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THE, CAMPERS IN STONE VALLEE
(Continued from Last Week.)
And so it was arranged: and next morning they
started to find the cave —Hester on the seat of the
buckboard beside her father; Natty on a box behind,
giving direction as to the way. The lunch-basket
was stowed under the seat out of the sun; also a jug
of water, wrapped in w r et sacking, to keep it cool: for,
as Mr. Croly observed, listening to water was not the
same as tasting it, and Natty owned that the sounds
in the cave were most tantalizing.
The way was like the country of Hester’s story,
which she had borrowed from Natty’s descriptions.
Tne land rose in long benches toward the horizon,
and the sage grew ever bigger and wilder. The sun
climbed higher and hotter in the cloudless sky. The
low, flat crest of the mesa looked blue and hazy in
the distance. “Keep to the west,” Natty was always
saying.
As Hetty gazed, the blue line seemed to waver, to
rise and sink; the light quivered; sometimes she fan
cied she saw the rocks, and then her eyelids fell and
she saw only dark spots shifting on a glowing field.
Her father’s arm went around her, and she slept.
When she woke the wagon had stopped and her
father was lifting her to the ground. It was all pre
cisely like.the story she had partly heard and partly
made. The black rocks rose before her; at their
feet tumbled a mass of broken stone, as when part of
a wall falls down. Through this rift a pass went up
into the cup-shaped hollow; but all was hot and bare.
There was no pool, no grass, no peace and refresh
ment for man and beast. And Hetty could have
cried to see her dreams so nearly true and yet so
far from it. No poor starved horses need come
there to feed and drink.
“I don’t believe there is any cave!” she exclaimed
pettishly.
It was decided to eat luncheon before exploring
further. The sun beat full upon the face of the per
pendicular rocks; in the little breezeless hollow the
air was hot and dead as the air of an oven.
They were forced to content themselves with the
shadow of the wagon, and here they sat them down,
in the dust, and ate and drank; and Hetty’s faith re
vived with the taste of the good home food, and
Natty’s appetite was something to remember.
“We’ll save the rest of Mother’s biscuits to eat on
the way home,” Mr. Croly advised: but when he
looked for the rest of the biscuits, none were left.
Natty had finished a pile of them that would have
I lied a horse’s nose bag. lie was happier, with those
white flaky morsels descending into that place of
chronic emptiness, his stomach, than rivers of water
with sands of gold could have made him.
But Mr. Croly was thinking of his acres of thirsty
land; of his homesick wife and those tender “host
ages, his two little daughters. He would have been
ashamed to confess how, like a dreaming boy, his
mind ran upon that sound of water in Natty’s cave.
It was not much of a. cave to look at; only a hole
tig enough to creep into, leading to a tunnel that
ran along, close to the ground, at the base of those
basalt bluffs, where they rested upon the granite. It
was at the back of the little cup-shaped valley, be
neath the half circle of rocks encompassing it. They
crept into it and along the tunnel, one by one. A
strong, cool draft of air met them, and at first they
thought the sound they heard was only wind. The
tunnel roared like an old-fash ! oned chimney in an
autumn gale. But there were two sounds—one, the
faraway rushing and roaring, and a nearer one that
made their hearts thrill.
A sound of living water, imprisoned in some dark
passage of the rocks —falling, falling deliciously, like
rain of a summer night dropping into cisterns far un
derground, that with the sound.
“Oh, Father, Father, it is there!” Hetty cried; and
she began to laugh hysterically.
‘lt. is there!” Mr. Croly repeated. "If that isn’t
water, I’ll eat my hat!”
Natty’s peaked face wore a smile that was ghastly
in the faint, green, cavernous light.
“Didn’t I tell ye?” he exulted, though as a fact he
had never claimed more than the sound.
Hetty laughed, and listened, and laughed again,
scarcely knowing why the sound should fill her with
such joy.
“Hark!” her father commanded; ami he began a
A Story Illustrating Holv a Good Deed Wrings Its Relvard.
series of tappings and knockings on the walls of the
tunnel.
“Children,” —there was a sharp business ring in his
voice, —“I want you to get out of this place; it looks
to me like a place for snakes —rattlers. Natty, you
take Hetty out; and be careful how you go poking
about those rocks under the bluff.”
To Hetty’s disappointment she saw but little of
the cave. That day her father finished his explora
tions by himself. But she was allowed to creep in
for one more “Hark!” before they left —just to make
sure that the wonderful sound was true.
She chatted and laughed all the way home, and
Natty seemed uncommonly wide awake, and his head
kept popping up over the back of the seat from be
hind; but her father said scarcely a word, and drove
as one in a dream.
That night the parents talked late in their room,
and next morning Hetty found her mother putting up
another picnic luncheon.
“Who is that for?” she asked.
“Father is going to take a ride, and he may not
be back to dinner.”
“Oh, may I —”
“No, dear; you may not. I can answer for that
myself,” said Mrs. Croly. So Hetty knew it was no
use talking to Father.
But she hung about the wagon asking questions
while he was harnessing up.
“What did he want the ropes for, and the candles,
and the pick, and crowbar? And what was that tal
lowy stuff in the box?”
It was giant powder, she was told, her father ad
ding, with his teasing smile, intended to baffle idle
questions, that he and Natty were going “prospect
ing.”
Hetty felt more disappointed than ever, and in
jured, too, that her father should take Natty Gess,
and leave her behind —without even telling her
where they were going.
It was after tea-time, and the sun was sinking, a
great copper-red ball, on the verge of the plain, when
they saw the wagon returning. They saw only the
dust, but they knew it was the wagon. And then
Mrs. Croly behaved in a manner which her little
daughter could not understand.
Instead of going out to meet her husband, when his
step was heard on the broad-walk, she turned away
and went into the next room, and only Hetty was
left to greet him.
He was smiling, and did not seem in the least put
out.
“yVhere is Mother? Mother, come here!” he call
ed. In his hand be carried the jug he had taken in
the morning, filled with water from the well; it still
seemed heavy.
“Bring me a tumbler, Hetty,” he said.
Mrs. Croly sat down, looking pale, and watched
him while he fiPed the glass to the brim.
“Drink that, Mother,” he said. “That ought to
make you feel stronger. It is worth its weight in gold
to us —that tumblerful of water.”
“Don't try any of your jokes on me, Father. I
don't feel as if I could bear it,” said Mrs. Croly.
“I mean what 1 say. That is living water. It is
water that will give nfe. He that made ‘rivers in
the desert,’ bid it in the rocks; and a boy as ignor
ant as a wild ass's colt discovered it; and, please God,
I will make a wav for it to spread.”
“And I grudged them—our neighbors— a little wa
ter from our well!” said Mrs. Croly, humbly; and the
tears stood in her eyes.
“You didn’t do any such thing!” Mr. Croly prompt
ly contradicted. “You are one of them that say: I
can't go,’ but go, all the same, and twice as far as
the ready promisers. Come, Mother, you shall not
mix any tears with that water. With that jugful I
expect to christen our claim. And if I can wake up
these sagc-brushers, and get ’em to chip in and help
me build a ditch, we can water twenty farms with
that water just as well as one; and own the ditch •
besides.”
And the thing was done. The farmers woke up at
the word water! Not in the river, far away, with
costly dams and gates and waste weirs to build, but
water in the hills above them, ready to steal down
in rivulets, once away was made, and bless their
The Golden Age for October 6, 1910.
naked lands. So the settlers built the “Settlers’
Ditch.” And long before the company had made up
its big, various, expensive mind what to do next, and
whether the land was worth saving, it was saved —
that much of it, at least.
The sage-brush disappeared; the grass and clover
spread. Little Martha waded in the ditches, and
laughed and grew tall, if not fat, and the dark hol
lows faded from under her sweet blue eyes.
They were in a grass country, and the mother’s
heart was satisfied. They were in a country they
had made themselves,—with the help of God’s good
gift,—and the father’s pride was satisfied.
And when at last the company's big ditch went
through, it could afford to spare, from its rent rolls,
those few men on the “Settlers’ Ditch” who had saved
their own land through the faith that was in them.
BIOPSIS.
(Continued from Page 1.)
The sweetest songs that ever thrilled the heart
Have by I ps white with agony been sung.
Beyond some Jordan every Canaan lies.
Who will not in the wilderness abide,
Athirst and hungered, for his forty days
Shall ne’er along the palm-strewn highway ride
In triumph to be crowned a king of men.
But paths of peace the humble only find.
’Twas not o’er Shinar’s vain, ambitious host,
Exulting in the pride of human strength—
But unto Bethel’s wanderer, lone and sad,
Rock-pillowed in the desert, God drew back
The curtains of the skies, and showed revealed
The shining stairway swung ’twixt earth and Heaven.
God gems thy path with opportunities
Thick as the summer dewdrops on the grass,
Rich with His promises. But, manna-like,
They must be gathered e;*e the sun be risen,
And used upon the instant, else they breed
Within the heart a never dying brood of worms,
Armed with stings of vain regret,
And to a loathsome hell of torment turn
The paradise of memory.
So, from seeds
Os good, neglected, direst evils spring;
And opportunities of yesterday,
Borne upward, on whose wings we might have soared
To heights immeasurable of bliss sublime,
Hang millstones ’round our necks today to drag
Our struggling souls beneath the unp'tying wave.
Seize, then, the winged moments as they pass,
And ere they speed to Heaven’s record up,
Stamp each with some good deed,
Some gentle word, \
Some holy thought, some generous action done;
So shall thy treasures be laid up in Heaven;
And where thy treasures are, God says thy heart
Shall be. And where thy heart is, there thou art,
For heart is all. And Heaven thus be thine.
MEMPHIS MUZZLING THE DEVIL.
(Continued from Page 4.)
never existed its violent satanic children would never
have been known. But the saloon can be better
fought as an OUTLAW, than as the dirty legalized
darling of the State.
Let the good work of outlawing the saloon go on,
and then, as in the case of Memphis OUTRAGED
DECENCY can find easier redress.
And remember—what Memphis has done, and is
doing, all other prohibition communities can do
WHEN ITS CITIZENS GROW TO THE FULL
STATURE OF MEN!
Payne Afternoon, observed by an Atlanta Literary
Society this week, was a fitting honor to our brilliant
story-writer, Mrs. Odessa Strickland Payne. Read
her masterpieces—“ESTHEß FERRALL’S EXPERI
MENT” and “THE MISSION GIRL.” Each sl.lO post
paid.
THE GOLDEN AGE,
814 Austell Bldg., Atlanta. Ga.
5
