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DRIVING into the yard on a dull<br />
September day in an old democrat<br />
wagon which might have arrived<br />
on the Mayflower with his' distinguished<br />
ancestor, scowling and snarling at<br />
a * rack-a-bones <strong>of</strong> a horse, William Brewster<br />
nervously grasped the reins and slid<br />
gingerly to the ground.<br />
"Whoa! didn't I t^ll ye?" he shrieked,<br />
jerking on the reins and throwing his<br />
clumsy-weight on the tugs. "Back, you old<br />
fool! Do you want me to tear the whiffletrees<br />
out gettin' you onhitched!"<br />
When he stamped . into the kitchen a<br />
few .minutes later, the refined old gentlewoman<br />
by the window lifted her deep grey<br />
eyes for an instant from a pan <strong>of</strong> pie apples<br />
to drop again.before he could catch their<br />
subtle flash.<br />
"What'd you think has happened now,<br />
Anne Rutledge?" he growled throwing him<br />
self iqjo the big rocker. "Stone has sold<br />
to Bayton for fifteen thousand and oneV<br />
these durned furriners has bought the<br />
Jenkins' place."<br />
It was a piece <strong>of</strong> real news and the woman's<br />
industrious fingers halted for a<br />
moment as she looked him full in the face.<br />
The Stone place was directly east <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Brewster estate, the last farm owned by a<br />
"native" between them and beautiful<br />
Kildare, which, within a few years had<br />
been' bought up by millionaires from St.<br />
Louis and New York and converted into a<br />
sort <strong>of</strong> Bar Harbor <strong>of</strong> the granite hills.<br />
The Jenkins place was the next farm<br />
directly west.<br />
" AND <strong>of</strong> all kinds <strong>of</strong> course it had<br />
*» to be one <strong>of</strong> these crazy Rooshan<br />
Poles," the incensed "native"<br />
added.<br />
• "Maybe it will be all for the best,<br />
William," his wife s<strong>of</strong>tly ventured,<br />
resting her eyes on old Mount Maroonock<br />
rising dimly above the gathering<br />
clouds. ''Bayton has his millions and<br />
will probably convert the Stone Place -.,,<br />
into one <strong>of</strong> his model farms and as for<br />
the Jenkins place, I'm sure anything j<br />
ought to be better than an abandoned t<br />
farm all going to rack and ruin." —• j<br />
"Jest like you, Anne Rutledge!" he<br />
retorted, "Staring at the mountain!<br />
If your darned old mountain should<br />
bust, an' give us all a fire an' brimstone<br />
shower bath, you'd say the<br />
same. Bayton ain't a-goin' to set up<br />
another <strong>of</strong> his high-toned farms but<br />
jest hitch a bigger frontier on to his<br />
lordly serfdom. He'll have a barb<br />
wire fence twelve feet high all aroun'<br />
my farm, that'll scratch up my cattle<br />
like the old Harry an' spile my huntin'<br />
an' fishin', darn 'im!<br />
,"An' the worst <strong>of</strong> it all is," he went<br />
on getting up and pacing the room in<br />
growing excitement, "Bayton swears<br />
that this is the last acre he is goin' to<br />
buy. Just imagine my luck, Anne!<br />
Stone sells for fifteen thousand and I<br />
couldn't sell for fifteen hundred an'<br />
my farm's twice as good as his'n.<br />
Jest imagine it Anne Rutledge, if you<br />
can! A barb wire fence on one side o*<br />
me an' a crazv Polack on the other!"<br />
«s j TELL ye what, Anne! I tell ye<br />
* what!" he cried as his flashing eyes fell<br />
on the beloved Winchester and fishing rod<br />
in a conspicuous corner, "1 ain't goin' to<br />
stan' this insult. A man <strong>of</strong> my name an'<br />
antecedents ain't called on to do it. My<br />
forefathers fought the injuns at Plymouth<br />
and chopped a home outen the wilderness,<br />
an' a hundred an' fifty years later they did<br />
the same thing all over again up here among<br />
the granite hills. An' now an insolent<br />
money-grubber buys up the whole country-side,<br />
postin' every wood and stream ,<br />
an' fences me in on one side an' tells me to<br />
'sociate with the scum o' the earth on the<br />
other! I'll sell out an' git out if I have t<br />
gnglwH^BP&«uft ||^ starting the<br />
? ^a»alBEHB>^PB«SBk, horse down<br />
VjJnaaHBnaKaaaM ^naaaHKSiinBB<br />
1 | y<br />
At Latt She Came I !<br />
Home With a Story \<br />
With a Real Thrill<br />
in It tor Everybody<br />
hill on the run and only the sudden ap-<br />
(jearance on the scene <strong>of</strong> the new neighbor,<br />
as, with a flying leap, he caught the horse's<br />
bridle, saved her from a serious accident.<br />
And—here was the thrill—the rescuer had<br />
greeted and soothed the fri ghtened girl in<br />
perfectly good French!<br />
She tried tp thank him in the same ḷanguage.<br />
All that followed was onl y partly<br />
revealed. At least so it seemed to the<br />
gentle mother when, left alone with her<br />
mountains, she thought it all over. Brewster<br />
listened to the story with flushed face<br />
and tingling ears but in thinking over the<br />
French feature <strong>of</strong> it, his resourceful hatred<br />
found additional cause for suspicion.<br />
"Like's not the critter is one o' these eddicated<br />
Nihilists that had to git up an' git<br />
for throwin' bombs!"<br />
> However, the deeper instincts <strong>of</strong> the<br />
gentleman prevailed, and he actually<br />
nodded to the foreigner the next time they<br />
passed on the road but the man's industry<br />
and enterprise continued to excite and irritate<br />
him beyond endurance. Every new<br />
venture <strong>of</strong> the young enthusiast seemed to<br />
strike him as an insulting challenge. The<br />
logging and lumbering, the shingling <strong>of</strong> the<br />
barn, sides and all, with his own shingles,<br />
the re-modelling <strong>of</strong> the old farmhouse, the<br />
installation <strong>of</strong> modern improvements with<br />
second hand materials donated by one <strong>of</strong><br />
the millionaires on the hill seemed to Brewster<br />
little short <strong>of</strong> a «Iap in the face.<br />
it'T'HEidea <strong>of</strong> that scum o' the earth with<br />
* a bathroom in his house," he snarled.<br />
"A dry sink's been good enough for us."<br />
But even this was not the end for what<br />
should this insatiate foreigner do but revive<br />
an old sugar orchard which had not<br />
been tapped for twenty-five years, the spicy<br />
smoke and fragrant steam rising like incense<br />
over the hill day and night. After<br />
that he attacked an unsightly cider apple<br />
orchard, trimming and pruning so close<br />
that the natives declared the trees looked<br />
"for all creation like sheared sheep with<br />
their hind legs and tails stickin' up in the<br />
As the snowline kept rising higher and<br />
higher on Mount Maroonock, William<br />
Brewster tossed the foreigner and his impertinent<br />
innovations to the glorious spring<br />
breezes and started with plow and harrow<br />
for the fields. And it was with the devout<br />
feeling that all the stars in their courses<br />
were fighting for him that, just as old<br />
Maroonock was putting away its winter<br />
night cap and all the streams were breaking<br />
into their spring songs, he hailed a<br />
"lowery day threatenin' rain." Filling his<br />
pocket with worm ' s released by the plow<br />
and enlisting the dextrous fingers <strong>of</strong> Anne<br />
Rutledge on his snarled lines, he was soon<br />
<strong>of</strong>f toward the mountain filled with fisherman's<br />
joy.<br />
He cut across the Stone place up through<br />
the woods to the east side <strong>of</strong> old Maroonock<br />
where the descent jriras the greatest and<br />
the pools the deepest .<br />
" ASFINEadayasever broke," he said to<br />
** himself as he made a bee line for the<br />
big hole under a mighty hemlock,<br />
But there was nothing doing there,<br />
much to his disappointment, although<br />
he bobbed his bait with patient persistence.<br />
And when the next pool<br />
and the next yielded no greater returns,<br />
the main stream being still too<br />
\ high and boisterous, he began to be<br />
|bitterly suspicious that somebody had<br />
3 out-guessed him and sneaked in ahead.<br />
"If that's what's up, it's no use my<br />
fiddlin' any more," he muttered, as he<br />
threw down the rod and produced his<br />
pipe and tobacco. Then he noticed<br />
footprints in the mud. "It's probably<br />
Zeke," he said to himself. "I<br />
beat him good an' hard last year, do<br />
it four years out <strong>of</strong> five an' if I skin<br />
along now I can maybe get the double<br />
cross on him down at the big bend."<br />
Alas for his hopes! There at the<br />
I big curve his enemy appeared—and it<br />
¦ was not Zeke!<br />
, Astounded and maddened, William<br />
\ Brewster muttered imprecations at<br />
the unconscious <strong>of</strong>fender standing out<br />
in the open and getting ready for the<br />
cast. The high-brow affectation <strong>of</strong><br />
fly fishing added insult to injury.<br />
"The low, miserable furriner!" said<br />
Brewster under his breath.<br />
A little above six feet, straight as a pine<br />
and handsome as a Greek athlete, the<br />
young man turned on his heel, threw his<br />
head backward and swung the rod into<br />
position for the cast.<br />
"Cuss him!" hissed the spectator as the<br />
fisher's sinewy wrist started the mighty<br />
whir! that was to shoot the dancing coachman<br />
into the boiling eddy twenty-fivuflft<br />
away. But suddenly something happened<br />
for the quivering rod stood poised in the<br />
air, the line floating down and curling up<br />
limp on the ground.<br />
"He's seen me an' thinks I'm Bayton's<br />
warden," muttered Brewster but suddenly<br />
catching sight <strong>of</strong> the object which had<br />
fCovriNTF.D ON PAGE 32:1)