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HAMILTON JOURNAL.
THE OFFICIAL ORGAN OF HARRIS COUNTY.
VOL. XIII.
A LOVER’S GALE.
“Just look and listen, girls' AY hat a
windstorm for the last of May! Per
haps we had better not go,” and Mrs.
S'! Hmikel turned away from the window
md paused in the process of drawing on
her gluves.
“ill, mother,” remonstrated Pelle.
“You don't mean to say tint you'd for be
vllling to miss seeing the procession
fear of having your hair blown about a
bit! Hie isn't at all patriotic, is she,
Miss Myers’” .
“Lift c Miss Myers" looked upand her
lips moved, but no words came, How*
ever, nobody noticed the dressmaker's
unusually “tiood-bye. pale face and Miss evident .Myers,” agita- the
and
three called arted out gaily., five the Haines minutes build- later
as they s off for
ing, on Broadway, where a window had
been reserved for them. 1
“Good-bye,” smile responded Miss Myers A
and tried to as she spoke; ah but
when the door closed and she w r as ne
she bent over the. machine with a very
grave face and a mind that was not so
Vnuch absorbed in her work as in the as
socialkms and recollections this solemn
holiday never failed to awaken.
Panorama wise there passed before her
menial vision the old homestead in the
south, the honored father tak .a lg up
arms to defend his all, the co aintly
mother committing her child to God's
ikeeping, when, home and husband both
snatched from her by war's cruel red
hands, she sank beneath the blow,
Then came the image of the handsome,
happy hearted yoang northerner, Henry
Dean, who twenty years ago had been
visiting at the next plantation and
whom the firing on bum ter had called
.-away from the girl he had loved the
day after he had spoken, nd
she, when the spark of re el
lion had fared up into the
fierce blaze of civil war, and her father
had enrolled himself among the force#
sent to resist those other forces with
her lover in the ranks-then
smothered every lingering hope of a
possible union, and set herself the task
of forgetting. ® Bat she never could for-
5s °passed en _deavor and
the years by and no word
♦Lame rt o tell her he had escaped housands the fate
so bravely met by so many loved
of his eountry-men, Agnes to
think of him as lying in a soldier's grave
m a sunnv cemetery, where birds came
to sin<* and mate in the springtime, and
beside which a mother often sat
No one knew her story; that is, noth
ing beyond these bare facts in that sadly
fainiliar tale of the impoverishment and
scattering of familie; following in the
footsteps of the war. demure Everybody little was
kind to the quiet,
HAMILTON, GA., JULY 28,1885.
maker, and although light-hearted girU
like Hoile an l Helen iainkel sometimes
rallied her for refusing the offers they
were sure her fair face and amiable dis¬
position must have brought her, Agnes
knew there was no malice in the words,
0ll b T thoughtlessness, and soon forgot
the sting of them.
( n the HOth of May, then, the past
twenty years back was being revived in
lier witli . , than „ usual ... dia
memory more the unreasonable
tinctuess. nntside
"'ind moaned drearily around the eor
tier So w and then hanging a shutter
and always whirling ahead of it little
clouds oT dust. But the sun shone
Lnglitlv and the sidewalks were filled
Wl ^ 1 holiday throngs on their way to
new the procession. The servants had
'• K * n B ncn of absence, so that
V 1 ? Myers though was alone m tho house. But, ^she
timid she was by nature,
was now raincr inerrnea to aae comiore
in the feeling that there was nobody by
A to break , her thoughts. .. . ,
m upon
I p and down up and down, went her
, feet on-the treadle, and the work needle, glided and
.steadily out from under the
»1 \&* " h ' le th <> worker was silently re
calling that, , last day with him in t he
sunny south, that walk home from the
that promise to see hi n
on the morrow-a promise never
kept, tor v umter came between,
‘ Ah-h. W hat was that. Miss My -
ers gave a little scream a# she sprang
up H’om the chair, khe had quite for
gotten the present, and thought for an
instant that shei actually heard the f mig
of the guns that had separated her ringing from
her love. But it was only the
0 .ff , 16 telephone . , call over , her head. . .
^ su ppose I ought to answer it.
She decided then, and taking down the
ear P iece she put her mouth to the
transmitter ana called Hello,
In spite of her recent solemn thoughts,
indeed, . in view of them, Miss My era
cou \ d n °t forbear smiling as she spoke
the homely word; with no one present
and vis |bie to whom it could be ad
dressed it seemed like mockery to her-
8 ^-. She had only used the new m
mention once or twice before, and when
presently the sound of martial music
eamc to her faintly but measurably clear
through the ’phone she stood lis PI enmg
as entranced.
window must be open where
the parade is passing, she reflected,
‘Perhaps it is at the Haines and they
waDt to send a message to me.
At this moment Bello was called
0l,t at the other end of the line. It was
* J and remembering respond. how
*J ,e heard the girls Miss
Myere answered again, Hello, who an*
arc you
^ury l ean. Is that you, Aunt
dariC .- lm down at the depot; gtait for
Baltimore in G*n mm ttes. a ,u
NO. 30.
s:iV ‘how do you do* and good-bye.
n uvc found another elew. l‘nw Heaven
it may lead to something. Carrol#?” Have you
any messagos for the
There was a pans**, while Miss Myers
stood there at the instrument, clutching
the ear piece as if it had been a rope
that was to save her from she drowning. had
By a supreme effort of will re¬
covered from the shock the mention of
that name had given her, ami now her
train was reeling with doubt, uneor
tainty and longing. What ought she to
do? Should she reply and tell who she
really was, or not? It was evident that
there was something wrong with the
w ires and that Mr. Dean imagined Wlmt him
self to be talking to his aunt,
claim had the ‘ little Mis# Myers” upon
him now, after all these years? \ cry
likely ho was happily married ami —
therefore it was not Miss Myers’plain
and simple duty to say that she was no?
“Aunt Jane,” and then go back to her
work?
But one sentence re a a elm:
he was following up c. her fast.
Could it bo herself be was looking forf
Baltimore was in the south, so why not
open her Tips and declare waiting that for slid him was to
hero in New York
come to her? Yet what if she should be
waiting and the “efue” should turn out
to refer to something else, a matter of
business? At this instance warned a peculiar her
clicking that the wire in the might instrument ho switched f
o any
any moment and her opportunity be
lost.
“Harry,” she called out softly.
It was the name he had asked her to
give him twenty years ago, and it now
came to her lips and passed from them
into tho instrument almost before she
*eali ed it was it spoken. you?” AVhere you’
“Agnes! is are
Street and number instantly before the
eomiections- ' *
She heard no more, but a gasp called
out tho Kunkels' address, then hung up
the ear-piece and dropped into her Yet chair
with a lace as white as snow. even
now the instinct to work was strong
within her, and not many minutes had
elapsed before her feet were again on
the treadle, and the whirr of the ma¬
chine once more filled the room. Now,
however, its accompanying rhythm in
her brain, was not all in the past tense,
for, “Did he hear me? Will he come?”
kept up its ceaseless t hrob till it seemed
as i; the words n/usfc be stitched to
every seam of tho shirt she was hem
m
uimg. time by tho little dress¬
But as went
maker i ried to prepare her ht*arf for the
disappointment. “i have drjanaed i ftl while
may the playing of March
listening ..eorgia,’ »o • block'
Through so many
awMy.* she said to ii**r#elf. “It # twenty