.

"Gone up to bed, I s'pose," said Aunt Keturah, shortly: "and I'm goin' too. I've got my things to finish packing yet to-night."

The door had scarcely closed upon the lank figure of the retiring spinster when Mike Reilly came into the room.

"A note, sir—from the bank."

Squire Green opened it and glanced over the contents.

"Good Jericho!" he ejaculated, setting his teeth close together and contracting his brows into a dark frown. "I knew he was a villain, but I didn't think he was as bad as that!"

Following the first impulse of his heart, he went up to Laura's room, but paused silently by the bedside when he saw, in the moonlight, the fair cheek outlined against the snowy pillow, and the long lashes of the closed eyelids shadowing the waxen skin.

"She's asleep," he murmured under his breath; "my little one's asleep. Time enough to-morrow morning."

And he crept out of the room on tiptoe. But Laura was not asleep. The lip quivers, the eyelashes hang heavy with tears, as she lies there softly sobbing to herself:

"Oh, papa! papa! I wouldn't mind it so much if it were not that I was deceiving papa."

The faint moonlight had long ago been extinguished in racks of driving clouds. the rain was beginning to play its soft tune on the leaves, and the old clock in the hall had just chimed 3, as Maurice Denvers waiting impatiently by the clustered laburnums, heard the great door creak softly on its hinges, and then a whispered voice asked:

"Are you there?"

"Yes."

But instead of the lily hand of pretty Laura, a handbox was extended through the darkness.

"Confound it!" muttered Denvers, under his breath, "I never thought of the baggage; but I must contrive to stow it away somewhere."

A square box followed; then two paper parcels; then a valise.

"Oh, botheration! one would think we were going to the East Indies for a wedding tour!" grumbled Maurice.

"That's a woman's calculation all over."

And then came a soft rustle through the leafy path, a smothered "Hush, sh!" and in half a minute they were driving down the lane speedily and noiselessly.

About a mile had been traversed in this way when Maurice leaned tenderly towards his companion.

"Cheer up, dearest; we shall soon be there."

There was no answer, save an unmistakable nasal sound.

"She's asleep and, what's more, she's snoring!" ejaculated Mr. Denvers.

"Well, perhaps she's tired, poor thing! It's just as well, however; I wanted time to arrange all my plans and to think over what the next step is to be."

The faint crimson of dawn was beginning to glow in the east when the waterproof cloak and green veil at Mr. Denvers' side began to stir a little.

"Dearest," he murmured softly, bending down towards the drooping head.

"Hain't we got to the depot yet?" demanded a sleepy voice, interrupted by a prodigious yawn. "I declare, Mike, you drive slower'n a snail, and I've got the cramp in my legs and toothache besides. Deuce take the rain, say I."

Mr. Denvers drew up his horse with a sudden jerk.

"Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely.

"Who be I? Why, who should I be but Keturah Ann Green? Mercy upon us! Tain't Mike after all! Hem—turn around—take me home again. There's some hitch here that I can't get the hang on, no how. I do b'lieve Maurice Denvers is goin' to elope with me! Help! Murder! Thieves! You can't marry me agin' my own free will, anyhow; I won't say yes; I won't—I won't!"

"Will you hush, woman!" sternly demanded Denvers, pale with anger and dismay.

"Who on earth do you suppose wants to marry you?"

"Well, then," demanded the irate spinster, "what are you runnin' away with me for?"

"I might with equal justice ask," he replied, "what are you leaving your brother's house in this mysterious manner for?"

"Well, I might as well own at once," said Miss Green desperately, "speak the truth and shame that What's-his-name, they say. Mike Reiley was goin' to drive me to the four o'clock morning train, and Mike wasn't coming back agin. You see, Jotham advanced money to Mike, and he's took a most cruel advantage of it ever since, and Squire Deane down to the factory in our village wants more hands, and I was jest goin' to help a poor oppressed feller creetur unbeknownst to Jotham, and—Gracious goodness, Mr. Denver, do you want to shake the life and soul out of me that you're drivin' like all possessed? I've lost my veil—there go my false teeth; my back comb's broke off: Oh! oh!"

Miss Keturah Green broke into a hysterical sort of a trill, holding on to the side of the carriage as it rattled madly over the road. But Maurice Denver never ceased his pace until he reined up abruptly at the little station.

"There!" he said viciously, "you've ruined my prospects, if that is any consolation to you."

And before she could pour forth her wrath the carriage had disappeared down the road.

Our little heroine also had heard the soft steps through the hall, the subdued murmur of voices, and the muffled roll of carriage wheels.

"He has come," murmured Laura to herself. "Oh, I must see papa once more before I go."

She stole softly to her father's room. As she opened the door, a light streamed into the hall. Squire Green was sitting at his table, awake and dressed.

"Laura!" He started as he saw her white, agitated face. "Daughter!"

And he drew her tenderly to his side.

"I'm not sick, little one. Don't be frightened; but I got news last night that I couldn't sleep on. See."

He gave her the letter from the bank. She glanced over it with dilated eyes and blanching cheeks.

"Father! it is not possible that Maurice has forged your name—that he is a villain!"

"There is the best possible proof, Laura. The officers are on his track already."

And Laura, clinging, pallid and trembling to her father's side, began to realize what a narrow escape she had made.

Half an hour after sunrise Maurice Denvers was arrested for the crime of forgery. The elopement—which had been his sole hope for surely, he fancied Jotham Green would hardly deliver his daughter's husband up to the penalties of the law—had proved a miserable failure, and we may imagine the imprecations he mentally heaped on poor old Aunt Keturah's head.

Mike Reilly waited at the foot of the lane until daylight, and then came philosophically home, put up his horses and went to work, agreeing with Hamlet that it was "better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of."

As for Miss Keturah Green, she went home resolved for the future to mind her own business, and Laura has not left off thanking Providence that she did not elope in the rainy darkness of that eventful morning.

Philadelphia Call.